The Shirts get a drummer!

After 18 months of playing as a three piece, using sequenced tracks and/or "borrowing" drummers for live shows, The Shirts are stoked about the new guy: Rob. Rob and I played way back before squadcar in a band called Bender, had quite a large repertoire of original rock and cover songs, and did regular shows at live houses around the place. We even did a demo at M7 in Koiwa which I finally heard last week after around 6 or 7 years. Saturday saw us rehearse for the third time with Rob at Ongakukan-bis in Shibuya, and as we quietly drained the Chivas bottle supplied by the fifth shirt Andy, Kazue was kind enough to take a few pictures, of the rock!

Open mic at the Ruby..

Every Tuesday night for as long as I can remember, the Ruby Room in Shibuya has held Tokyo's premier Open Mic night. When I started going it was still around the corner, at the old Sugar High building, and while it has gone through various mutations throughout the years, essentially it's still basically the same: a great place for both wanna-be and established artists to go and develop their craft in a smoke filled room full of drinking music lovers.

I don't hit it so much these days, but whenever I do I find it difficult to leave. Here's a selection of what was going on Tuesday night..

A cool little Quartet (that didn't play any WSQ):



Dan sitting in with some of the guys from Sunset Drive:





Pat, who had more pedals than I've seen anyone slinging since Magic Dirt at Meredith in '96:



And finally, Dan and me doing some songs, both of the old and new variety, just for the hell of it:









Thanks to Tosh from Sunset Drive for taking this last set of pics..

Monitor: Tuesday

Tuesday, monitor stylee..

Squadcar "Misses" cover photo..

A while back I was desperately scrambling through my hard drives trying to find the original photo that we used as the basis for Squadcar's Misses album cover, and last night (by chance) I finally did! As I mentioned in a previous Misses post, this shoot involved my hairdresser Chiho as our model, and five of my friends throwing ideas around and shooting her in all sorts of poses around my apartment. We eventually went through them all and chose this shot of her laying on the bed, and then let our label guy Deguchi-san (Garage) do his thing..

Monitor live: Courage to Escape

Monitor are preparing for Valentine Records Presents vol. 5 which will be at The Ruby Room in Shibuya on May 23rd.

Here's 'Courage to Escape' from VRP 4..

Squadcar: これから live

Squadcar played a lot of shows in their day. The video below was taken in December 2005 at Shibuya Nest, well the main part of it was anyway.. Dan got creative and put it together with some footage of us goofing off backstage at a Shinjuku Marz show as well. It was a very memorable show, partly because we played with the awesome Mothercoat, and also because the amazingly enjoyable and impromptu backstage rehearsal party (that starts the video) was probably better than the set we played when we hit the stage.. >_<

Photo by Andrew McGovern

Osaka video

Here's the video squadcar made for our song 'Osaka', which was on our self-titled 4th album. We did it with a few of the guys from the Tokyo College of Visual Arts, in a railway carriage at some zoo in Yokohama. It was filmed VERY early in the morning, the day after a good friend's birthday party. It was basically a comedy of errors in that our drummer didn't show up, I lost my wallet, we hadn't brought our instruments (as we had supposedly been instructed to), we were given little or no direction, and.. let's just say we hadn't had much sleep.

>_<

Misses

Misses was the mini-album that squadcar made with Christopher McGuire. The drama that surrounded this recording would most certainly make it eligable for inclusion in the musical Encyclopedia Dramatica, if there was one anyways.. On the one hand we had a fairly major J-pop celebrity going through the process of implosion, and on the other, well.. In any case, we managed to get a decent pre-order throughout Japan and actually thought we had a shot at doing something for a bit. But alas..

Nonetheless, the album came out great, as did the cover. We invited my hairdresser Chiho to come be our model, threw her on a bed and let 5 guys have their photographic way with her. We then chose a shot and let Deguchi-san work his magic!

Christopher McGuire

Former squadcar producer (and Quruli drummer) Christopher McGuire can sure hit dem skins..

Squadcar: Making Misses (Glenn version)

Misses was a mini-album that squadcar recorded with Christopher McGuire, who was at the time drummer for uber-cool Japanese band Quruli. The sessions became stuff of legend, though not always for good reasons. Ryan Skelton made a mini-doco about the sessions (that I will post later) from footage that I took throughout, but I wasn't really happy with it, and Christopher DEFINITELY wasn't happy with it. I made this one kind of as a reaction to that, it contains footage also of a video that students from the Tokyo College of Creative Arts made of the title song..

In Ryan's defence, he didn't think much of my version either, and he's now making a million dollar movie!

Valentine

Valentine Records is a collective of bands that do events and release albums in Tokyo, but the name came from a mini-album that squadcar did way back in 2004. Deguchi-san from the Garage took a blurry picture that I had taken when my good mate Rich bumped me on the ferry to Miyajima, and turned it into a great cover! He also added the little squiggly pic that became part of our logo for a bit!

Make mine a Vox..

Knockout is a little recording studio in Shimokitazawa where squadcar recorded a few times. It was small and the gear was pretty stock for the most part, but they had these amps...

Monitor @ VRP 4

Valentine Records Presents vol. 4 last night was awesome. We managed to stream the show live for the first time and were really happy to see some friends and family from far off places tuning in for the event. There's lots of pics and video of all of the bands to come, but for the moment, here's some Monitor for ya...

Valentine Records presents vol. 4

Valentine records are hosting another electro/rock extravaganza this evening at The Garage in Shimokitazawa. On the bill are: Super Samir (featuring Rodriguez), The Black Shakes, Monitor, and Come to my Party.

The Monitor set will see Dan and I reunite for the first real show in 2 years, with good buddies Kurt Shirt fingerbangin bass and Richard from the Black Shakes thumpin skins..

Vintage Squadcar

Scenes from Shimokitazawa..



Guitar setup in the rehearsal studio.



The wall beside Knockout studios.



The Squadcar 4th album release party (at Garage) Valentine posters

All good things..

Dan goes to NYC today. Cheers matey, it was one hell of a ride...