Stood up and down

Last night Keita and I were going to do something with a couple of people, but they fell through so we canceled. That had me pretty bummed out, as I had been looking forward to it. Then Hizaki called and said he had some people who wanted to meet me.

Remember Tokami, and how when I first saw them back in '06 and they had the pope singer? That's Kaito, and he was with us, so it was neat to catch up with him. Also his presence put a couple of puzzle pieces into place, and when I mentioned that I'd finally figured it out, Hizaki called me slow. ;_;

Tenten (KuRt) and I bonded quickly, and Yomi (Nightmare) was also there, inexplicably. His speaking voice is much higher than his singing voice would have you believe. He's got tons of energy and we got along well.

Some older guys in a regular rock band showed up, all from Osaka, so Hizaki and all those guys spoke a rapid stream of Kansai-ben, which, just from Hizaki's unapologetic refusal to speak Tokyo-ben, certainly trains your ear pretty fast. One of the guys there, almost twice my age, was familiar with a lot of places in CA where I've spent my years, and it was nice to talk about familiar landmarks and hangouts.

The restaurant we were all at was closing so we then headed to the Rock 'n' Roll bar of one of the Osaka dudes, and just lounged about til morning.

Also Kiyoharu showed up. 30 minutes later he left.
I didn't speak to him personally, but you should have seen Tenten and Yomi freak out hard.

Hizaki and I left the place around 8am (>_<) and I came home and CRASHED SO HARD and I must have slept 9 or 10 hours, and it's currently 8pm, so there goes an entire day and my sleeping schedule! Tomorrow's a national holiday though, so I think I'll be fine. I miss daylight though!

I am not cut out for that kind of schedule. O_o

Notes on Christmas

December 21st.

-After months and months and months, finally re-connect with college friends and have a great time.

December 22nd.

-Enjoy some great Christmas cake with coworkers.

-Go to my boss's daughter's piano recital. Adorable.

December 23rd.

-Hizaki invited me to the Versailles tour final at Shibuya Kokaido, which will always and forever be a way better name than "C. C. Lemon Hall". That name is the worst. I let him know I would be bringing Ryota as well.

-The show was great--the stage had FIRE and EXPLOSIONS SORTA and stuff like that. There was a huge tiered stage that Yuki was up on, and periodically Teru would scramble up and down it. The performance was spot-on as usual, although at one point I remember thinking that I really didn't care for the song they were current playing. I turned to Ryota and asked what song this was. He said, "Princess. I don't like it much either." Ha.

-So Versailles is going major in June and that's pretty cool and I'm happy for them. They're also playing 5 days in a row at Rokumeikan. That is insanity. Kamijo told me that originally it was going to be 3 days, but Hizaki pushed for 5 BECAUSE HE IS RIDICULOUS.

-At one point Ryota went to the restroom, and when he came back he hurried back to my side and said, "I just peed next to Shinya." I patted him on the head. "Good for you."

-After the show, people without guest passes were ushered out, and there was a short short after-party on the 2nd floor lobby with everyone. Matenrou Opera was also there, and I randomly ran into people from Hear Japan and J-Rock Revolution as well, so 'sup guys. Also Noriko Shouji was there and she is the VK grandma basically and she is tiny and really sweet.

-'Zaquitos had me come to the final uchiage, and there we talked a bit of business that was quite neat indeed. Basically it was just chillin' and maxin' and relaxin' with Versailles, Matenrou Opera, Dollis Mary, Shinya, and then a small handful of roadies, hair/makeup staff, and then their management and recording engineer.

-I never, every thought that my path would cross with Dir en grey in any capacity, but sure enough Shinya told me that he and Die were learning English but that he wasn't advancing as fast. "So you want to practice right now?" I asked. Nervous and embarrassed, he refused, very Shinya-like.


December 24th.

-Spent the evening with the regular crew of Masaki, Yanagi, Keita, and a nice handful of others at a really relaxing darts bar in Shinjuku. Yanagi is currently in the band SwallowtaiL, and their other two members Rai and Ryuji were also there. Ryuji sang Ayaka's "Mikkazuki" and... I am not exaggerating; Ryuji may very well be the best vocalist in visual kei that I have ever heard. He nailed that song in terms of both technique and soul.

-We did a gift exchange, sort of white elephant style, and pretty much everyone did a great job of gift-giving. I don't think I'm very good at gift giving, so the reaction everyone had when my gift was opened felt pretty good. The one I received is sort of an O. Henry situation; one of our friends is a tattoo artist and part of his gift was one free tattoo. While I am far too fickle to get a tattoo, nor have I really thought about ever getting one ever, I appreciate the gesture and loved the rest of the gift. :)


December 25th.

-I met up with Reina, who had gifts for me from people, and that was great. We headed to Club Quattro in Shibuya, which was smaller than I expected. I got my pass from Ryo and in we went. The crowd was diverse, with lots more foreigners than I'm used to seeing in one place, and a healthy number of males. A few girls there were in those Santa dresses and that was cute, and some of the stage lighting in the beginning felt Christmas-y, so that felt appropriate. :-P

-It was my first (and last, obviously) time really seeing Rentrer en Soi, and it was neat to see them. They seem to have a more relaxed, swaggering energy. Banter is minimal, but when Satsuki did speak he chose his words very carefully. Quite a long set; several encores, and in the 2nd one there were a lot of old songs, which I liked.

-After the show the guests went down to say hello to the guys, and Jasmine You showed up, which was good because otherwise I really only know Ryo. Ryo was excited to introduce me to the rest of the guys, who were friendly and talkative, particularly Mika, and Satsuki was friendly as well. Ryo gave me a really cool business idea so I hope I can find the time to put it to work. :)


December 26th.

-I bought an mp3 player that is modeled after SOUNDWAVE the DECEPTICON TRANSFORMER and it ACTUALLY TRANSFORMS, and I subsequently win all y'all so flippin' hard.


I had a very unconventional Christmas. I'm excited for the developments and happy for the experiences I had, but I wouldn't have much of a problem trading it to spend some time with my distressingly awesome family. :)

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.

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.

Event teaser

http://www.naigai-p.co.jp/chokichoki/event.html

I'm the guy with the big Roger Daltry/Robert Plant/Brian May hair. :)

Lipps, Choki, and Gatsby

Although the title sounds like some sort of bizarre rival to Emerson, Lake & Palmer or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, it is in fact all about my modeling job yesterday.

For the last few weeks, I've been going to a dance studio to rehearse for an event put on by Choki Choki magazine, and sponsored by GATSBY. I was recruited by Harajuku Lipps a month and a half ago, and got to know the staff as well as that of ETC Dance School.

Yesterday was the event, and it was at Shibuya O-Crest. First, though, I had to meet up with everyone in Harajuku at the salon itself.

Takeshita-dori at 7:30 in the morning ranks up there as one of my creepiest experiences in Japan. There was absolutely nobody around, and the silence was overwhelming.

Once at the salon, I got my hair braided and pinned, got my makeup done, and got some tattoos:

Then we hopped into taxis and went over to the venue.

That's Ken, the vocalist/guitarist from that band I mentioned the first time. There were talks of playing together in the future. I don't know what will come of that, but it's exciting nonetheless.

It was really cool playing in a venue that big again. Well, not playing; dancing, I guess. The staff other salons that were presenting were good buddies with most of the other salons including Lipps so it was a whirlwind of getting introduced to ridiculously cool-looking dudes and distressingly pretty girls.

It's interesting how many contacts you make at events like these. You meet other models who want to meet someone with similar experiences, or you meet people with other interests that you share, or you meet people who can cooperate with you and help you out, and you meet people who can learn from you. You fulfill a wide variety of roles at the same time. Yeah, sometimes you meet people who are just there to act all cool, but they tend not to get many more jobs after that.

The performances consisted of us 4 dancers, some hairstylists, and a painter: as we danced/got the wigs cut, the painter was toward the back of the stage, painting a big picture. Watching the video later it was quite impressive.

But that was but one of the extra things we had to worry about. As dancers, we hadn't thought about the fact that there would be real paint, and real plastic under out bare feet, and of course since there would be a lot of fallen hair, it would be easy to slip. I didn't realize how easy it really would be to slip on a bunch of hair until I stepped on some as I was moving across the stage. I didn't slip or lose my balance or do anything out of the ordinary at all, but I do remember thinking "wow, I could easily fall and make the 'blooper' reel of the DVD."

There were cameras and video cameras on us at almost all times, it seemed, as the thing was filmed to be a DVD. No idea when that'll come out, though.

The performance went off swimmingly; no mistakes and we were all riding a pretty positive feeling.

That's our choreographer, Yusuke, who I had a total mancrush on. Afterward, when we were leaving the after-party for just the salon, he took me aside and gave me his business card! I couldn't have been happier.

Right after the performance, though, some of the Gatsby people had bought us a bunch of beer and we went to the bar in the hall and got to chill out with all the other salon peeps. Then we went to the one for Lipps only for shabu-shabu and sukiyaki and lots of really amazing conversation. I go in tomorrow to get a free haircut/straightening on the house! Awesome.

I thought about how great that experience was, and compare it to the toughness of doing the band. Sometimes I wonder if I'm making the right decisions, but right now I'm coasting on this good feeling and new agencies. I don't anticipate too much more work coming my way on that front, but what a great memory. :)

I hang out with Swedish metal dudes

So for the past few weeks, Samuel Persson, guitarist of Ghamorean, has been chillin' in our building, and we've been talkin' and hangin' out and mostly drinking. He left this morning, but last night he finally showed me his band.

"The Imperial Eye"

This isn't music I normally actively listen to, but if it's good enough I can appreciate it. They sound pro and they've got a slick video and at any rate they're better than Laverite. :)

When not being shirtless and scary, he's really chill and funny and good-looking and... you know what, screw the Swedes, those cool jerks!

Elec's Musical History

Like I wrote in an earlier entry, I come from a musical family. On my mom's side, my grandparents both play many instruments between them: piano, guitar, harp, steel guitar, harmonica, and the both of them often perform duets on the marimba and it's one of the cutest things on earth. Momma-bear is a graduate from the Conservatory of Music at University of the Pacific, in piano, and she has also been choral teacher, vocal coach, piano teacher, and many other things at all levels of education. She started me off on piano at an earlier age. She often reminds me that I once, in a six-year-old fit of frustration, told her that I'd never become a musician, to spite her. She laughs now.

Poppa-bear, on the other hand, was in a band with my uncle in the late '70s and also ran a music/instrument shop with him. Two young dudes running a business: I have no acquaintances who can make the same claim. He also built the bass in the above picture by himself from scratch and he still plays it to this day and it sounds beautiful. (Keep in mind that Brian May also built his Red Special from scratch!)
He started teaching me both guitar and bass when I was around twelve years old, and for years and years I would often help accompany my parents on guitar, bass, or drums when my mom's vocal performance group had a holiday gig or session or other commitment.

In Junior High I was in the school band, and one of my first tastes of non-school-related music was when some friends during the lunch hour and started discussing our love for progressive rock without realize that we were talking about a genre. I was heavily into Yes and we were all into a little bit of ELP, King Crimson, Rush, and Jethro Tull; the others threw in some other things like Led Zeppelin and we would just start talking about the riffs and then setting up instruments and hacking some of them out. We ended up working together a really heavy version of the "Rumble" from West Side Story.


Prog took to the sidelines as I, a young male in school band growing up in California in the late 1990's, discovered a way that even band geeks could suddenly seem cool: ska. I could make a joke about the embarrassment of this confession but honestly it was a really positive thing for me overall, and it was in this vein that I formed my first band, Sevensealed.


Sevensealed started off as a ska band but we quickly weaned ourselves of horns and any other signs of ska and morphed into a punk band. We weren't amazing, but we were better than a lot of local bands and certainly the only ones under 18, so we got called on to play a lot of the local scene. We all had talent, individually, but somehow it failed to add up to something solid. I place the blame solidly upon my own shoulders.

I was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist. Upon forming Sevensealed my guitar skill seemed to stagnate; or, rather, it ossified as the music we wrote didn't really help us grow as musicians. I tried to write intelligent lyrics and succeeded only when I wasn't expressly proud of the results. I was a terrible frontman but I was still the most charismatic of the group. I had a bad habit of wanting to explain the lyrical content of the songs before we played them which killed any and all momentum of a set. We did get better as we went along and I think if a few things had gone differently we could have had one more good year in us and been really good.

The others were clearly more talented; Scott Lord, the bassist, is now in LA having studied at the Musician's Institute, and now loans out his considerable talents, touring with bands or artists who require someone amazing like him. Gary, his brother, I don't think plays anymore but was doing extremely well in real estate in the Bay Area. And I'm sure Terry the drummer is off doing something cool. He ensured I got something good out of the whole thing, though: I started learning drums at this point.

In 2001, with Gary out of high school and Terry at a different high school, we decided to break up the band, which bummed out quite a few people and secretly made me feel kinda cool, but Scott and I still played together in a small jazz combo. We won lots of awards, and I even took home some awards for my piano playing. This was hard for me to take because it was clear to me and no one else that I was in fact a weak link in the combo. I may be an above average pianist, but jazz, no matter how much I adored it and the guys I played with, it was much too big a Goliath for me.


That same year, I formed another band with a popular vocalist at school; the band was called "Fragile" and we wrote simple, good rock tunes. What I remember best about that band was that the singer really helped me learn when to keep things simple, catchy, and accessible and when I could make things smarter, more inscrutable, more complex. We'd also cover, like, Boston, or Fuel (the band, not the Metallica song) for some reason. We played a few gigs and then sort of faded away.

The next year was one of huge experimentation as I threw together a little gothy outfit called Flight of the Mechanics, which I still think is an awesome name, and now years later that I know about Flight of the Conchords, I love them but I get a little sad! Anyway, FotM was kinda late Smashing Pumpkins-y and kinda Radiohead-ish, only with better, and therefore probably boring, vocals. The bassist wasn't so hot and the drummer had tempo issues so we played a few times and then I laid the project to rest.

The other big experimentation was with hip-hop, as two other guys and I got together to program some beats and write some rap. This was all done without irony and with the purest of intentions; we simply wanted to make something positive and engaging without being preachy and something dance-able without the lyrical content in mainstream rap that made it nearly impossible for us to digest. We called ourselves Corporate America because, despite our pure intentions, we were flippin' idiots.

Now, if we had known about indie rap we could have easily found something we could have enjoyed, and either incorporated what they had done right or mercifully dropped the project altogether, but our ignorance may well have acted as a creativity enhancer, as we simply didn't realize that there already existed the kind of thing we wanted to do. We had no pretensions that we were doing something "new" or anything; we just wanted to make something that we wanted to listen to. I started playing with words and rhythms, trying to avoid what I saw as stereotypical delivery, and I started listening to a bit of older hip-hop, in particular Digable Planets and such. Nowadays, of course, I sit back and let people who know what the heck they're doing provide all my rap entertainment, but at the time it was just three guys having fun with sounds and words. We performed a few times to good reception but I think I must have seen the light or I had a falling out with the other guys very slowly and that fizzled out too.

And then after high school, I completely turned my attention to my studies, only briefly flirting with the idea of a band once freshman year. I was in a play, our student director who I was sorta/kinda seeing? said she knew a guy looking for a bassist. I met with him, they seemed a bit heavy for my tastes at the time, but I thought I'd give it a shot--I was all set to join and then I realized that he was the boyfriend of the student director. I did not join the band and didn't try again until my senior year.

That was when I took a music history class and the professor wanted to do an experiment by throwing together a band of students and then having them perform songs written by other students, usually non-musicians, in various styles. I decided to audition, and even though I play all the standard rock band instruments, I thought I'd audition on bass, as that is my strength.

The Professor had brought in a friend of his to help advise and coach the final band: Rob Sabino, a keyboardist from the Bronx, childhood friend and former bandmate of Ace Frehley (Frehley's Comet in 1985), also formerly of Chic, and played on David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album and Madonna's "Like a Virgin" album. Among a bajillion others, as you can see.

I had everyone beat easily until this one guy showed up and blew me away. (He played in a group called The Parlour Dames, which he would later ask me to join, but as I was moving to Japan in 6 months it might have been too much trouble. I grudgingly declined.) I knew then and there that I wouldn't be in the project. That bassist that would beat me was, unfortunately for my disappointment, a really great guy and we hit it off. I sat at the piano and he and I noodled around with various songs. Sabino noticed me, came over, started jamming on the keyboards with me, and he asked me if I'd like to be the keyboardist. Such an endorsement restored my confidence in my piano playing.

The band, called "Rockward" (very apt), was huge, and there were so many personalities in it... also, with two weeks before performance, the professor told me I had to arrange horn parts for all six of our pieces. I said no, prof. said yes. I called Rob, who called the professor, and we reached an agreement that I'd write and arrange horn parts for three of the songs. I sort of resented that, but so it goes.

The set was pretty cool; four original songs solicited from students, and two covers, all pretty unrecognizable by the end. There was "Foster Mom Blues" (imagine Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line" if it were taken at a shuffle and add some sax solos), "Empty Bottle Blooze" (imagine wanting to make out with and possibly get to 3rd base with a song, and then a harmonica comes in), "Sharp" (dual lead guitar/keyboard lines make it kinda metal but then it turns into a solid rocker with this part in the middle with a zillion chord changes that sounds inexplicably like Elton John), and some lame song with a million unfunny references to our university that we ended up somehow making not-lame by the end. The two covers were Heart's "Barracuda" which we did fairly straight, and Stone Temple Pilot's "Plush", which thanks to us now had ragtime piano and muted horns. And it worked well, if I do say so myself.



And now I'm in Japan. I was looking for a band for awhile, mostly because I realized that the world of a beginning model who still wants a roof over his head and food in his stomach still needs a part-time job and there's too much waiting involved. Most bands didn't ever get back to me, and those that did either expressed reservations about my Japanese (obviously not a problem and I have a piece of paper to prove it!) or the simple fact that I'm a foreigner. Black:List sent me a very, very polite email on my phone saying that they were going to go about the new member search in their own fashion. At least they got back to me, though.

I found a melodic hard rock band called WILLPOWER who welcomed the fact that I wasn't Japanese; they were into your standard metal staples and then some prog and Deep Purple and stuff. We got along great, they were extremely talented, and jamming with them felt great, but just before I was set to join a few weeks later, they decided to kaisan instead.


That's been my musical journey up until now; for several reasons I was suddenly struck by a lot of the memories and wanted to write about it. I'm leaving out quite a few little projects and filling in I did as favors, but I think I've gotten almost everything important. I wish I had more to show for it!

My 2nd TV appearance: Honda CM

The shot itself lasts maybe 2 seconds. I got paid too much for that. :-P

But y'know, it was kind of a long shoot, and there were other factors that made the time tough, but they gave me a bonus for my troubles. And, this isn't really "work", so no complaints here!

My housemates all emailed me in force to let me know they saw me.

Watch it!


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