4. A "Chattering" Band

At the end of 2013, two years after the birth of my daughter and also now having obtained a new contract in another department at Kyushu University teaching English (mostly academic writing, and with no literature classes), I attend a year-end party, where I meet a guitar player who later gets me in touch with another guitar player, an ex-pat from California in the U.S., who he knows is looking for a vocalist for his band. We meet, just the two of us, for drinks one night after exchanging some mail electronically to discuss music things, mainly, and a couple of weeks later, after auditioning, I am the band's new vocalist (despite having had a rather rough voice during the rehearsal, much to my dismay, as it was post "stubborn cold," and therefore I found myself unable to hit many of the high notes I would normally have been able to hit, though the band members didn't seem to notice or to care too much and indeed, graciously, I had thought at the time, accepted me into their rather badass hard rocker circle anyway...). 

Before we start rehearsing in earnest, I propose the name "Chattering Man" for the band, a name/title I had held in reserve for some new project I wanted to do "some day.” Originally, I had thought I might use it as the name for a future self-created indies publisher for innovative fiction, or as the name of an online fiction/poetry journal, but neither of these had come to pass, and since my interest was now in singing for a band, it seemed the perfect opportunity to use it. My friend James had died in 2011, as I alluded to earlier in a footnote, the year I first came to Fukuoka to teach, and he had had a song called "The Chattering Man" on his second, and what turned out (unfortunately) to be final, Thread LP, “Children of the Centipede,” the title of which had stayed with me. The guitarist, after a fortnight, agrees to use the name for the new incarnation of his band (note that I say his band and not our band), and off we go...

Even before performing our first live show we'd quickly rushed into the studio together to record an album, as the guitarist thought we needed to have a CD in order to promote ourselves before we made our live debut. The LP consisted mostly of the guitarist's old songs, things he'd previously done with former bands or solo, except that now they would feature me on lead vocals (in my own style of singing, at the time) with him doing backing vocals, harmonizing in his gruff, rather high-pitched voice. The LP also included three of my new songs, essentially, things I'd written a cappella sans chords, as I couldn't yet play either the guitar or the keyboard. I had presented him with my a cappella recordings, which I'd made at home (the more things change...) via my Mac’s built-in microphone, and he then arranged his guitar parts around the vocal melodies, after which we would rehearse the new songs together as a band in the rehearsal studio. The first of these songs was a sort of semi-acoustic power-rock ballad, with a rather bluesy guitar solo played as an overdub atop it, while the second piece I had envisioned as a sort of "theme song" for the band (i.e. “Chattering," which also later became the title of the LP), a heavy, plodding, almost prog-metal song that was a bit longer than most of our other material, and one that, after we'd been performing it for well over a year, the drummer suddenly confessed to me one night, in a moment of brutal honesty, and with a hint of bitterness, or maybe some other unpleasant emotion I couldn't quite ascertain, how much he "hated" it…

The third and final piece of mine that went onto the LP was called "Stupid Man" and which, in the guitarist's hard rock arrangement, soon became a favorite at shows, featuring a simple melody and uncomplicated lyrics (I was constantly asked by people -- inevitably male -- after shows, "Who were you writing about? Who's the stupid man in your song??"), as well as some ripping electric guitar and a heavy, Bonham-esque drumbeat. And so, over a period of around two years, starting with our first show in early 2014 (March, I believe it was), we would perform a bunch of live shows at various venues in and around Fukuoka, as well as in other parts of Kyushu, me becoming increasingly more dramatic on stage over time, eventually donning a Venetian half-mask I'd purchased for Halloween the first year when I was on stage with the band, usually during the song "Chattering" (the one the drummer had apparently hated so much all along…), a style of mask which allowed me to sing freely while wearing it, as my nose and mouth were not covered. I also began to develop a rather unique style of contortionistic dance that I myself felt a bit shamanistic, though the drummer had termed it, euphemistically, “Marc’s monkey dance" (Balinese shaman to him, perhaps?). 

Around the end of the first year of our existence as a band, or perhaps it was the beginning of the second (my memory is rather fuzzy on this now), the guitarist arranged two more of my then-new a cappella songs, "City of Masks" and "Phantom," both inspired by the mask I now wore on stage for at least one or two songs during each set we performed, often for the opening number. The mask had also, by then, become emblematic of the band; it had become part of our overall image (was it just I who felt so? I don’t think so…). In fact, when we had someone design a website and business card for us, the white version of the Venetian half-mask -- the one I'd initially worn, before starting to appear at shows with different colors and designs over time, to mix things up -- was included beside the band's name as part of our logo/branding.

By the latter part of 2015, I had recorded around 30-some a cappella demos, a potential pool of songs that could be arranged by the guitarist and then rehearsed and performed as a band, or that was what I had imagined/hoped at the time, anyway. After arranging "City of Masks" and "Phantom," however, the guitarist (let me restate, again, that he was the band's founder and leader, not I) stopped doing any new arrangements of my songs, or writing any new songs himself, except for one, which seemed to come out of nowhere, a sort of catchy rock song about how recent pop artists were imitative and unoriginal; he was suddenly inspired to write the song, he said, by his extreme dislike of cover bands, as he felt that they got way too much airplay and made too much money, despite their “complete lack of originality” (in Japan, these bands are often termed “copy bands,” which is definitely more accurate than “cover bands” would seem to imply, since “covers” do not necessarily need to be imitative, while “copies” are, by nature, so). 

In any case, I was ever-eager to expand our catalog of original material and to experiment with new arrangements, new ways of presenting our shows to audiences, rather than playing the same material over again and again in the same way, but the guitarist and the other members seemed content enough with a sort of stasis, performing the same numbers at every show and in the same exact arrangements, even sometimes in the same running order. In fact, when once I suggested we do a half-acoustic, half-electric set I was met with strong resistance by the band, and when in fact we tried it, after I had persisted in my appeal, more than half the audience left as soon as we started to perform an acoustic version of “Phantom” three songs into the setlist (this song, in the band’s regular "electric" arrangement, was a very heavy, distorted guitar and pounding drums number). It became a “told you so” moment, and after that night I never really felt the same about participating in the band or about making any suggestions about our setlists or live activities.

Although, at first, we had regularly maintained a weekly rehearsal schedule of three, then two, hours on the same day of every week, and always at the same time and place (i.e. at the friend of a friend’s music studio), eventually we began rehearsing less and less together, very much irregularly-so, sometimes not for several weeks (eventually this became months) in a row. And, when we did get together again to rehearse, it was always just to brush up on the same songs we'd performed so many times in the past, rather than to introduce any potential new ones into our by-now staid, I’d felt, cycle of songs. It was true that in between the full-band shows, the guitarist and I sometimes did so-called "unplugged" acoustic gigs together at smaller venues, but, again, we always only regurgitated the same material ad infinitum. While I was ever-revving to do new stuff, and to experiment with new sounds and styles, the indication from the other band members was that having to learn and practice new material would have been a nuisance, and that now that we had enough songs in our repertoire to just rotate them endlessly, ten or twelve or whatever, there was no pressing need to add any new ones to our "rotation." 

Was there?

Well…

And so, finally, after months and months of asking the guitarist (whilst trying hard not to sound as though I was begging) whether he might consider arranging any of the new material I'd presented him demos for, and then waiting, waiting some more again before asking him again (and then, over time waiting longer periods of time before, again, broaching the subject, so that I didn't seem overly anxious, though in fact I was...), I simply reached a point where I could no longer wait, or, rather, when I determined not to wait any longer, for someone else to complete my songs for me. It was then that I decided that I would buy my first acoustic guitar, which turned out to be a Yamaha. I knew nothing about guitars at the time, and the bassist of the band, who also played the acoustic, one day kindly agreed to accompany me to the music shop. He gave me some advice as to what kind of guitar to buy, suggesting a larger body guitar, as it would have “better resonance,” and the larger, clunkier (I felt) guitar size was the thing I had disliked the most about my first acoustic, ironically -- the ones I have since purchased have gotten increasingly smaller-bodied: first, the Ibanez I purchased the following year, and then the even-smaller Guild, my third-ever acoustic, which I bought used just last summer.

The day I bought the guitar, returning home with it strapped on my back, I saw a long, silvery reptile -- a lizard? a gecko? -- outside of the apartment complex where my wife and 4-year-old daughter and I were living, and this itself would come to have great significance for me. But, as Detective Nathan Adler once said, "I'm getting ahead of myself..."

After a few months of daily practice I could play some basic guitar, could even sort of play a few covers; I understood how to make some essential, standard chords, and had soon even written two original pieces in which I'd begun with the chord structure, rather than the vocal melody line, as I’d previously had to do with my 30-some a cappella sans-guitar pieces. These songs were entitled "More" and "Want." Although both utilized rather basic chords, such as A-minor, E, G, and so on, the latter also included a chord I had "discovered" by playing around on the guitar, sliding one fret up the neck from "E" without changing the position of the fingers (let me emphasize the fact that I did not find this chord by practicing with a standard chord chart, as everyone around me insisted I should, but simply by experimenting and by listening to the sounds that were emerging from the instrument). I would later be told by a number of guitar players, including the guitarist in my own band, the one I myself formed post-CM (I will write more on this subject soon), that this was not a "standard" chord and was also therefore "weird”; in other words, the message seemed to be: "It'd be better not to use this non-standard chord, since no one else does!" This is a very good example of why I often did not see eye to eye with collaborators I ended up working with before breaking away from the band/group format. My thought was always, What's wrong with using a non-standard chord? Is there a rule -- and, if so, who made it? -- that dictates which chords can and cannot be used in a song? Yet, over and over, I would get this bizarre look from guitarists whenever I used this chord, and other "non-standard" chords, in my original songs, or at least that seemed to be the trend at the time.

In any case, having written these two songs, with a number of other new songs shortly following, and also having begun figuring out how I might arrange some of the a cappella material I'd written for CM prior to learning guitar as well, I began my search for new members with whom I might further arrange and perform my new material together. In fact, even before I had felt confident enough to play the guitar together in a band, I had asked a certain, more or less "pro-level" guitarist who ran a bar and who was active in other local bands, one with whom I'd once or twice performed on the same stage, if he would like to try doing a duo project with me, i.e. arranging some of my demos acoustically, and also arranging/performing his original songs together (he had shared some of the things he'd been working on, and I was more-than-happy to try writing lyrics and then to sing them along with his guitar accompaniment). I also thought that we might try co-writing some new songs together, etc. eventually as well. This idea excited me very much, indeed, at the time, and at the time he'd readily agreed to do it and had seemed (to me, anyway) rather enthusiastic as well.

Unfortunately, this little hope I'd briefly entertained that our duo project would actually happen turned out to be illusory, as, much to my extreme disappointment, he never followed up with me. I tried getting in touch with him many times, but he proved to be very difficult to reach, as he was not on SNS -- neither FB nor LINE nor Messenger, at least not at the time -- and, though I even went to visit him at the music bar he owned, to try and catch him, he was always absent whenever I showed my face, paying more than once for the bar’s not-cheap drinks and chatting with the woman he had hired to run it in his stead. She herself told me that he "isn’t around much these days,” but that he sporadically dropped in "late at night," and also that he was often quite difficult to reach. And so, admitting defeat, I eventually gave up on the idea of our DOA project entirely and started seeking out another guitarist with whom to collaborate.*

* As a footnote to this story, let me just add that eventually he had to close his bar, apparently because the owner of the building was not renewing the lease on it. A year or so later I performed solo at another venue where he was (then) running the sound. He had apparently been aware of my musical activities around town, and said to me it was great that I had so quickly learned to play the guitar and to do my own thing. As to what happened between the time I gave up on our project and the time we met again... This is exactly the story I am about to relate.