Supernatural
2012-02-12
Waking up in the morning was a bit surreal. Did what happened theday before really occur? That was US doing that? It was a trip. Butwhat was even more trippy was that we began to get responses fromthe heavy metal press in other countries. That same morning, Mai gota call from Germany. She couldn't talk because she didn't knowenough English, so she took the guy's number and had me call himback after we had gotten everyone together to be part of it with meacting as interpreter. The interview lasted about 90 minutes. Itwasn't just about us, but about the state of the Japanese metalscene and how women fare in it.
The calls kept coming after that, too. People were apparently makingcopies of our CD-ROM and sending them around, which was great forus. I taught Mai how to say, "Give me your number and I'll have ourAmerican guitarist call you back. " On the remaining 700 or so CDROMs we still had, we put a sticker with an email address on them ratherthan making people call Mai's number. Her number was for people inJapan to book us or contact us for more information. Back in 1995,the consumer internet was just getting off the groundpopularitywise, so it was still questionable how many people had web access let alone email capability.
I had to return to the U. S. since I had just about used up all thetime I was allowed to stay there without a visa (180 days a year,but no more than 90 at a stretch).
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I wouldn't be able to returnuntil March. Cindy went back with me, which effectively put thegroup out of commission for five months. However, during thatdowntime, I went to a senior level computer science class at a localuniversity before their lecture started and told them I was lookingfor a fulltime web designer to create and maintain a homepage forthe group. I wrote my emal address on the chalkboard and left.
The next morning, when I checked my email, I found three applicantsfor the position. I got back to them and, after interviewing them ata Starbuck's about a mile from my house, chose one as my permanentweb guy. Given the tools that were available at the time, he did areal good job and kept updating and improving it as we not justacquired video, audio, etc to put up, but to make it look better. Iwas insistent on simplicity so that it was easy to use and navigate. The rest of the members were glad to be on the web and a couple ofthose who had been holdouts from getting online finally boughtcomputers so that they could see it on a daily basis and communicatewith fans.
Mai and I started to talk about doing an American tour during timeswhen I couldn't be in Japan. We weren't quite ready for it yet, butit was something we had to prepare for. We also needed to organizegigs in Japan so that we have as little actual downtime as possibleand we are in front of as many people as we could manage.
The interview requests dribbled in over the winter, as did letterswith money in them seeking copies of our CD-ROM. During theChristmas/New Years holiday, Tsutomu came to my house and we had agood old time fucking, sucking, and generally being affectionatewith each other. It was so nice to feel his cock inside me again.
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Hewas going to graduate college in April. I was wondering if he wouldask me to marry him once he was able to get a job.
Using the information I had available to me, I sent copies of ourCD-ROM to clubs all over America. Since we were a new band with justtwo gigs under our belt, it was going to be extremely difficult tobook shows. I was hoping that some of them would play off the factthat we were an all girl neo-classical metal band. And I was alsopraying that we would draw invitations in areas with large Japanesecommunities. I put a one page ad in Music Connection to advertise usand let not just bookers know we were there, but other musicians,too.
Of course, my biggest problem was that heavy metal was pretty muchdead as a commercial force in the U. S. at the time. Many of theclubs where bands had been allowed to cut their teeth were closing,floundering or were bought out by entertainment conglomerates andthus would only book signed acts.
Cindy missed Seri something fierce and she would write emails to herthat I had to translate into Japanese for her and vice versa. Thatmade me squeamish because I felt like a voyeur.
Meanwhile, Mai got some letters of recommendation from theorganizers of the college student festival at the school we playedat and parlayed it into about half a dozen shows total for April andMay. Of course, the quid pro quo for the letter was having to playtheir festival again the following October.
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I decided to book somesummer parks and legion hall shows that we would promote ourselvesand hopefully sneak in some high school and college shows, too, evenif we had to do it for free. It could be that they would think itwould be cool and multi-cultural for a band from Japan to play attheir campus, especially one that is all female.
That latter idea bore fruit, as I ended up able to indeed scheduleabout a dozen shows at those venues for September and late Octoberin Southern California. We would have to fly back to Japan inbetween that to perform our obligation for the Japanese college. SoI took out ads in the area free papers to publicize the Californiauniversity appearances and, just to sex it up, also had them includethe ones in Japan, too.
Finally, the last week of March came and I could legally fly intoJapan again without a visa. Of course, Cindy was with me and weimmediately started rehearsals. It was like getting back on abicycle and, within a couple of weeks, we were ready. Our first showwas April 14th in a section of Tokyo called Koenji on a three bandbill with us at the bottom, so we only got 30 minutes. We did justsome of our fast songs for the set and we destroyed. Some of theguys at the front were trying to look up our leather skirts. Ismiled because it was so funny due to the cliche nature of it. Wesold 30 copies of our CD-ROM there.
The second gig was two days later on a Friday in Shibuya, Tokyo. This time we were opening on a two band bill and were allowed a fullhour.
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The crowd was behind us all the way and we got called back foran encore. The club owner wouldn't let us back on for a second one,but instead asked us to headline in November, which meant I wouldhave to keep careful track of how long I was in country so that Icould make the show. We were pretty thrilled with that. We sold 50copies of our CD-ROM. Nice!
Six days later, we played at some dive in Yokohama I had never heardof. It probably held 75 people max. We went down well, but the stagewas very cramped and we really couldn't move much. We unloaded maybefive CD-ROMs afterward.
Then we played a Tuesday night in Kawasaki, which was in the sameprefecture as Yokohama. This was a very well known venue and, again,we were third on a three band bill. The crowd loved our 30 minuteset, demanded that we come back and we did two more songs before theclub manager said that was all. We again sold 30 more copies of ourCD-ROM.
A week later, Tsutomu graduated from college (the Japanese schoolcalendar ends in April). I wasn't allowed to go to the ceremony,which was fine since I find graduations excruciatingly tedious. WhenI saw him the next day, I took him to a love hotel and fucked hisbrains out for a few hours.
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We didn't do it in my hotel room becausein a love hotel we could be as loud as we wanted.
Seri reconnected with Cindy and both of them were quite chuffedabout it, naturally. I was really happy for them. Even so, they wereobviously still hiding their lesbianism from the other band members. It sucked that they felt it necessary to do that.
Our next show was on May 1st and, as always, we were an opening act.
We were allowed 40 minutes and while I thought we played well enoughthe crowd just didn't really care for us. There was very littlereaction. It really shocked us after the successful gigs we did. Theheadliner was a visual kei band that ultimately never went anywhereand who I didn't think was any good. . Different strokes fordifferent folks, I guess.
Two nights after that, we were back in Koenji at the same club wedid our first gig of the year in. We were originally scheduled to goon third, but the club manager, noting the reaction of the crowd tous at that past show, dropped the second band to third and slottedus in their place, giving us 45 minutes. We demolished the joint andwere brought back for three encores.
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We sold 61 copies of our CD-ROMthis time.
A writer from Rockin' F, a major Japanese music magazine, happenedto be at the show to check out the headliner and came backstageafter our set to interview us. We had to break our equipment downfirst, though. We gave him a CD-ROM and since he didn't want to talkto us after the show was over, we agreed to meet him in a coffeeshop the next day.
We got fully kitted out for the interview. He brought a photographerwith him, as we anticipated he might, and we went into an alleybehind the coffee shop for an impromptu photo session once theinterview was concluded. They gave us a nice two page spread and itwas a fun interview. Of course, he asked us about our marriageprospects. Cindy and I laughed knowingly. I lied and said none of ushad boyfriends or husbands because we were concentrating solely onour incipient musical careers so as to not blunt our appeal tohopeful lads, as it were.
That was the last of the shows we had scheduled and Cindy and I hadto leave the country so that we would still have some time left touse on the visa free deal in October and November. Thus, it wasdecided that everybody would fly to SoCal and live with me so thatwe could keep rehearsing and writing together. When we got situatedat my place in mid-May, I called the local high school (actually, myalma mater), where I had already booked a gig for September, to askif they would mind if we played there in the next few days. Theywere good with it and so our first American show was at my onetimehigh school, although as an Asian female rather than a white male. The white boys loved us, the white girls couldn't have cared lessand the hispanic guys ignored us.
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I rented professional videocameras and hired some college film students to shoot the show andwe used their facilities to edit it all down.
Using that opportunity as a reference, we played at a high school ina different district before the schools shut down for the summer. Between those two shows, we sold another 33 CD-ROMs. We flyered alot of the other high schools for a show I booked at an AmericanLegion Hall in Orange County. for July 11th.
Miki likely only had one more year left on her Master's thesis, butshe decided to shelve it to see where the band was going to go. Wegot more encouragement when, at the aforementioned Legion Hall show,we drew 103 people, about twice what I had believed we would. Wewere allowed to use pyro, too, and we played two blistering hoursthat went down a storm. We sold 47 CD-ROMs, which is a prettyamazing amount for that crowd size, and we collected as many emailaddresses as we could in order to create an email newsletter aboutour band.
The hits to our website began to increase greatly over the course ofthe summer. The other band members went back to Japan a week afterthe above concert to conserve their visa free time. Tsutomu calledand told me he got a job with a prominent insurance company andwould be working in its sales division. He was disappointed Iwouldn't be returning to his country until late October and I wasmissing him tons, too.
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