You.May.Die.In.The.Desert: June 2007

Friday, June 29, 2007

Home

We made it home today after going Back to the Future. We left Japan at 17:00 on June 29th and we arrived in Seattle on June 29th at 9:30. We get to live the 29th twice.

I will put up another post later with lots of pics and commentary, but I just wanted to let people know we made it home safe.

Thank You so much to Scraps of Tape, Shun, Zankyo, Kono, and all the lovely people and bands we met in Japan.

xoxo
Brandon

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Niigata

If you haven't found it yet Scraps of Tape are doing a much better job of updating their blog. Go look at it here:
http://sottourdiary.blogspot.com/

The last couple days have been quite an adventure.
On Sunday, the 24th, it was Brian's birthday and we played at club rock'n roll in Nagoya. It turned out that we had a lot of technichal difficulties and we were quite embarressed, but people said we still sounded good. Anyways, Kono got brian the funniest gifts and Marcus was a big hit.

Yesterday we had a very long drive back to Toyko and we lost our dear friend Shun. He, unfortunately had to go back to school and be with is family. He was a great tour manager and friend.

We finally got some REAL pizza last night and for the first time i felt full.

We are starting to feel the effects of being on tour and being apart from the ones we love. This is the only part about tour that is no fun. This expereice has been so amazing and I am really going to cherish the last two days with all of my new friends, Japanese and Swedish.

Hopefully I will write at least once more.

Please check the Scraps of Tape blog for a more day to day synopsis of tour.

xoxo
Brandon

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Long Overdue

Here I am in Kobe and it is 4:20 in the morning. We have had a serious lack of internet, hence, the no posts since our first show. This tour has been so amazing so far. Scraps of Tape are the best group of guys in the world, plus they are my new favorite band.

I am going to do a quick run down of some shows...

The Zankyo Festival in Toyko was crazy. We played to about 800 people on a huge stage. We had our own dressing room, an interpreter, free shirts, and we did an autograph session. It was great fun, but we were nervous so the show could have been better. Te', Scraps of Tape, and Naan were all really good!

Whoopees in Kyoto was a good show. S o T were awesome and we had fun, but that was a really long day. That night we got to stay in a traditional Japanese style home, which was a very unique experience.

Okayama was another good show for us. We got a live DVD of this show that may appear some day in some form. That night we got to stay at Kono's familys house in Okayama. Kono (the label president and manager) was kind enough to let YMDITD to stay at his familys home where we were recieved with pen arms and showered with gifts. We got a traditional home cooked meal and some Japanese PJ's!

Fukuoka was probably the best show on th tour so far. It was a smaller venue, but everyone there was really into the music. We sold a lot of merch and Brian went crowd surfing. We had a crazy after party with a bunch of the bands and then went to Kareoke...

Osaka was an odd show. The venue seemed great, but the sound eneded up being really bad. The crowd was not very responsive and it wans't our best show. There was also a girl at the show from MTV Japan to check out us and Scraps of Tape. I guess we ended up selling a bunch of stuff, which was weird considering not many people were into the show. This night was my first time really going into the crowd during the performance. There was a huge stage and a barrier, but some show I got over it all and rocked out in the crowd trying to get a response.

Tonight at Helluve Lounge in Kobe was probably our best performance. The stage is lit from below and it is a nice small venue with good sound. Scraps really did an amazing job tonight too. Maybe the best show of tour?

I really can't say enough about how great Scraps of Tape are. Such an amazing band and such awesome guys. I wish we could tour with them all them time, even more I wish we lived on the same continent so that we could hang out as friends.

I'll try my best to keep updating.

I miss my family and friends, but I love Japan.

xoxo
Brandon

pics soon.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

First Show, Tower Records, Shibuya

Yesterday we walked around Shibuya with Kono from Zankyo Records. We went to the Market in the morning to get some food and do some shopping. Then, we walked to downtown Shibuya where there we so many people we could barley walk. Kono took us to Tower Records, which is the biggest CD store in Japan (this thing is literally 6 floors). We got to see our CD in the shelves, which was surreal, but awesome. We also saw some friends CD's like Caspian, Jatun, Scraps of Tape etc.

After a lot of walking around in the hot streets of Shibuya we went to the venue to organize our merchandise and do a sound check. I think we arrived at about 2 pm and met with our new friend Takeshi. We spent nearly all day at Club Kinoto except for a few times when we went out to get money, food, and mike had to get some new mallets.

5 other bands played with us and they were all very well practiced and most of them were quite good. It is interesting in Japan because there seems to be many more girls/women in bands, so we got to meet many of them last night. We played 5th our of six bands and by the time we took the stage we were all very tired. We played OK, but had some technical and other mess ups. We were glad to play the show before the festival, becuase we needed the practice.

We met a lot of very nice people and a few fans (Akiko!).

We are trying to learn some Japanese, but it is very hard. I am struggling to fins vegetarian food and I have hit my head about 10 times on door ways and ceilings.

We play the Zankyo Festival tonight and then we leave for Kyoto tomorrow.

We are very happy to be here and miss everyone at home.

Hopefully more soon.

xoxo
Brandon & YMDITD

Friday, June 15, 2007

28 hours later...

We arrived in Japan yesterday after a lot of traveling. Brian and I flew together from Seattle to LAX to Tokyo and we met Mike who flew staright from Seattle. Kono, from Zankyo picked us up at Narita and we loaded all of our gear into the Zankyo Van. It was about an hour drive from Narita to Shibuya. We are staying at the Zankyo studio, which is a unique experience.
We were all hungry so we went out to dinner in Shibuya at a Japanese resturant. On the way there we saw a huge video screen that was advertising the Zankyo Festival, which we are playing on Sunday!
Walking around Tokyo everything seems fake, like you are at Universal Studios. There are so many people everywhere.
Driving on the opposite side of the road had also been quite thrilling; people are everywhere and nobody seems to be paying attention to traffic (we were all slightly scared for our lives).

People have been very generous and kind to us so far and we are excited to get on the road.

We will try to upload some pictures when we have the chance.

xoxo
Brandon
YMDITD

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

16th Confirmed

Our Show at Club Kinoto has been confirmed for June 16th. I am not sure what time it starts or how much it costs, but I am sure you can google search for it.

On another note, I am really mad at punkbutton.net. I order 500 buttons from them on April 30th so that we could have buttons for our visit to Japan. They claim 2-4 weeks for delivery. Well, it has been about 6 weeks and still no buttons and no reply. I ordered buttons from them before so i thought they were reliable, I guess not. So DO NOT BUY BUTTONS FROM PUNKBUTTONS.NET!!!!!!!

Oh my gosh we are leaving in two days!!!

xoxo