Met The Meatbats

It was fun to work with the Bombastic Meatbats featuring Matt Sorum yesterday at Gakki Fair in Yokohama. Rittor Music holds a non-professional players' competition called Saikyo (=the most powerful) Player's Contest every other year coinciding with Gakki Fair. The Meatbats was the guest band this year and truly blew everyone's mind including mine. Unfortunately Chad Smith couldn't play with them for the show but Matt Sorum played such tight and heavy rock groove that made all of us say "Wow!" Even one of my colleagues said that Matt's first kick sound hit right in his stomach! I agree with you, Kano-kun!

In fact, I didn't know much about them before I worked with them but now they are one of my favorite bands. I'm always drawn to the rhythm section and fell in love with the bassist Kevin Chown. His bass has almost everything I love about the bass. Such a great player! He's placed next to Mick Karn in the list of my favorite bass players - sorry, nobody can beat my all time bass hero Mick. Anyway, they have no vocals, purely instrumental but absolutely make the audience dance. Great music!

My job yesterday was more like looking after the band while they are at the venue rather than interpreting at interviews which I usually do. I did one interview with Matt for Drum Magazine after we had lunch and did a couple of short interviews with Kevin For Bass Magazine and Jeff Kollman for Guitar Magazine after the show. I was going to do Ed Roth's short interview for Keyboard Magazine but it started right after Kevin's began so Nao, one of my fellow editors, did it all in English. Hey Nao, you did a great job! You should do it more often because your English is much better than you think.

Ed's partner Yoko helped me a lot, too. Without her, I would have been lost because there were many things going on at once that I often had to run back and forth between the band and the staff. Thank you so much, Yoko!! You are truly a lovely girl. Stay in touch, okay?

This year I've been rediscovering the joy of working with great people and becoming friends with them. People like Annekei, Larry and Tina Graham and the Meatbats, they all surely have opened my eyes and mind wide again and triggered my love for what I do and whom I work with. I do hope to see you all again soon!!

(Oh, Annekei, I'm sorry I missed you during your autumn tour. Let's hang out in Tokyo next time!!)

Great music and great people to work with are the key of my life :)