Friday, March 26, 2010

Hidemi's Rambling No.141

To me, the best guitarist is Toshiyuki Abe of Tulip. Once, he came to a local radio show, which was recorded with the audience. My past best friend and I were determined to go to the studio because Mr. Abe hardly appeared on TV and the only chance to see him had been Tulip’s concerts. We called the radio station for the location and it was a 30-minute bus ride plus a one-hour train ride with a number of connections. It was Saturday and the only way for us to make it was going there as soon as school was over, as we were still high school students. We were tired from a long trip with our heavy school bags when we arrived. But to our huge shock, we found that we came to the wrong studio since the radio station had two studios at the totally different locations and the phone operator had told us the wrong one by mistake. It took another one hour to the other studio by train. We finally reached the studio exhausted, and the security guard at the gate didn’t let us in because we didn’t have the required pass which existence we didn’t know. After all the toil, we were denied on the spot. We were standing at a loss when we saw two girls beckoning to us at the gate. They had the pass and although we were completely strangers, they told the guard that we were their friends and came here together. The two girls looked like angels. The show had already begun but because Mr. Abe was the main attraction, his appearance was the last part, for which we were barely in time. I had never seen him so closely. We spent about four hours of turmoil in total on that day for Mr. Abe’s 15-minute appearance. It was so worthwhile, really…