Live Schedule

http://www.chemical-pictures.com/live.html

New page on the website! Also that is my nose.

Already mentioned the one on 5/16, so the next one is


May 23rd, Takadanobaba AREA
Open 4:30, start 5:00; advance 2800 + drink

with Chemical Pictures, MaitoreiA, Dio, Jewel, Lad

sometime tomorrow

Tomorrow http://chemical-pictures.com/ will be updated, and we've got 3 upcoming live dates:

5/16, 5/23, and 6/12

tee hee :3

Design session, also food

I was at Michika's yesterday. She's the designer of Vanilla Edge, and she treats Chemical Pictures and others as her children. I have no family here, so I am only too happy to think of her as mom!

First we watched me on TV. Then she cooked TONS for me, Joe showed up, Yumeji (ex-Mello, Rhyolite) helped me make the songs I wrote more CP-friendly while still retaining their Jimi-ness, and Michika's husband Nao played some seriously sexy licks and let me play his fretless bass. Lovely.

But the whole point was some design discussion, and I can't wait to see how she carries out my image.

I am being actively, fiercely helped, protected, encouraged by Tenten, Schwarz, Joe, Masami, Michika, and I am so lucky and thankful.

Gaaaah April is just DEAD SPACE I want it to be May! May is when things start goin' down.

also definitely some crazy surprises coming up i think yeah

3 mins

Real-time!

It's over now.

One of my acquaintances who helped out during the SCSP PV was one of the cheerleaders for the February part. When I ran into her I didn't recognize her at first. She was cute before but in the cheer guise she was distressingly pretty.

I watched with Michika of Vanilla Edge and Yumeji of Mello. Great people. More later; dinner time!

Vidja Gaems

Is anyone else playing Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, because it is seriously fun and hard but in a good way, not like R.Mika, that jerk.


In fact, R.Mika, why do you suck so bad? Why do you have command throws with precarious timing and terrible range? And why, if I somehow whiff those command throws, do you assume that I meant to do your half-circle-back moves, which are terrible and leave you open to attack even if you connect? Why do you have so few frames of invisibility? Why is your normal moveset a confusing mess? Why do your super combos do piddly damage despite the fact that you are slamming someone into the ground after jumping off a turnbuckle? Why are all your super combos so awkward anyway? Why do your crouching attacks make you invulnerable on purpose? In fact, why does every single movement you make include some horrifically self-punishing window of opportunity? You are the worst. Praise the lord that you've never appeared in any other fighting game. Stay away. No one likes you. If they do they are jerks too so go live in jerkyjerkland together, ya jerks.

(i am pretty addicted to street fighter alpha 3 on commutes to work (´・ω・’))

I Kill My Heart

The readers of Rock Japan Elec-tric are the best readers out of any readers who have ever read anything. They are clairvoyant, they are Internet Encyclopedia Browns, and they support me no matter what, which is actually kind of insane of them and they should really get checked out. :-*

That said, you're right about the TV appearance, so let's give some details:

3/28 (Sat)
Fuji TV, channel 8, 6pm
"Music Fair"
I will be playing guitar during Tommy Heavenly6's performance.
I probably won't pop up too much during those 3 minutes, but it's something.


Also, apparently this is the cover and promo shot for the new album:

Once again, thanks to Sneakglove for finding this stuff out way before I'm told anything! Sneakglove should be my publicist.

The others

Pre-wig. I was pretty happy with wardrobe this time. Actually wardrobe for these jobs has been wonderful and it's so nice to work with the same staff every time. It makes me feel much less like "random foreigner #4" or something. Japanese helps with that of course.

2/3 of my partners in crime for the evening. All 3 of us share the same first name. I was the first one on board, of course; the middle one you might recognize from Tommy February6's "Strawberry Cream Soda Pop" PV with me, and the last one was found on the criteria that he is a musician, spoke Japanese, and, most importantly, shared my first name. I'm 100% serious.
And he's very talented; he's featured in a song/video with GaGaalinG for example and is a fantastic producer and multi-instrumentalist. Going back to the middle one, he's a talented aspiring filmmaker, especially with an eye for indie bands with a visual flair. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, because PVs are not exactly ways to make money, as they're sort of just expected nowadays. I guess that's why bands stick 'em in the releases now, or have PV collection DVDs.

Drummer J split so Bass J and I went to Jonathan's because we were seriously jonesin' for some ice cream. Then Masaki called me out of the blue and I took Bass J along to go out for some drinks with Masaki, Keita and some of those guys and gals, and then back home.

see what we did, we switched hats we are so wacky and random tee hee


basically im saying that theres a show you should be watching on saturday evening

Hm...

I wonder why I was at Fuji TV studio today…

the things you find

Check out what I found in the dumpster behind our studio when I went outside to take a call about cool stuff coming up!

Live Report 3/14/09, Shimokitazawa Mosaic: Chemical Pictures

What a night.

Masami, making last-minute changes to our MTR.

How terrified I look!


We met up a couple of hours before entrance time to get our rental cars, loaded up the equipment, picked up our makeup girl, then tried to get to Mosaic on time. We were only a half-hour late, but even then it was beginning to look like there was no way we'd start the show on time. We dodged the girls doing irimachi, Tenten took their presents, and we headed into makeup.

This is our roadie, Uta, in charge of the tedious task of strawifying our stage water bottles.


We had an intense, 2-hour sound check, where we did a lot of fine-tuning, and since it was a one-man, we were able to make very specific requests to the PA girl, who was stellar, and the lighting guy, who was spot-on.


Head into final hair/makeup check and somehow we actually managed to start almost on time!

The set started out with a projector playing a countdown over the Chemical Pictures logo and that pretty guitar piece. As it got to 10, the crowd started counting down along with it. Schwarz's guitar squealed the intro to the heavier intro, and the screen dropped, revealing us in the sparkly sunglasses. Tenten came out in the middle of it and the crowd got even more wild.

Tenten is quite the performer, getting much more involved with the crowd than I've ever seen a vocalist get in this genre. He was pretty worried about me before we went on, just because I seemed so nervous, but to be honest once I get out on the stage I'm perfectly fine.

That said, though, the place was jam-packed to capacity! We had to actually cut down the guest list because tons of people were showing up. It had sold out in January but then they added more tickets and then those sold out too. There were two guys with video cameras on either extreme end of the stage, one foreign photographer from a particular foreign magazine, and fans were squished all the way up to the front. No press pit, no dividing bar, just the stage and then people. Tenten would frequently just seem to walk into the crowd, and they loved it.

Masami looked like he was having a blast; Joe really stepped into his new crazy character, and Schwarz was smolderingly cool.

During one of the MC's, Tenten spoke about how he and Joe were from the same hometown. He talked about Masami helping out, he talked about Schwarz being a prodigy, and then he said "and Jimi... well, just look at him, you know what's up." He mentioned my appearances in Tommy's videos and that got them going too. :)

The MC's that night were pretty serious in nature, as it had been quite awhile since his last time on stage. I thought he was a good speaker, which sometimes is not the case with vocalists and MC's.

I have never played material as heavy as "In My Dream" or "Suffering" before, and that was such a rush! Everyone was bouncing all around that tiny, tiny stage. At one point Tenten dived into the audience, which felt good to me because there's no way any normal VK venue would have allowed that.

Oh, and I managed to catch a cold THE DAY before the thing, so bad that my voice barely came out. Through various means I managed to be able to sing, but only barely... I really wish I'd been in tip-top shape, but them kids and their germs...!


It was really nice to have hair/makeup staff, goods staff, a house staff, and a roadie for us. Made life so much easier. SO much easier. They were attending our every needs, and it reminded me a lot of my various acting/modeling gigs. I make sure to thank them profusely because they had to endure some of our silly requests.

We sold Polaroids again, this time THIRTY per member, and we had to sign/draw/write on them all. That took a long time too.

Tenten is, obviously, the most popular member, but as the show went on I heard an awful lot of "Jimi!" too. D:

Anyway, after our final song, the call for "encore!" went up almost immediately. We played Radiohead's "Creep" and "Pearl" by The Yellow Monkey.
And then we got called for another encore; we did "Suffering" and "Pureparato" again, and then out.

TONS of presents for Tenten, and lots of visitors, many in the shape of other bandmen bringing beer, which we sorely needed at that point! A couple of the guys from Rubik were there to say hello, as was Shunsuke from bis, Mika from Rentrer, and Ruvie's vocalist. The woman who collaborated with Tenten on the jewelry from Vanilla Edge is also the one who did the Flash on our website, and she's wonderful and it's been great to work with her and I was glad to hear the nice things she said about the performance. There were also all sorts of other important-looking people I didn't know and I just smiled and looked cute and said hello and thanks and stuff.

I had just played a two-hour set with no rest and yet I did not feel tired at all; only exhilirated. What a rare feeling. We changed, gathered all our stuff, dodged the demachi, and headed out.


So then here's our next live:

May 16, 2009 (Sat)
"Ishin-Kaiten Vol.17"
Shinjuku HOLIDAY
Open...16:00 Start... 16:30
Adv: 2800 yen, Day: 3300 (+drink)

・Chemical Pictures
・SIVA
・Drop Star shooting (ex.GHOST's Kousei's solo project)
・Gilltia
・PRIMEADDICT
・Aya
・The Vambie
・DRO'LE

Tickets on sale from April 4th at CD HOLIDAY. You can yoyaku for any band except ours, apparently, for some reason... I'll figure out why in a coupla days. :)

Also, these live pictures are awesome can't wait for you to see them, but it won't be through me! :-*

CP's B-day

The pictures are in reverse order, but you get it. :)

Hey guys one-mans are crazy sweet.

Also check out what we added to the homepage at http://chemical-pictures.com/ , I haven't looked closely yet.

More after a proper rest!!

I really want to thank everyone for all the support and kind thoughts and encouragement... it's meant a lot in these strange times. And this is just the beginning!

Tomorrow

And of course the first email in my jimi.aoma account is from my mom wishing me good luck tomorrow. :3 My mom is awesome.

There's a lot of stuff I want to touch on--wanna give a bigger run-down of the two Tommy albums, the new D, Mucc, Nogod and DRay, the beautiful new ET PV--but I'm going out of my mind with nervousness for the show tomorrow.

And today at work they handed me a "termination of employment" paper--and for a moment I panicked, and then I realized I'd done the same thing last year when I renewed my contract. They just sprung it on me though; nothing like "hey so we're giving you a new contract but first sign this terminating the last one". Signed my new contract and now I'm gold.

I'll try to update from location!

Introducing

Jimi

It is my pleasure to present to you the other members of Chemical Pictures.


Of course, you know Tenten...

Guitarist #1 is Schwarz (name subject to change), who helped out Tenten in the past with his solo stuff.

Guitarist #2 is Joe, formerly of SugarTrip.

Masami (ex-Gossip) is doing support for the time being, and we're working on a transition. But best to hit the ground running like this. :)

I can't wait to show the shots!

Subjects

When I update from my keitai I forget to put a subject. D:

Shimokita's vibe IS super chill, and I love how it's never really crowded. The shopping is great in all price ranges and diverse styles.

But in the Japanese consciousness it does sort of have a hipster thing going on. The area isn't particularly clean, although in a way that arguably adds to its charm. Usually when I've gone the buskers have been pretty unique and interesting; I once saw an really cool acoustic duo with one guy on a cajon, who somehow managed to make Sublime tunes even MORE funky, and called out to me and we chatted for awhile. Others do crafts or other performances and it really adds to the friendly character of the area.

But yesterdays buskers were terrible! One guitar/bass combo whose off-tune caterwauling could be heard from the other side of the station, and another man doing calligraphy, writing overwrought phrases on paper: when his crowd began to dwindle, he dipped his hair and face into the ink and tried it that way. His crowd dwindled further, and now he has ink in his face and hair.

I didn't mean to imply in my last post that I didn't like the place, so sorry! Since yesterday I was sort of on business, it was a lot more calming to be shopping there as opposed to trying my luck in the 'Buk or the two 'Juk's or the 'Buya. I particularly like the GGD there.

Also there were tons of cafes and pubs and bars and the like and if I'd been with someone I woulda checked out a few of 'em but I was alone and didn't want to look pathetic. :(


Today was a good rehearsal, compared to the one I had to rush to after work after having not slept after the long, long film shoot. We're STILL changing bits of the songs, and I'm overjoyed that we always nail it the first time we try it, and then never forget after that. These guys are serious. For every idea Tenten suggests that doesn't work, he has a couple that just make us wonder why we'd never thought of that. Lovin' these guys. Tomorrow's the photoshoot!

Shimokitazawa is a funny place that tries to be bonhemian and trendy at the same time. The general style waffles between way laid-back hip, and totally atrocious. Some people just try too hard I guess. You can find great deals if you take your time, though.

Today I finally finished buying stuff for CP outfits, got some boots, and seriously why am i still limping

Tomorrow, rehearsal; day after, photoshoot at 6am do you envy me or what

(protip: do not envy; 6am is the devil's time, also envy is a sin :) )

The WBC is going on right now, and it's nice to watch a sport for which I know the rules; still don't really 'get' soccer. Japan has a basketball league but they never show the games on regular channels.(つ_;) I also miss football. Most of all I kinda miss shootin' hoops with bro or poppa-bear or roomies!

Off to bed after I watch the new Office. :3

To clarify

The shoot was actually pretty fun, the more I think back on it... it was just bookended by roughness at the time.

Regarding the members of Chemical Pictures that some of you guessed, everyone's been pretty far off the mark so far, although someone mentioned Gossip and that was close. Wrong member though. :-* (Also, Guitar #1 has never done Visual before so you can ignore him for now!)


Tommy sent me her two best-of albums, and some of these songs are really, really, really good! I wonder how I managed to go so long without really being aware of this stuff. I went back to my entry where a lot of you made suggestions and sure enough those turned out to be the songs I thought were really good too. Good work, lads 'n' ladies!


M'kay, I'm off to go shopping in Shimokitazawa today! We take photos on Monday soooo look forward to all that! :D

ouch

Wed: work at 9am, take two-hour train to studio, film straight until:

7am on Thursday, train back to work on no sleep, now off to rehearsal with a limp. Shoulda been fun but rushing to much. 1 more week or so of this sorta business.

Whee!

Studio 3/3

Here's the whole group:




Guitar #1's setup...



Compare to my setup...



And then I purposefully look like the huge dork in the last group shot. I wonder if anyone can guess who the other members are! :3

Recording

Laying down the 弦楽器 tracks at Guitar#2's place. He was up late last night mixing drums. G#2 made me delicious gyudon.
Wednesday Tenten will come do vocals.

Which of the songs are we doing, I wonder! (・ω・)

Countdown 2 Weeks

First of all, I got a package:

Awesome scarf, awesome letter, 1st issue of Askew, and Transformers chocolates. By this I mean that they transformed from foil-wrapped candy to deliciousness in mere seconds.

Oh 'sup Laverite.

Bands literally do rehearse in front of a mirror to perfect movements and staging and jump timing and whatever, so after a particularly aerobic rehearsal a few days ago, Tenten decided that a beer would be the best way to cool down and we took this horrible sweaty picture.

This is guitarist #2's setup. I have no idea what's going on.

Wearing guitarist #1's glasses,




And Tenten's. They said I looked like Superman, so there's the reason for that pose. Except instead of an S there's a unicorn on my shirt.

2 more weeks! And, for other cool reasons, March is going to be craaaaazy and might be removed from, as the kids say, "the hook".