I've been distressingly busy working these days, and that can really get a guy down, but sometimes something completely random strikes you with enough hope to get through the day.

Today, a pretty Russian girl sang me a song about a baby mammoth looking for his mother. I fell in love briefly.

Tommy Heavenly6 - PAPERMOON preview

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=CorqviqI33k

Embedding isn't working right now, but this video should be neat.

重大発表: 10/19's Big Anouncements

The night isnt yet over, so I'll have a full live report later.

2 announcements.

One. If you reserve a ticket for our next show at Narciss, we'll be giving out a free one-track CD.

Two. That live will be Yue's last performance as Laverite's vocalist.

We're sad to see him go, but grateful for his friendship over the past year. We'll be sure to make our next live our best!

Real-time again

I went for a slightly darker look today. And doing my hair, I realize I want a haircut and bangs.

Real-time bloggin'

We play first tonight and go on at 4:30. 7 bands, and OZxBONE is here too.

Being first, we sound-check last so we're relegated to the immediate backstage dressing room. We don't get to mingle with the other bands but it's more relaxing down here.

It also means we have to do hair and makeup before we rehearse, and that's kind of annoying.

I have one last idea to fix my wireless, or it's with a cable again. The sound is better that way anyway, and it doesn't restrict my regular movement too much. I do have to be careful not to get crossed with Yue's mic chord, though!

Ryota showed me some new song parts; a slow tune and a mid-tempo thing. I've written a couple of tunes they guys liked when I demo'd them.

Ganbarimasu!

Live Report 10/03/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE and others

disappearing nose!

I am more than a little late on this one, and so much has happened since then, so this'll be nice and long I think.

Bara came out to Japan to do some stuff but also to come visit me, and she invited me to go see Moran with her, half of whom are ex-Fatima. I don't remember liking Fatima much at all, but I kinda dug Moran's style, and that singyman is charismatic as heckkkkkkkk.

Also, recently I made contact with La Carmina who is in Japan, and Kyu and a friend came, and it was a really nice feeling to play for some good friends.

After a shaky live at Area, it was somewhat of a relief to be back at Narciss, with Hidetora and the rest of the friendly staff, with a real backstage, and in the suburbian surroundings of Saitama.

We went 3rd out of five, and while the place wasn't exactly full, I am proud to say that Laverite had every single person in the place standing up for us and everyone was, in fact, up toward the front rockin' out. Bara and Carmina were snappin' away with real nice cameras.

just after coming offstage, sweaty and tired!

I felt really energized from just being back in that space. Our set was 7 songs that night, and most of them my favorites. We opened with a slower tune, just to be experimental, and with that crowd I think we got a lot of leeway. I was bouncing around and smiling for the rest of the set, though, doing backing vocals on a couple of songs, and was able to showcase some slap and tapping. Ryota, perhaps unbeknownst to anyone but the most hardcore of Laverite fans (haha what), changes a tiny handful of things up every so often: in "Sephirot", the solo is no longer some early-Metallica-like tapping but some impressive sweep picking work; the guitar in "Delusion" is now a deliberate throwback to early-90's VK. They're very minor but someone with a sensitive ear who had seen us enough times would be able to pick up on the differences.

During the 2nd pre-chorus of "Solidarity", Ryota comes over and we sort of play facing each other; just before the chorus hits I bop him on the head. :D


Carmina wrote about us a little bit here and here and has a few photos, but she let me peruse 'em all and I could hardly narrow down my favorite to merely a few, so here are A MILLION, in order of dubious chronology.

Also, thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! I had a surprisingly good one. What with me working so much and having not been in contact with many of my friends for awhile, I wasn't sure how things would go. But the night of my birthday, an hour before leaving the office, my boss, her daughter, and my other coworker threw me a little party with some fancy cakes, good wine, and cute little presents. After work I met up with Masaki & The Funky Gang for drinks and they gave me a lightsaber. Darth Vader's lightsaber. Which would be a useful gift if I were a Sith Lord and needed to kill any Jedis, but that's just dumb.

Because I already killed them all.

With my bare hands.

Went and saw Ironman with The Bunners on Friday, which was good, but then again sometimes I'm remarkably easy to please with oh-ho-how-witty dialogue, superheroes, or Robert Downey Jr. Actually, most superhero movies leave me bored and annoyed (I haven't liked the Spiderman movies, for instance), but this one is the first one other than the first two X-Men films I can say I actually enjoyed watching. Also she is a brilliant gift-giver.

Monday was lunch with some college folks which just felt so good to do, not having seen especially one of them since April.

I was also lucky enough to go to a coupla cool restaurants with Carmina, but I guess you'll have to wait for her book to come out to get the full effect!

My parents WHO ARE AWESOME sent me the season 4 DVDs of The Office WHICH IS AWESOME and I need to get my main computer fixed so I can circumvent all the ways in which I am not allowed to watch season 5's premiere due to my country of residence.

Our next live is this Sunday, 10/19, and we have a big announcement. On 11/23 we're playing with Vagu*Project again and I couldn't be more excited! There are a couple of other interesting things to be excited about, so I'll let you know when those come up too.

Live Report 9/24/08, Takadanobaba AREA: LAVERITE, Schmelz Cure, Gizmo, Roze, 7191, D-ZEL, Ashura

I worked in the morning then SPRINTED to Takadanobaba to get to Area, which I'd never been to and was just dealing with that nervousness of performing in a new venue. Right when I got there I sat down and did hair and makeup, then immediately got up on stage for rehearsal, and since we were going first, then went right into our performance.

My wireless started acting up right as we started Sephirot, and I started freaking out a little bit. But the staff guy standing in the wings had a cord plugged into me just as I'd barely realized that it was having problems. Apparently Barry Allen works in a live house in Tokyo.

In fact, as we got off stage, I whined a little bit and apologized to Ryota and Yue that I had the troubles. Ryota looked at me blankly and said, "wait when did that happen?"

Inertia and Bunny came, as did a couple of our regular fans. It was sort of an audition live, and by that I mean that if the Area people liked us, then we'd be able to do normal booking with them. We wanted to showcase our broad range, so we played Sephirot, Criticism, Tenkuu, Kamen, and Solidarity, all which are very different songs from one another. In fact, as we were talking with the staff afterward in the office and taking care of money stuff, that sort of worked against us in their eyes. They like the songs as individual tracks, but to them we seemed to lack focus in how we want to present ourselves, what sort of bands or events we want to associate ourselves with, etc.

It was all interesting because it wasn't the way we were used to being advised elsewhere. Not that Narciss ever coddles us; they're often quite hard on us in terms of post-show advice but obviously we're doing something decently because Narciss has frequently treated us with particular favor. I don't feel that Area was unfair to us at all, I don't want you to get that impression. It's just interesting to hear another perspective.

We also heard yet another perspective because Sizna from Sugar had come to check us out. He came backstage afterward and he and Ryota mostly discussed stuff.

Unfortunately, mentally I was barely 'there'--I think I was still trying catching breath from my recently very hectic schedule. Still, it felt good to finally get to play our first live in Tokyo!


Thanks to all your comments regarding the Becca video; it was a long shoot for sure but it was a lot of fun. I have never been so well attended-to. We played through the song a million times that day and of course I had to go crazy-go-nuts each time. In between each take I had several people come to my aid; makeup girl for touchup, costume girl for adjustments, water girl with the water, with hole cut out of the lid and straw taped into place, just like when we play live too.

All the people involved were really great, and Becca herself was very sweet and very good to work with. That song is going to be the ending theme for "Kuroshitsuji", a new anime, and the opening theme is going to be by Sid. Seven degrees of Tenuous Connections, I know.


Sometime next week I'll put up my report of our 10/3 show, but in the meantime, check out La Carmina's post about it!

BECCA - I'm Alive

Konpeito found me before I could, even!



Check out that hot, hot guitarist on the left in the blue shirt. :-*