A Super Drummer Appears! hr676

 

There used to be numerous kinds of music magazines at book stores in the mid-80’s when my partner and I moved to Tokyo to become professional musicians. Those magazines had classified ads on the last few pages to recruit band members. Among them, a magazine called ‘Player’ spared almost more than half the entire contents for the classified ads. In fact, my partner and I ran across each other through one of the ads in that magazine when I still lived in Kyoto.

One of the reasons why we came to Tokyo was that we had thought many good musicians would be found in Tokyo, which would enable us to form a band with professional quality in no time. Finding a good player had been extremely difficult when we played around the kyoto area. We recruited one after another who had never met our standard. In the end, we used a rhythm machine and sequencers in place of human members. It was the time when those gadgets had been just put on the market so that the technology was lamentably primitive. Machine troubles had been our norm in the gigs and we had bitterly learned the limitations of machine members.

Once we moved to Tokyo, we put as many classified ads as possible in the music magazines and met so many musicians. While we repeated test sessions with each candidate in the studio, we couldn’t find good enough members who matched our quest for the ones with high skill and a strong motivation to become professional. We gradually began to think that we had overestimated Tokyo.

On one of those days, we found Mr. Maejima. He was a highly motivated drummer of a bag of bones, who was refined and courteous, a dropout of college from passion for music as I was. In the studio session, he played accurately and delicately, who was the best drummer we had ever come across. He joined us as a band member instantly. We got along so well. We shared not only eagerness for success in music but also even hobbies, which made us closer. He invited us to his home where he lived with his parents. He gave me his old, first drum set that he had gotten by working part time so strenuously when he was a student, and came to my apartment with it to set it up for me. He also gave me a lot of gaming software that he had finished playing. The legendary film ‘Back to the Future’ was first known to us as his best picture. Together we ate out and even went to that famous theme park of the mouse, where I introduced him to the mouse as my band’s drummer. We were on good terms, that was quite rare for my partner and I who had no friends.

As for other members however, we continuously had no luck. We couldn’t find a bassist and a guitarist, and had to compromise with the temporary members to play for gigs and auditions. Those members played awfully in the studio for rehearsal and in the actual gigs. What irritated us most was they would make a big mistake at the important contest of all things and ruin our chance. On top of that, we were caught in a fight with the promoter of the gig who turned out to be a fraud. We were besieged with bad luck and our band had been in hot water for months.

Then at last, Mr. Maejima told us that he wanted to quit the band. My partner and I understood his feeling since a long predicament of the band added to our part time jobs for living had exhausted us as well. We were too dispirited to persuade him to stay. Nevertheless, it was so hard to see an unfailing partner leaving. A leaden heart by his leaving drove us to switch to recording our songs with synthesizers from playing them in a gig. In hindsight, it was a good decision that would work for us well.

A few years later, I received a letter from Mr. Maejima unexpectedly. It said that he had joined a new religious group and worked as a drummer of the group’s band. He suggested that I join it. While I should have felt happy for him, I felt sad instead. The fact that the mainstream of the music scene had no place for such a talented, motivated musician like Mr. Maejima. The reality that a would-be artist with good looks and no talent sold well and was adored. I knew that the world was unfair, but his letter made me realize it anew.

Decades have passed since then, and I have moved around several times. Still, I have a drum set that Mr. Maejima gave me. It’s on active service, only disassembled to components. They are used as containers in my apartment, holding my stuff including passion. 

Ramen Restaurants in Japan hr675

 

Japanese people love ramen so much. Ramen is Chinese-style soup noodles which is obscenely popular in Japan. I hear that there are about 20,000 ramen restaurants all over the country. The degree of its popularity is easily imagined by the fact that a McDonald’s closed and reopened as a ramen restaurant in my town. Chains are rampant while the majority are small restaurants run privately by individual owner-managers. In front of a popular restaurant, a long queue is formed before it opens until it closes for the day and the place is packed with customers all day long. Millions of websites, magazines, TV programs and YouTube videos feature and introduce ramen restaurants of any kind, in any area.

I like ramen but don’t eat it at the restaurant. I loathe a waiting line to begin with. And the atmosphere is a big problem. Those restaurants are clean but almost all of them are shabby. Customers sit at the counter elbow to elbow in a cramped space where they suck in noodles by slurping. Above all, the price is high. A bowl of ramen in an atrocious atmosphere costs more than a dish at a modern family restaurant. The reason why people choose ramen restaurants despite all of that is the quality of deliciousness, I suppose.

An owner-manager in any ramen restaurant is particular about his or her special recipe that is attained by a continuous process of trial and error over years, in which they have selected and contrived a mixture of ingredients for the soup, such as pork, chicken, fish, soy sauce or miso. They use carefully-selected noodles in their elaborate soup for which they begin to prepare the night before. Because they spend enormous time and effort to make ramen, profit is little in spite of the high price setting. I think that is why their restaurants are small and tacky. To me, it’s always a mystery why they wouldn’t spare just a tiny bit of their passion for the taste, to their place’s interior. But there’s one bigger question. If they can’t be rich no matter how popular their place becomes by their time, effort and elaboration, why do they run that kind of business?

Come to think of it, I take years to complete my song with persistent, rather obsessive elaboration although it doesn’t sell at all. I know I can earn money if I make many songs like recent hit ones that are catchy and arranged with loops efficiently done by copying and pasting on music software. Yet, I wouldn’t do that. Since we have limited time from birth to death, I want to spend mine for what I can enjoy as much as possible. From my experiences with my wealthy parents and my rich friends’ parents at the private school I went to, I learned that living in luxury gives more enjoyment is an illusion. I would rather have time for doing what makes me feel deeply satisfied and truly happy than for greed and a shallow delight given by looking down on others. After all, I feel happy by elaborating my music into perfection itself, which is more appealing to me than money.

I suspect that owner-managers of ramen restaurants may feel the same way I do. Even if that’s the case, I won’t enter their unrefined restaurants. I would definitely get in if there were a delicious, low-priced ramen place with a sophisticated atmosphere and no queue. However, the possibility that I come across that restaurant is as low as I become a successful musician. I would never say never though.

Passion hr656

 

What I had been doing before I decided to become a musician was studying to enter one of Japanese first-rate universities, which was ostensibly believed so. That was when I was a high school student in the early 80’s.

To tell you the truth, I had in fact, not been studying in those days, which I had never told anyone. I just had been pretending to study every day. While I had acted in front of my family and friends as if I had been preparing for fiercely competitive entrance examinations and studying desperately to succeed in them, I hadn’t been able to find any sort of motivation to study once I sat at my desk in my room. To stimulate myself, I would listen to the records of my favorite band, but then gaze blankly at empty space or take a nap instead of being stimulated. I had tried to study in the middle of the night, which was supposed to be quieter and easier to concentrate, but I would listen to late night radio shows at which I would laugh until dawn.

After I had spent months in those routines while arrogantly declaring to people around me that I would get in the leading university, I came to my senses and began to wonder how I could succeed without studying. Now I had trembled every day with a fear that I would have failed the entrance examination of all first-rate universities. Even though I was grasped with the fear, I still couldn’t feel like studying. And in the end, that fear did materialize.

Am I a born sluggard? Am I a loser? In the depths of despair, I made up my mind to be a musician. Then in an instant my attitude changed completely. I earnestly searched for and joined a professional-oriented band, spent all the savings I had on a synthesizer, and practiced every day at the far-off rental studio to which I took a train and brought the synthesizer weighing fifty pounds and carried by me who is merely five feet. I would sweat all over even in winter just carrying it from and to the platform at the train station.

On one occasion at the station, as though he couldn’t stand to watch me struggling with the synthesizer any more, a man approached me silently and lifted it on his shoulder. He went down the stairs from the platform carrying it for me. While he staggered along the way and slowed down  probably because it was heavier than he had thought, he brought it to the bottom of the stairs and disappeared without a word. I felt like a hero came to rescue me.

But a villain also appeared as well. On another occasion, I was walking over the bridge carrying it in addition to other instruments. Because it was impossible for me to walk continuously with all that heavy stuff, I posed and put down all the instruments every few yards. And a vulgar man yelled at me from behind, “Get out of my way, you slow-walking ugly!” I snapped at the word ‘ugly’, put down the instruments, and stopped him by saying, “What did you say?” Then I seized him by the neck, squeezed it and pushed him to the bridge-rail. I was wringing his neck seriously and intended to push him down to the river. The man gasped for air and screamed “Call the police! Please, someone!” By that time, passersby had gathered, and a woman untangled my hands on his neck and broke us up. It seemed I turned into a villain there.

When I wasn’t in the studio, I had practiced playing the keyboard at home and worked at a part-time job to pay for the rental studio. Although my new routine had totally exhausted me, I was willing to take the ordeal. I never lost my passion as if I were possessed by something. And I haven’t lost it to this day after decades have passed.

To keep going can lead to many setbacks. Sometimes there are those nights when I want to give up and throw everything away. Still, when it dawns, I get motivated again gradually. Not vanity nor prosperity but passion keeps me alive. I don’t want to quit staying alive just yet.

Reward hr569

My parents didn’t get married for love. Their marriage was part of a deal to inherit the family’s fortune and they took it for money. Another part of the deal was to carry on the family and they had me as a successor. It had gone according to their plan until I decided to do what I wanted for my life and left home. Since then, they attempted every evil way to pull me back in the family. They tried all possible means to make me give up my carrier as a musician. They said I had no talent, I was a failure, and how bad I was as a human being, over and over at every opportunity. They conned me once big time. Out of the blue they offered money to set up my own record label, and after I rented an office and hired the staff, they suddenly withdrew their money, crushed my label and bankrupted me. I defied any kind of attack, threat, temptation and begging from them because I was determined to be a musician. When they realized I wouldn’t succeed the family, they told me not to even visit them because they didn’t want to see me any more. On their repeated requests not to come see them in their house, I understood they didn’t need their child who wasn’t a successor. From that experience, I have a doubt about a concept of unconditional love. I spent about 10 years to complete my last song. The new song I’ve been currently working on hasn’t been completed yet after four years. It was not because I was loitering over my work on purpose. Making music is the only thing I do seriously without compromise. I don’t want to let time interfere with my music. It’s completed when I’m satisfactorily convinced it’s finished. And I dream of my future in which my song will be such a big hit that it will make me a celebrity and take me to Monaco. The other day, I noticed an unfavorable fact. While I dedicate my life for my songs that I spend all my effort, time and passion on, I unconsciously expect reward from them. Although I already have so much fun and feel indescribable happiness during work, I believe that my songs should bring me money and fame someday. That sounds awfully like my parents’ attitude toward me. They raised me while they expected reward when I grew up. Do I also nurture my songs for reward when they are completed? If so, I will end up exploding my anger if my songs don’t reward me with money and fame. Am I the same as my parents after all or can I give unconditional love to my songs? I get enough reward in the process of completing songs. My reward is done when songs are done. From then on, all I should care is to make my songs happy, which means to support them all my life by doing whatever I possibly can to make them be heard by a lot of people. Can I love my songs that way and be satisfied with my life until the day I die? I must try. Because even if I don’t have any money or fame at all, I think I’ve already received reward called life with freedom and happiness…