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Sunday, April 29, 2007

Click Click

Before they're taken down by the shadowy Count Olafs of the TV Network World, check out two songs from Music Station- Tandem, and their "first appearance" on the show doing Giri Giri Surfrider.

Hang on, Giri Giri was released after Tandem, so surely the Tandem clip should have been their first time on the show? Presumably the Tandem performance was part of some 'best of' end of the year type show. Anyway, I'd seen the Giri Giri clip before, but this one has their introductions at the start, with host Tamori unaware as to who was who. Apparently, Yukari's mum went along to the studio with them. Aw, shucks, they were so young...



Sunday, April 22, 2007

Happy Birthday, Haruka!

Haruka turned 19 on the 21st! Doesn't that make Yukari 20 this July?

Woah.



...and here's the blog. "I turned 19 before I knew it. The next thing I know, I'll be saying "I'll be turning 30 tomorrow!".
If you're like me, you might be thinking "why is her birthday cake written in Korean?" Well, she loves Korea, and has already been twice this year. It just "fits" with her, apparently (she means personality presumably. I went to Seoul once and didn't have the easiest time, although I agree with Haruka that the subway is far easier to navigate than Tokyo's). The Korean on the front says "Haruka", which a friend went to the trouble of looking up, then making a cake of.

Anyway, happy nineteenth!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Blog

While I always read Halcali's blog whenever it gets updated, I usually think their posts about what films they watched and what they did in Osaka wouldn't be that interesting to you, and the few times when they mention recording or playing live aside, I usually don't post about it.

Here's what Haruka wrote yesterday though:


いつ聴いてもらえるか、分からないケド・・・。
そもそも聴いてもらえる程のモノが出来るか分からないケド・・・
今、RAPを書きつつ、これからどんな曲が出来上がるのだろう。
と期待や期待に胸を躍らせています。
詞がすらすら思いつく訳でもなくて、

急に部屋の掃除をしてみたり、無駄にメールの確認をしてみたり
Google Earthで世界旅行を地味に楽しんでみたり・・・

はい。要するに

逃げてます。 

I don't know when you'll get to hear it, but...

I don't even know if it's something you'll want to hear in the first place, but...

I've just been writing rap (lyrics) over and over, having no idea what kind of song it's going to turn into, and getting really anxious about it.

No lyrics were coming to mind at all...

Suddenly, I just started to clean my room, then aimlessly recheck my e-mail, and then mess around taking a trip around the world on Google Earth.

OK, to put it bluntly:

I'm running away.

She goes on to talk about how she read about a designer in a fashion magazine, who kept postponing an exhibition, but instead of coming out with the predictable "great art takes time and I'm suffering for it" line, he used something quite a bit more personal, maybe even selfish, to explain why. He said that the simple fact is that his life will sometimes intrude on his work, and when that happens ("If my dog gets sick, for example, that's going to be higher on my priorities than putting on a show") his job is going to have to wait.

Why Haruka liked this, and why it relates here, is that it's often easy to forget that artists, painters, poets, novelists and pop stars are people too, who do people things and must also live their people lives.

Halcali are certainly a band who are more honest and open about the process of being in a pop band than frankly any other band I've ever come across in their position. It's certainly hard to imagine another band like this coming on the internet and admitting that, yes, there was a point where they had to sit down and try to write the music you're listening to now, and that yes, there were also points where they couldn't think of a single line and so made themselves that 15th cup of tea to put it off for another 15 minutes instead. Reading Haruka's post reminded me of when I was writing my dissertation on Satre and J.D Salinger in university.

She closes with a more familiar (but still good to hear for those of us waiting for the new album) "I'll work hard to get it done, just wait a little longer!", but I hope they'll be more posts on their blog like this in the future.

All that aside, it's good to read about them getting more and more involved in the writing, isn't it? Roll on "spring/summer 2007" I say.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

TTT on YT

I re-uploaded the Music Station performance of Tip Taps Tip to You Tube. Since my attempts to re-upload the banned Twinkle Star Music Station performance and the MTV gig were met with "WE BANNED THIS ONCE ALREADY!", I'm not sure why they let me get away with this. If you haven't seen this clip already, it's definitely worth a look or two. No doubt it will be gone again in a couple of weeks.

It also makes you wonder why they didn't get back on Music Station with LOOK, but anyway...



UPDATE

Here's that fine performance of Twinkle Star from Music Station again.