2009/04/28＊Takuro
「Shooting a PV」
We’re at a pier for our shoot today.
You can see the Bay Bridge.
As to the content, we’re filming some nice and suspicious-looking footage. Look forward to it.
With that, later.
2009/04/25＊Kazuhiko
『Birth』
Hello, this is Kazu Nakamura. I turned 25 on April 24th. Hello, this is Kazu Nakamura.
Today was my first show as a 25-year-old. Dring an MC, everyone from te’ and telephones surprised me by coming and bringing a cake on-stage. Ah, I’m happy. But it’s like, “are you guys really doing this at a festival show!?“. I was really surprised.
I spent the day at my parents’ home yesterday. If you lead this kind of a lifestyle, getting to celebrate your birthday with your parents is something of a rarity. This birthday felt somehow special.
It was raining down hard during the show and Takuro mentioned this in an MC, but there was a lot of steam rising from the guest seating area, so much so that it looked like an onsen. That looked crazy. Don’t you go and catch a cold now.
After the show, we had a barbecue with everyone from te’. The flames were insane.
This was Kazu Nakamura.
2009/04/24＊Takuro
「For the first time in 3 years」
We’re heading to Sendai with te’ for our Arabaki performance. It’s our first time traveling together since “Gjallarhorn” (aka Yellow Album), our first release on Zankyo three years ago. Commuting with Masa is great as ever. Here’s to hoping it’ll be sunny at the venue.
2009/04/20＊Takuro
「Before & after mastering」
The CD I talked about last time has been completed!! …is what I’d want to proudly proclaim, but we just finished mastering it today. (laughs) First off, I’ll skip the explanation as to what “mastering” is. My knowledge and vocabulary isn’t adequate to explain what it actually means. However, you can hear a clear difference listening to it before & after. Listening to it over again in its entirety, there’s something I realized: among 9mm’s CD’s, this one is extremely long. Even longer than any of the albums. (laughs) We’re troubled over the fact how, because of the length, the (what’s supposed to be the) lead track “Black Market Blues” isn’t able to do what we intended it to. Not that I mean to say it’s bad (it’s awesome) but to put it simply, you’ll completely forget what you were actually listening to halfway through because of the length of the live track. You’ll go “Huh? I was sure I was listening to a single……” and you’ll look at the display of your stereo to find it saying “2 30:54 (30 minutes and 54 seconds into the second track)”. I think that’s going to happen a lot people.
That’s right, we’ve included the whole Free Live in its entirety. The length easily exceeds that of the similar “Discommunication e.p.”. The petty mistakes, the stupid quips during our performance, even the MC’s, everything’s included. Thinking about it now, there was a huge price drop at the time of “Disco～” which I think caused a stir. Most of the copies were sold like hot cakes. However, as I think everyone’s memories of that are getting fuzzy, this time we’ll stealthily return to a more normal price, guhehehehe…… that was the plan anyway. But, listening to it at mastering today, it again feels right to sell it with a huge price drop. Thinking about it carefully, selling this for 1500 yen can’t be good… maybe something that cheap won’t even sell in the first place… perhaps we’re just idiots… we’re idiots?! Hooray! We’ll just forget all about that stream of thoughts and the CD shall be released as planned.
The song we call “Black Market Blues”, it’s a really good one so look forward to it please. To those of you who attended Free Live, how about you wait for the release while making speeches to your walrus and somehow playing songs to him intracerebrally? Oh, and a truetone or something is on sale as well. Listening to it through the speaker of your cellphone might feel kind of lonely, but I’m just saying it’s an option. With ringtones and truetones being so popular, I wish BOSE or someone would collaborate with all the cellphone makers to develop cellphones that have speakers with never before heard quality! Then all the music lovers would go and…… not get one, nhahahaha. With that, later.
2009/04/17＊Takuro
「Two big announcements & we’re home」
I’m hooome, or rather, we already returned a long time ago. At our lodging together, we’d be drinking from sunrise to sunset and eating great food everyday at the inn where they’d listen to our good-for-nothing remarks with all smiles. Thank you very much. Oh, and as I was bidding my farewell to Gretsch, he threw himself down showing me his stomach, going like “come on then, let’s have some petting“. I did as asked. But really, we’ll make some good songs.
We’ve finally made some announcements. An EP and a tour!!
Keeping quiet about this was no easy task, you know? Damn. Alright, here I go:
Black Market Blues, Black Market Blues, Black Market Blues, Black Market Blues!!!!! …is the name of the EP we’re coming out with!! We played it at Free Live as well. It’s quuuite good. Hearing the song, a certain someone told us that “this century’s gonna be alright“! Who do you think it was? Nhahaha～
And then, Daisanji Memai Taisen!! We’ve been talking about how we’d like to play with THE BACK HORN for ages now, and that has now finally materialized. Hooray. Seriously, keeping quiet about this wasn’t easy. We chose that title by the eight of us. Can’t help but be excited by this tour. Come on over to get dizzy, everyone.
We’re rapidly announcing summer festival performances as well. Last year we played nine and I don’t think it’ll be that different for this year either to be honest. Oh dear. (laughs) Look forward to which ones we’ll be appearing at. With that, later.
2009/04/13＊Takuro
「A return to lodging together, news flash 2」
Even though they made a distinction between Ultraman and Ultraman Has Returned, for the “Has Returned” version I think they didn’t call him “New Ultraman” or anything like that. Does anyone remember how it really was? There was something like that written in TV ◯gazine around the time I was in kindergarten. Actually, there might even be some people who don’t even know Ultraman Has Returned itself.
Everyone aside from me headed out for ramen. Just like that the end of our lodging together is already in sight. Today we’ll drink the night away.
Pictured here is the watchdog for our lodging, Gretsch. He doesn’t bark at all so it makes me wonder if it’s not actually just a hollow body. He cheerfully complied with me taking a picture of him, too.
2009/04/12＊Takuro
「A return to lodging together, news flash」
We’re in the middle of composing at the moment.
Taki’s doing guitar dubs. He’s moving really fast.
We’ve been really cheerful these last two, three days. I want to play catch ball and fly kites or paper airplanes (not satellites) in some park with a lot of greenery. I think we’ll be heading out for a break together.
2009/04/09＊Takuro
「Lodging together again」
“You just went last month!” is what some of you might be saying, but the four of us are again secluding ourselves in the mountains.
The real worry here isn’t “what if a pig (a wild boar, actually…! In reference to “Lodging together, news flash 6“, reading it while replacing “pig” with “wild boar” makes us look twice as stupid) comes out again?” but the possibility that a bear might come out. Whether it’s by ringing a bell, whistling or just singing out loud when I’m walking about, I’ll be sure to cheerily be careful. Playing dead is absolutely not allowed. You’ll get eaten.
I was wondering if I’d get to do some cherry blossom viewing, but there aren’t many sakura trees around here. They have a history of being planted by humans, so they wouldn’t bother planting them here on the mountains with a lot of greenery as it is. Although there aren’t any white or pink flowers blooming here, the birds are constantly singing which creates a really pleasant atmosphere. Maybe I’ll try recording them and making it into a song where I slap them on top of a barrage of distorted guitars and double bass drums, with a BPM of 190. Nhahaha. Well, we’ve only just started so you can never know what we’re going to come up with. With that, later～.
2009/04/05＊Takuro
「Punk Spring Zero Nine」
This was a fantastic day.
“Damnit, I won’t be able to watch the flowers” and other such complaints seem completely trivial now after seeing so many awesome shows.
There was an aisle in the backstage area from where you could see the audience. I witnessed several circles forming amongst the people there. It was like I was watching a foreign festival (though I’ve only seen videos of those). Each time a song ended, there was cheering and tens of thousands of fists in the air. Everyone seeing that, the cheers get even louder. I was moved by Cromagnon and Bad Religion, got great laughs out of NOFX and attentively watched all of Takeshi’s band’s show. I got to talk to the members of Madina Lake and Mindless Self Indulgence a bit (basically just stuff like “you were awesome!” (in Japanese) but they got what we were trying to say. If you try hard enough, you’ll be able to communicate with Japanese only just fine). Bad Religion are an important band to both Taki and Kazuhiko, so expect a blog post with overflowing emotion from them, or alternatively, they’ll just say “this is impossible, I don’t feel like I’ll be able to convey this tremendous emotion” and end up not writing a single word. I think it’ll be one of the two. Look forward to it.
Our own show was the best too, of course. The year before last we were asked to perform in a hurry, but this year we hung up our backdrop nice and high, arranged a bad ass setlist that wouldn’t lose to the legends performing there and mustered up the strength needed to do our performance under such circumstances. I’m completely worn out. We had a good time. Thanks to everyone who watched us play. Even the people who were getting fired up for all they were worth at the stage next to ours.
Even though we got into the mood for playing live again, we’re rushing right back into songwriting. I think our next show is at Arabaki. Before I’ve noticed it, we’re playing all kinds of festivals this year as well. Since it’s already spring, that means summer’s right around the corner, huh… I’m happy to be spending the year being so busy. With that, later.
2009/04/04＊Takuro
「After the Free Live」
To all those who came to see us on 4/1 as well as all who watched us on Supesha, thank you. We’re in a shinkansen at the moment, traveling to Punk Spring. The sakura I can see from the window are blooming～. Just before waking up that day, I saw a horrific nightmare where, even in spite of it being a free event, there was an extremely urgent state of affairs as there were only 6 people there to watch our show. (We even performed in my dream. It was going pretty good, but I unfortunately woke up before we finished.) At this point, I can but laugh. Once we got on the stage, there were people around 1000 times that there to watch us. I was astonished. Furthermore, though it was the sort of suspicious weather where it could’ve started raining at anytime, thanks to the power of music it never did (actually it dribbled just a little bit at the very end). Though everyones’ return home might’ve been a little difficult, the Free Live itself went very well.
Like Kazuhiko said in the beginning of the program that by the time of airing, we’d be well over with the show. What would been something perfect to liven up our wrap-up & DVD release party afterwards, the bar where we were at didn’t have a TV, so we weren’t able to check how our show was that night. Looking aside to the pedestrian bridge during our show, this girl (probably, I wonder if there were others) walking over there (well, she was watching our show though) fell over flashily at the staircase. I wonder if she was okay — I can’t see from the recording. In addition to what I could see from the stage, there were also people dancing below the sakura trees at around half the tempo of the song, as well as the usual band kids of course. In any case, for now I’ll concentrate on watching this recording. Later～
…is what I was supposed to write here but forgot to. I’m writing about present time from here on. Did anyone realize that before writing those not even very long paragraphs above, there was a blank of more than 24 hours where we traveled from Nagoya to Tokyo? I guess you also wouldn’t know that I wrote it all in 5 minutes, nhahahaha. Now then. I wasn’t coping with my car sickness very well and breathing was a bit difficult, so the trip back was pretty harsh. This is something I talked about with George (Williams. Thanks for your help at the Film Live!), but whether it’s a shinkansen, airplane or car, the speed limit at which the human body can travel is sliiightly exceeded. So when traveling long-distance, even though the body is moving, the soul can’t keep up! (Something that’s written about in Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase). Not that there’s any basis for it, it’s just a theory he came up with while wanting to explain that hardship that comes with commuting.
There was some slight trouble too at our important Nagoya show, but on our way back afterwards our moods were lifted, so overall I’d say the result was a favorable one. I liked how there was a foreign fan present, bursting into roars of laughter here and there. “Gahahaha～!“. It’s too bad it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to see the sakura tomorrow which would be the best day to go view them, but I’m looking forward to our show as well as all the other wonderful bands who will be performing. With that, later～ (for the second time)
