5. Made of Thin Glass (PART 1 of 2)

Four members you were

Four people who tried

It was fine for awhile

But how quickly it died...

Fragile Reptile ('16)

The first member to take part in what would end up to be my own first bona fide band (and also the last, not counting short-lived trios and some collaborations) was the lead guitarist, a somewhat socially-awkward, but seemingly nice guy (this was my initial impression, anyway) I'd met at a rooftop party where both he and I had performed. Almost desperate by now to do my own duo project, though still a member of the “chattering band” (we were still playing the same setlists over and over, my stockpile of demos still collecting proverbial dust, even as I was writing more new songs weekly, sometimes even daily, on the guitar), I asked him if he would do it. To my surprise he said, "Let's go into the studio and see what happens.” Before long we were trying out stuff together as a duo project, even before I'd assembled the members of what was to become the full band version.

The next person I asked to join, thinking now that the duo could indeed expand to become a full "rock band-style" ensemble, and that this would free me from my then-current role as subordinate “singer-only” in a project I no longer had any enthusiasm for, was the bassist, a woman who was then also the (new) manager for my former band, at least during the final few months remaining before I decided to quit in order to focus more on my own unit. Originally a guitar player, she now wanted very badly herself to play in a band and to perform live, so when I asked her to play bass for us, she immediately agreed. 

So now, with a guitarist and a bassist, I began to consider whom I might ask to join the three of us on drums, since I couldn’t drum and sing and play guitar all at once myself, obviously. I had the idea to ask another acquaintance of mine from the local live circuit (Fukuoka is a small city), another “nice guy” who had been doing another project with another friend of mine who'd recently left Japan for the U.K. He played the drums well, I thought, and was always all smiles when I saw him, and his friend also said he would likely do it when I asked him what he thought, since he had apparently had no other full-time obligations at the time. So, thinking I had nothing to lose, one day I contacted him by phone and asked if he would be interested in “joining my new group,” that is, if he had the time to spare. At first, he agreed to come to our rehearsal "as a trial run," and then, after the first time in the studio together, he told me he would gladly participate, but only on the condition that he would only continue as a temporary member until I was able to find a replacement drummer. However, after only another couple of practice sessions together, he agreed to stay on as a "full member," much to the relief of both myself and the others, who had also hoped he would accept the offer to be our permanent drummer.

And so, toward the end of 2015, two shows were already decided for early the next year. The first was a duo show with my guitarist, which we had already booked previously, and which we were now promoting as a sort of “warm-up show” before the band’s big debut show. The band would perform at a somewhat larger venue than the duo, at the same livehouse, incidentally, where my first band (CM) had had its debut live show. Excited, and optimistic in so many naively-stupid ways, I now believed that my original music was finally ready to take flight, to soar to the heavens with these three new musical comrades, and that everything would be so much better in '16 for me and my musical aspirations than they had been with my former band... 

The name I had chosen for my shiny new unit (There's a lady who's sure / All that glitters is gold...) was "Glass Gecko." Actually, I'd also considered "Silver Gecko," the name I had originally thought to use for the duo project with the guitarist who ended up MIA, but, when given a choice between the two names, the guitarist of this band preferred “Glass Gecko”, and so fate determined that this band would become like waremono (割れ物) -- that is “fragile, easily broken” -- and would need to be handled with extreme caution and care. 

I mentioned earlier that the day I'd purchased my first acoustic I'd seen a lizard or a gecko, and that this would become an important symbol for me. You see, I took this rare sighting as a sign of "change,” for "change" was one definition I had immediately discovered when I searched under the terms “gecko” and “symbolism” via Google Search. And, indeed, change was on the horizon in so many ways for me, as well as (you might say) for my band members, though not all of them were comfortable or desirable. In any case, I would certainly learn many lessons in the coming months, both with this band and beyond...

As anyone who has any experience doing stuff with other people (that is, being part of a group) in almost any situation, but perhaps especially in any creative situation, as in a band situation, can attest to, interpersonal relations are not always easy, and if "three is a crowd," well, then four might just end up a complete and total catastrophe. In my/our case, we were a band not only focused on original compositions, but we were also a band in which two "lead" members were writing them. The guitarist, too, wrote his own instrumental songs, which should have come as no surprise to me, though he didn’t mention it until the second or third full-band rehearsal, when, essentially out of nowhere, he proclaimed to me/us, "I want to do my songs with this band, too." I should have expected something like this to happen, and in fact I readily agreed and asked him to send me some demos, which he did. 

Well, much to my surprise (actually, it was more a bit of shock), the first two demos I was asked to write melodies and lyrics for were neither rock nor alterna-rock in style, as I'd half-expected (since his arrangements of my songs, up until then, had essentially been one variation of either of these genres). Instead, it rather sounded like extremely chill MOR lounge music, something akin to "jazz-lite," i.e. music that would hardly catch one's attention if played in an elevator or the lounge of a hotel. At first I quietly panicked, thinking that it would be impossible for me to come up with anything acceptable for these songs, but after centering myself a bit and first trying to come up with a vocal melody line to sing, I somehow managed not only to come up with one for his first two instrumental demos, but also to write lyrics that were not at all "dark." Indeed, I had tried my very best to write lyrics that would fit the sound of his soporific (at least in the demo versions), "major key" compositions, had tried to make the lyrics sound as positive as possible, as my own lyrics at the time could be rather depressed and gothic (e.g. "I can't find my way from this recurring pain / I can never find my way out of the rain" -- Want). Much to my relief, he and the other members were generally quite pleased with what I had come up with, though I secretly was not thrilled with having to sing and perform the songs at all of our rehearsals and shows alongside my own darker, emotionally-charged compositions. In any case, I thought, this was compromise, this was being a member of a band, this was "OK"... I was rather glad, frankly, to finally be able also to do my own compositions for the first time ever, even to play guitar on a stage with my own band! 

Give me shelter from the rainstorm

Give me light from your own hand

Find a way for me to compose

Let me sing in my own band

“Grab the Horn” (‘15)

(Oh yes, oh yes, oh god...)

And so...

Glass Gecko live at "Buzz" in 2016 (early show)

(Continued)