Some news

-From January 1st until March 13th, Trick Master, Strange Guitarist, Cosmic Boy (me) and Rhythm Geek will be performing under the name CPS. This is ostensibly a temporary measure as we're have activities and everything planned but we're not quite ready to be like BAM hey sup chem-pi is back

Check out the pop-up on the homepage to see the new doodles; pictures will be up at a later date.

-We're changing the venue of our 2nd one-man on 3/14, "Science", from Shimokitazawa Mosaic to Ikebukuro BlackHole.

-Tenten has a pendant and ring for sale on the fujipro website that he helped design.
 

That's all for now!

Recent images

Official pics from the BtSSB/AatP event

Rehearsal yesterday. Please note that Joe is standing right in front of our drummer, obscuring him from your view. You'll find out in 3 days.

Melmaga

Man, I just have nothing interesting to say lately! :-/

Drummer has been decided, and not just support. :)
Guitar auditions have been... going. '_'

To those of you who read Japanese, go to theChemical Pictures homepage and scroll down to the very bottom to sign up for the Official Chemical Pictures Mail Magazine!

Chuss~

Instore report

We weren't as nervous as we were for the Shinjuku event, so the talk went a lot smoother than last time. I still hate going first in a round of questions; I like time to think. Maybe it's just because the Shinjuku Zeal Link is in Marui One, but it's so much nicer than the one in Shibuya, which is in an older building. The white background just seemed a bit lonely, and it was dark and I couldn't see the back of the room, where my manager was standing, as well as the dude reading the questions! I have a hard time following along if I can't see the speaker's face. :(

That said, it went well, I think. Lots of new faces, lots of regulars we recognized... wanna give a shout-out to my California girls, who have already commented on the older entry, and the seriously cool-looking, really nice French dude who was the lone male in the crowd. There was one Japanese guy in the audience at the Shinjuku event, too, so that's neat.

The picture part of the event took a long time, and quite a few of the girls bought another ticket so they could go through two or three times, so it was quite tiring, but it was neat to be able to do that, and to see just how devoted these wonderful people are to these three silly guys. O_o

Looking forward to the 1-Day Alice and the Pirates Employee day!

TOE-MAY-HAN

1/16＠Nagoya HeartLandStudio
open16:30/start17:00
adv 3200/door 3700
with/SEX-ANDROID、Hana Shounen Baddies、NoGoD、Sandwich de 120ppun?、Tokyo Heroes

1/24＠ESAKA MUSE
open16:30/start17:00
adv 3200/door 3700
with/SEX-ANDROID、Hana Shounen Baddies、NoGoD、Guruguru Eigakan、Jully

1/31＠Omotesando FAB
open16:30/start17:00
adv 3200/door 3700
with/SEX-ANDROID、Hana Shounen Baddies、NoGoD、Tokyo Heroes、Jully

tourin' with mah dawgs nogod again awwright

Already comin' back

Chemical Pictures is playing the Undercode New Year's countdown event at Shinjuku no not there why would i say that dont ever listen to me Kinema Club.
And then the Osaka-Nagoya-Tokyo tour in January.

p. much awesome

Thanks

Shubarutsu

Last night the announcement went up on the CP website, along with official comments from FujiPro and the four of us.
It's difficult for me to express my emotions fluently in Japanese when I am hardly sure of what I feel in English, so my comment is short and vague.

Schwarz, I think, due to a few factors, has had (and for awhile, will have) a problem figuring out exactly how he wants to properly express himself with the talents he has. If we're going to mention music only, I feel like the CP-formula of heavy and blues played emotionally with nary a love song in sight suited his style just fine, but as a hunch I think he wants to walk a more traditional metal road.

And he has shown signs of restlessness for awhile now. At one meeting conversation quickly turned serious, and I remember thinking that I suddenly had no clue what anyone was talking about. This happened again a few months later, and, try as I might, I had no idea what was going on. Schwarz was pulling away, and I couldn't understand his reasons why. I thought the other two did, but in conversations with them later it turns out that they didn't quite understand.

Tenten and Schwarz discussed things like rambunctious brothers, sort of how I feel like with my own brother--to an outsider it might not look like we even like each other, but the affection for each other feels so obvious to ourselves. Joe tried very hard to get Schwarz to stay, and for a short while it seemed he was successful, but then he dropped the bomb, so to speak.

To tell the truth, I think we were very angry at first. Not only were our efforts to keep our buddy in the fold a failure, there was the timing question to look at. We had already filmed the Praparat video by this point, at the one-man. We hadn't gone into the studio to record it yet. There were all sorts of other things that made this decision a serious royal headache. But we worked out that he'd do the single with us and then that would be it.

Schwarz and Tenten have been working together since last year, before even Joe or I came into the fold. So it does feel a little strange in that sense. When Yue decided to leave Laverite, I have to be honest and say I felt a little relieved. I felt like I could only do so much there and I was looking for another shot. My initial feelings about Schwarz's departure aside, I also feel slightly relieved now, for some reason. Maybe because I just hope that he'll find enjoyment in whatever he does next, and also I have the feeling that we'll be all right.

CP will definitely be back. This is no BS activity pause. Unofficially the goal is to be back before the 3/14 one-man, and this is no vacation. We've been trying to get things in order ever since Schwarz first decided to part ways with us, so don't worry too much.

If you read Schwarz and Tenten's Japanese messages, they strike me as more honest than the typical "oh i am leaving over musical differences, it is so sad oh well" messages you see when someone leaves. Obviously we can't say everything; I don't like it when artists air their dirty laundry with each other, so I'm trying just to illustrate the humanness of these things. But I do want to stress: we still like him. He still likes us (I hope!). We're disappointed, but it's a rare, neat thing when you can get a bunch of dreamers to agree on a dream. And like I said in my Japanese message, it would be nice if both Chemical Pictures and Schwarz are able to keep traveling our respective journeys, keeping in mind the things we learned and the experiences we had together.


Be assured: we began planning out solutions to this the day after Schwarz first told us he'd be leaving, so we're doing our best to come back stronger than before.

I will be glad when we can put this behind us, though.

Oh hey, look forward to our support drummer for the 10/4 show. :)

9/23/09, Meguro Rokumeikan: Chemical Pictures, Hi:BRiD, Otogadead, Juliette

Up at 4, office at 6, Rokumeikan at 12, filmin' somethin' i dunno shut up, then just sitting around being nervous.

Those of you who have seen us live before, bless your hearts for thinking nothing but nice things, and I'm glad it doesn't look like we're struggling up there. Because ever since May I feel like we've been very hit-or-miss. Some shows were great, others not so great, and sometimes we all agreed whether it was a good or bad one and sometimes we didn't. That might be more frustrating than the quality of the show, actually; the inability to come to a consensus.

But last night was awesome!

Setlist:
-Welcome to our CHAOS-
1. Jibaku Souchi
2. Suffering
3. Yamu Sora
-Bluesmen-
4. Black Box
5. Reincarnation
6. Walking Ashland
7. Stand By Me
-fast riff from old website-
Encore -Praparat-

Jibaku Souchi, a very demanding song, executed pretty much flawlessly; Walking Ashland whipping everyone into a frenzy; Joe going absolutely bonkers, Tenten giving his all, Schwarz bein' cool as a cucumber... and I certainly felt collected and in control, and it feels good to hit that pocket.


In all honesty, I feel like some of it was the new costumes. So much easier to move around in than the other ones, bizarrely. Lighter, less restrictive. At first glance they don't look very CP-ish, but we had the opportunity to strike a great deal with BtSSB. Even though our glam aesthetic and their gothic aesthetic are worlds apart, they were very easy to work with, and it's the first time I've had a costume designed to the specifications I laid out in the first place, as opposed to sort of ignoring what I had in mind. Also, the new CP logo looks really neat; we had pins for sale and I stuck mine on my strap so I'll show those to you later.


The call for an encore came, and it was Shota's last show with us, and we knew we had to make an announcement...
Tenten started with, "We didn't really want to do an encore tonight."
The fans called out "Why?"
And then he just blurted it out. Pause. Schwarz is leaving. Shouts of shock, more than a few tears. I got emotional in a numb sense; I've already made my peace with his decision but watching the fans find out for the first time was not pleasant. And during Praparat, the words took on another more prescient meaning.
How are you supposed to smile? Ridiculous.

And as we went to the car, fans were respectful (we'd been told not to stay around and chat by management, and I think they could sort of see we weren't necessarily in the mood for a chat, given the news)... but I felt bad for them. I made sure to at least say thanks and smile, and thank those who just wanted to tell us they bought the CD.

By the 4th I hope it's sunk in, and the in-stores should go fine, I hope. More thoughts in my next post.


Finally though thanks to Nemo who came all the way from Nagano to come see us play! That was crazy nice of her.

More on 9/18

Ito asked if I had any other thoughts about the West show.

I do, actually. And I've been having these thoughts ever since our show at Cyber, and then Boxx.

For those two shows, we were playing with bands unlike us. It's the light, easy-to-understand and easy-to-get-into music for the modern Visual age. For West, it was all the drop-D heaviness bands, and they do what they do very, very well, and the audience goes absolutely bonkers.

I watched from the balcony after our set, with Karyu and James. It's inspiring, and I wonder if we ARE getting those reactions and I'm just too distracted to notice, or we're not quite solid yet, or what.

That said, though, people start moshing wall-to-wall across the entire front of the live house when we play our up-tempo 12-bar-blues pop song, so. So I guess even in a genre chock-full of unabashed musical cliches, there's still so much you can't predict about what people will enjoy across different bands, even if they're doing the same things.

And then I get really nice messages out of the blue, from all over the world, and it gives me a little hope.

hahahaha wait until you see these new costumes haaahahaha

9/18/09, Shibuya O-WEST: Chemical Pictures, Skull, born, OZ, Lulu, Nega

Post got eaten by Firefox, which has been crashing more than ever, by which I mean it has never crashed until the last couple of weeks.


Anyway.

I almost forgot we had a show! I should probably talk about that.


West is a huge stage, but by Japanese standards; I'm used to 200-cap live houses so I sort of had a hard time getting into the groove, but apparently it was okay. Fan reaction was good and I've received some sweet messages already. More foreigners than usual; keep comin'! :)


James came, which was neat. With foreigners I've met through work I tend to be hesitant to invite them to come see me play, but James works in music professionally (well, video, really) so I'm glad he can come see me in not-a-blonde-wig. And also, playing for real.

Karyu came as well, which was really nice of him and unexpected. I need to stress just how nice and grounded D'Ray are. They are good people.

Also got introduced to Michiru (Mask, Aioria, S to M), who is easy to pick out of a crowd but otherwise unassuming, pleasant and business-like, and I think he assumed I couldn't speak Japanese or something, but he was nice. My manager knows everyone apparently.


We are currently working on getting Praparat available for sale to you over-the-ocean peeps! I'm sorry it's taking this long. No one expected the interest this has generated so far and our management hasn't dealt with this sort of thing before so please be patient just a little while longer;;

Here's a picture of the CD and DVD:

Next is my first show at Rokumeikan. Hope I meet a ghost!

CM news, Despa at AX

Here is the spot in Tokyo where our commercial is playing; the Donki in Kabukicho, Shinjuku. It plays once every 15 minutes, all day. (click for big)

It is nice to have something out there being promoted that I am actually a part of, that I get credit for, as opposed to the stuff I do for Tommy or Steve or Becca, which, while loads of fun and I love doing it, isn't about me at all. :-P


So on James and I headed to AX to see D'espairsRay's FREE 10-year anniversary live. James had been hired by them to go on their Europe tour and take the tour document video; James is actually a video guy by trade.

When Tommy decided she was going to keep using me as guitarist after letting the other guys go, we were getting ready to do the February video. James was on the production crew for that one, and when she found out his name was James, she thought it would be funny to have two Jameses in the video. sure whatever just pay me

But we hit it off and then she added a 3rd James, in JJ, and we're set, but he didn't come so he's not a part of this story, I'm just tellin' you how James and I met. Wow, I am not on point this morning.


ANYWAY AX. Flowers from Marilyn Manson.

OH so before the doors opened up, James and I were walking toward the desk to give our names for the passes, and this girl came up and said "hey are you Jimi from Chemical Pictures?"
why yes i am
Seriously, I couldn't have been more tickled, or humbled, and she was super-nice and had a good head on her shoulders and was rockin' out in the Kanto plain and I thought she had had some neat Japanese adventures. We've been in the country for similar lengths of time so I think we were in the same mental place. I forgot her name but she was really nice and cool, so thanks for saying hi, and if I hadn't had to go to work early in the morning we shoulda stayed out for drinks!

I never thought I'd be found out just walkin' around :| ... :3
(so if you see me say hi)
(or if youre gonna be in the area hit me up and i will do my best to hang out with you)
(its fun)

So the set. For some reason a lot of their newer material sorta blends together to me, but then again I'm not as familiar with it as the old stuff. A lot of it does have to do with the fact that DRay's hit upon a songwriting formula and a solid, yet unadventurous playing style, that works for them. They played "Fuyuu shita Risou" and "Tatoeba Kimi ga Shindara" and "Facism" I think but I wanted to hear more stuff like the Garnet or Born stuff; that time period. That's just nostalgia talking though, and I understand that.
Stuff I remember: "Horizon", "Yozora", um

I really liked their first full album, and they played "Infection", and "Forbidden" was the final song of the encore, and those were really nice surprises for me.

They have great stage presence; Tsukasa is solid as a rock, and with a huge stage Karyu and Zero were running around and spinning around for nearly the entire set. They were so energetic during the very first song, in fact, that I bet myself they wouldn't be able to keep it up, yet they did.

For the encore, Tsukasa came out on vocals. He has a very interesting manner of speech, and a lot of his gestures and posture remind me a lot of my buddy Yumeji, but he was very funny. Karyu sat at the drums, Zero at the guitar, and Hizumi on bass.
Hizumi is funny to watch because he really does not come across as a rock star vocalist. He sort of shuffles around, slouches, and sorta seems like an old man.
After meeting him after the show, though, I think it is more appropriate to compare him, in looks, mannerisms, personality, and thought process, to L from Deathnote.

Think about it.

Anyway, with the bass on, he struck no poses, he made no faces, just looked at his fretboard.
Zero, on the otherhand, could be Dray's guitarist if he wanted to. He did not seem out of place at all and everything sounded great. Karyu was also surprisingly skilled. And Tsukasa really can sing.

Anyway, this shifting of members, he said, was called Sparking D'espairsRay, and everyone's name now had 'Sparking' affixed to it. They then played "Hollow" which is easily my favorite song they've written in the last few years.
They did these little silly solo breaks: Karyu pretended to suck at drums but at the end he was actually impressive; Hizumi stopped and started over a terrible bass solo several times, Zero did his best Yngwie impression, and Tsukasa sang this gorgeous enka tune, and he was very very good. He has the style down pat. He should be the first VK enka singer. :|

Anyway, after the show met up with the guys, all very cool. James had already told them all about Chemical Pictures when they were in Europe and Karyu seemed interested in that; Zero and I talked about gear and he was very fun.


All that said, though... this was the FIRST concert I've been to where I thought "ow too loud!"

CPSCM

tee hee

Visual Detective

i have no idea what this is for or when we agreed to this

(our clip is from ikebukuro cyber, judging by ten's hair)

(Thanks, Shizuka!)

Jacket

Here it is, the cover for our first single, Praparat.

It's funny; over the recording process I got very familiar with the lyrics to the lead song and it's neat to see some of those ideas reflected on this jacket.

I also saw a mock-up of the whole CD case--the pictures printed on the discs themselves, the booklet, the back--man. I did something. Well, I mean, I didn't do anything; just, someone realized our silly little ideas and made it into something we can hold.


We are working hard on a way to make this available for purchase overseas and we're pretty close!

Also, today I previewed the music video, and maybe I'm biased but I think it looks really awesome, considering the constraints we were under for it. :3

Studios 1, 2, 3ish

Last time we recorded "In My Dream", I recorded straight through my Sansamp. Also, on the whole, the recording process was difficult and left a slightly bad taste in my mouth. So I sort of had this idea that I don't enjoy recording. But now that we're recording the songs for Praparat, I find myself enjoying it actually.

We're not using Masami or Shota for drums this time; Okachin has drummed for a lot of people, most notably a particularly Kamen Rider and Gundam-obsessed singer. :-* He was great. It took a bit long, and admittedly that's because we didn't do as much pre-pro as we should have, but he did his own thing, asked for feedback, and did most of the stuff we asked him to do and was able to tell us what wouldn't work. It was surprisingly easy.

As for bass, I was able to do both songs in an hour. All in all it was painless compared to In My Dream, but that's probably because we're far more used to these songs. I made a basic sound through Sansamp and laid down the bass.

Then I went to Music Station, and came back.

Day 2 started with me running the bass tracks through an Acoustic head. There were a few bass amps to choose from but when I saw they had an Acoustic I knew I wanted that. I only have one bass, but with these two songs, it would have been nice to have, say, a J-bass and a fretless for certain sections. Still, I was able to emulate those sounds surprisingly well. To make a sort of garage-y picked J-bass tone, I also went through a Boss Blues Driver modified by Weed.

Then we laid down the majority of Schwarz's guitars, and at the end of the night/early morning, Joe put down the acoustic guitar parts. I wish I was more well-versed in guitar amps and stuff or I'd love to tell you guys what we used, but lots of different guitars are also coming in and out of play here and yeah.

Today we started with Tenten's vocals on Praparat, and I am really quite pleased with what he did here tonight. He sang my usual chorus parts for better blending purposes as I worked them out on keyboards and we added some other vocal bits that worked quite well.

Now Schwarz is finishing up some other stuff, and most likely Joe is going in with his parts soon. Tomorrow will be mostly mixing or taking any little bits we couldn't finish today if any, and then mastering, and then hey when do i get to sleep at all seriously

Live Report 8/18/09, Shiuya Boxx: Chemical Pictures, Downer event: Cellt, VelBet, DOG in the Parallel World Orchestra

I really like Boxx. I mean I like the venue. It's got a big area outside that you can chill in, the drink bar is separated from the main hall so you don't have to see a band you don't care about... I mean, from a band perspective you want to keep as many new people to see you as you can, but I totally get the need to escape from a group you're not interested in.

I did not like the sound or lights, though. We were a little bit frustrated but we sort of figured we'd just roll with it. We know we need to stay positive, so we just approached it from the aspect that Shibuya is sort of our "away" game.

But otherwise the show went well. Another reason I like the place is that there are 3 dressing rooms, which are very small but there are actually separate rooms instead of a general "backstage". Also, there's a large central backstage lounge with a fridge and freezer, an ice-maker, water cooler, couches, rice cooker, sofas, and a huge TV and sound system connected to the stage cameras which made observing the other bands so much easier.

Yomi (Nightmare) came and saw us and he spent some time complimenting my singing, which was an honor.

Some other potentially neat things in the works? There were some suits there for non-music-related things who started talking to me about the obvious jazz and blues influences on our playing styles and I like it when I seem to have bamboozled people over 30 that I'm any good! :-P

Next is RECORDING gah this week is going to be crazy.

Live Report 8/15/09, Saitama Kaikan: Chemical Pictures, FIFTEEN OTHER BANDS

When unexpected or unplanned stuff happens on stage--if I get a wire wrapped around my leg, or I bump into Joe, or my mic stand falls over, or Tenten tickles me onstage, what have you--I laugh it off and move on, try to recover well. After all, part of the measure of a good band is how well they can play off of that blip.

And honestly, all in all, things went fine last night, but I don't think I've ever been so embarrassed on stage!

First of all, it was really cool seeing a lot of the old Narciss staff again, and they remembered me and 'welcomed me back' with open arms and big smiles. So great to see Hidetora again, and I also had a great reunion with Kuma, now in Gizel. He's a friend of Joe's too, which just goes to show how dang small this VK world is.

Zero, formerly of Ghost, is now in Hi:BRiD and we hadn't actually spoken in almost a year or so, so it was cool to catch up with him too. And Leo from Cinema Strip. Yuri from Rubik has been a great friend to the band and he was there, as was former beaU bassist Kino, and Soan from Moran. He's been around a lot lately and he has the most calming effect.

Now, after each band's performance, a member or the whole band goes out to the front to do a short talk session with the Zenit Music Factory boss lady, who is admittedly a cool old lady. The idea Tenten wanted to do was, since he was going to jump off the front of the stage and run to the back door after our last song, he wouldn't be able to do the talk. So they were going to send me out there. All I really had to do was announce our single, our 3-man with Otogadead and Juliette, and that we'd be playing at Narciss in October.

Tenten thought it would be funny if I went out there and put her on the spot and say "I don't speak Japanese". I would be speaking Japanese the rest of the time anyway, so I wasn't put off by the idea for the schtick.

I hope I'm remembering this right, because it was sort of a blur.
I get out there and play it Steven Wright-ish, and I get laughs, but I realize that suddenly I have to be committed to this gag. Because she kept asking me questions, when she had assured me that she would keep it short! So I had to come up with these short English answers that Japanese people would understand.

FINALLY, she gets to the question about upcoming activities for CPs and I switch to Japanese, and I got HUGE cheering and applause.

And then it was over and all, and by everyone's account it went fine, but I was SO embarrassed for some reason!

And apparently people were really confused as to whether I can actually speak Japanese or not. Now, she was asking me questions in Japanese and I was answering them in easy English, so I don't know how I could have answered them if I didn't understand. Or how I could wing the tail end of the talk session in Japanese if I couldn't speak. Oh, silly people.

Man, this is why I quit being the singer in bands years ago!

Anyway. Next is

-Shibuya BOXX on the 18th, with VelBet, DOG in the Parallel World Orchestra, Cellt, and Downer

-Ikebukuro Cyber on the 27th, with Canzel, Cult Fiction Club, SuG, Toon Factory, DragonWAPPPPPPER

-9/18 O-West, with OZ, Nega, Lulu, born, Skull

-9/23 Meguro Rokumeikan, Chemical Pictures (with Otogadead and Juliette), release date of 'Praparat'

-10/4 Omotesando FAB, with Inugami Circus Dan, Hana Shounen Baddies, Monokuro Cinema, Hitotsume, and comedians Gorgeous and　Jaa Takeya (Gorgeous is a space pirate with a globe who does jokes that end in country names, and Jaa Takeya sings about awkward situations, I guess comedians warm up VK shows now)

-3/14/10, Shimokitazawa Mosaic, 1st birthday of Chemical Pictures

and some in-stores?? I think those scare me the most!

Oh yeah so quick announcements

-The following people are seriously flippin' aweome: Cryptomayhem, Mrs. Cryptomayhem, Silvanos, Nemo

-Yes, we are on Fuji Pro now, along with Dolly and Hi:BRiD and Smells which is basically Merry Go Round minus one. Other bands that used to be on this label are Gimmick, Ghost, Vogus Image, Henzel, and Clover.

-We have a maxi-single coming out on 9/23, Praparat. 2 songs + one DVD. :D

-The reason we were filming the live was because footage from it will be used as a short promotion commercial that will be shown on the video screen above the Donkihote in Shinjuku. :D

-Then a CPs shusai event for the CD release, another one-man on 3/14 at Mosaic, and lots of other junk!

-I can't get MY OWN BAND'S WEBSITE to show up properly on my computer!

New Japanese Blog

So apparently we're celebrities* now, which necessitates us getting celebrity blogs, and I honestly have no idea what it means and why it meant that we had to make entirely NEW OFFICIAL blogs with the website and not just, like, keeping all the other entries and stuff or moving them or anything. So it doesn't make a lot of sense, I guess I just "leveled up" or something.

Anyway!

http://ameblo.jp/cps-jimi/


*this doesn't mean anything; pretty much any band on any tiny label or management will have this ranking, as will random people you saw on TV like, twice