Over
the last week or so, I'd been emailing back and forth with a couple
musicians who wanted to do start a Dreamt Theatery band. They were
19 (I'm 28) so my first email was like, "Um, I'm 28 and a gaijin
and my Japanese sucks and I've only been drumming for a few months.
Interested?!" Amazingly, they were.
We
got together today; me, Koga and Megumi. Went to a studio in Shinjuku,
not far from Like An Edison and "America Street" (where
they sell Wranglers for top dollar... ugh, Wranglers!)
The
studio was tiny, and the air conditioning wasn't working, so it got
REALLY hot (the mirrors and windows were so steamed up Megumi was
able to draw pictures on 'em). We played through Pull Me Under, Surrounded,
Metropolis Part One, and bit of other songs, for the hour that we
had.
I
did pretty badly, but it wasn't all my fault -- the space was tight,
and so it was like trying to drive a small car for me (I'm 6'5"),
i.e., difficult! But it was also pretty fun, and once we got fully
underway, about ten minutes before our studio time ended, we made
it through Pull Me Under pretty well. Koga played great -- he even
had some of Petrucci's impossible solos down, including that whole
middle section of Metropolis part One (doot doot, doot, doot, do-doot!)
Megumi's singing was spot-on as well, once she learns to YELL we'l
be all set!
Afterwards,
we headed for the nearest okonomiyaki restaurant, which turned out
to be a do-it-yourself place. Normally that's cool, but after an hour
of drumming in a veritable sauna plus assorted wanderings about in
35c heat, the lat thingyou wanna be doing is sitting in front of a
hot cooking-table-thing! But the beer made it all better, and the
crab and shrimp batter we ordered was awesome. Plus talkign about
metal bands with Koga and Megumi was a lot of fun; DT, Metallica,
Megadeth, In Flames, Sex machine Guns, we hit on all that shit! We
also had the Tokyo version on okonomiyaki (okonomiyaki comes from
Osaka), called monja. It was cool, but I can see why I never heard
of it before!
Before
meeting up with Koga and Megumi, I hit a cool store called Mandarake.
All anime/maga stuff. The lower floor is full of models, toys, magazines,
etc... lots of glass cabinets protecting lots of cool stuff (they
had all the Constructicons for Y50,000, which almost seems fair, and
I'm a cheap bastard). THey also had some life-sized figures (one's
the little grey-lookin' chick from Nadesco, which first aired during
my first stay in Japan 5 years ago, and which I didn't like so much,
but whatever.
The
upper floor is just a bunch of hentai manga. Lots and lots and lots
of it! And a few DVDs and CD-roms, none of which I bought! Or even
looked at! In fact, I didn't even enter this floor, I just peeked
in from the stairs, and, um, my eyes were closed the whole time!
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