Music Station

Music Station was a lot of fun, and I absolutely love getting cool work opportunities like this.

We did our first day in the studio, from midnight to 8am. I finished my basic tracks in about an hour and finished right at 8, then went out to Roppongi.

Steve rolled in and Ryo, Tomas, JJ, and I headed into our first of a few run-throughs of our 3-minute song.

The first thing we noticed was that the set seems so much bigger on TV. We were also really impressed with the staff and the speed with which they were able to tear down and build sets for each act. Given that it was a live broadcast, they had to have it all done within two minutes, which is no small feat.

We were treated very well, and we took advantage of the downtime we had. Everyone but me and Tomas have iPod Touches or iPhones, and Steve, JJ, and Ryo had drum and keyboard apps. We did a nice little Web 2.0-ish jam session with those apps and a couple guitars.

I wore my Chemical Pictures T-shirt. :-*

In the hallway I passed a very pretty girl and she said hello and I realized it was Yui Aragaki and I sort of turned into a pile of embarrassed jelly.

Anyway, once the actual broadcast started, it felt like we got on stage and then stepped off. It was over just like that.

Steve gave me his new album, and I have yet to really listen to it because other than that taping I've been in the studio all this time.

So hopefully that'll be up on Youtube soon in some fashion! I have to say that I'm VERY lucky to be able to do things like this for freelance work and for a new artistic perspective, and then go back to where I want to be in Chemical Pictures. I like the attention I get as a member of CP during shows and stuff but I like the anonymity when I'm on stage with Steve.

I must have received well over 50 messages on my Japanese blog that day, and I had like over 4,000 unique visitors. Before we went out to do our bit, I read the 15 messages that had built up, and we couldn't have been gone for 5 minutes when I came back and saw there were 30 more in the inbox, and more trickled in. Some of these girls watched with their families and recorded it; some have supporting mothers who have also found things to like with CP. One girl told me her mother jokingly threatened to complain to TV Asahi because she felt the camera wasn't on me enough; another girl told me she was getting her nails done at the salon and asked if they could switch the TV to Music Station! Everyone at my label was watching too; Tenten called me afterward and Joe called as well. Schwarz slept through it and mailed to apologize. :-P

After it was all over, I then went right back to the studio for day 2. (On day 3 now)

That was humbling--I get that Music Station is a very big show and certainly not many people can say they've done it, but for CP fans to watch, even though it wasn't CP, and even though I wasn't the focus at all and didn't show on camera too much, they still made a big deal out of it and watched and let me know that they did. These people were so excited to see me there, and seeing them that happy just to see some random dude off to the side on some music show... that is so, so sweet of them. They're just darling people. Gotta admit I got a little emotional. :)