Fire Bomber Music

[Tochiro]

Anyone want to do flac/iso rips of Chie Kajiura's albums? They're incredibly difficult to find and I don't want to spend $60+ on a music CD.

Thanks

Incredibly hard to find? I got both from a 2nd hand amazon seller for about $5 each. Have never ever seen them going from more than half the RRP.

[kazuo]

Incredibly hard to find? I got both from a 2nd hand amazon seller for about $5 each. Have never ever seen them going from more than half the RRP.

Point me in the right direction to buy the albums for $5 and I will happily do so.

Note that amazonjp sellers won't ship outside of Japan, so it has to be someone who will actually ship them to the US.

Edited July 20, 2010 by kazuo

[Tochiro]

Point me in the right direction to buy the albums for $5 and I will happily do so.

Note that amazonjp sellers won't ship outside of Japan, so it has to be someone who will actually ship them to the US.

Well naturally Im talking about Amazon Jp since we are talking about Japanese products. And there are multiple ppl on this board, including myself, who Im sure would only be too happy to resend stuff if its the only way for you to get it.

[kazuo]

Well naturally Im talking about Amazon Jp since we are talking about Japanese products. And there are multiple ppl on this board, including myself, who Im sure would only be too happy to resend stuff if its the only way for you to get it.

Well, if you're serious about that, buy me all her albums and re-ship 'em to me!

PM me?

Also, IHATEYOU was kind enough to share the swf files off his USB stick. Here they are: http://rapidshare.com/files/408264296/Chie_Kajiura_-_Overflow.rar.html

Enjoy, and thank him!

[Tochiro]

Well, if you're serious about that, buy me all her albums and re-ship 'em to me!

PM me?

Also, IHATEYOU was kind enough to share the swf files off his USB stick. Here they are: http://rapidshare.com/files/408264296/Chie_Kajiura_-_Overflow.rar.html

Enjoy, and thank him!

Not quite the way these things usually work, but PM sent.

[Renato]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. A few weeks ago I asked the Japanese Macross fans if they knew who provided the singing voice for Emilia in "The Galaxy is Calling Me", and they told me it was a lady called Okudoi Mika (not to be confused with Misa's voice actress, Doi Mika), Check out her Youtube clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSST6j5wA5k

As you can see, she's a pretty talented jazz singer. If anyone is in Nagasaki, she's performing there next week! It's just a liiiittle out of my way, though

Anyway, it pleases me to finally get a solution to one of the biggest mysteries of Macross fandom.

EDIT: I didn't notice, it was either purely coincidental or an odd act of my subconscious that I recently changed my avatar to an image of Emilia.

Edited August 12, 2010 by Renato

[Renato]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. A few weeks ago I asked the Japanese Macross fans if they knew who provided the singing voice for Emilia in "The Galaxy is Calling Me", and they told me it was a lady called Okudoi Mika (not to be confused with Misa's voice actress, Doi Mika), Check out her Youtube clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSST6j5wA5k

As you can see, she's a pretty talented jazz singer. If anyone is in Nagasaki, she's performing there next week! It's just a liiiittle out of my way, though

Anyway, it pleases me to finally get a solution to one of the biggest mysteries of Macross fandom.

EDIT: I didn't notice, it was either purely coincidental or an odd act of my subconscious that I recently changed my avatar to an image of Emilia.

EDIT2 -- Heh, apparently she teamed up with that guy from the band Chicago to do a Silent Moebius song:

Not bad.

[Tochiro]

Awesome memory and great find!

[Renato]

FOR THE TOO LONG / DIDN’T READ CROWD: IT WAS A F***ING AWESOME CONCERT!!!!!! Thank you, you may move on.

OK, let's see if I can do one of these. Not to be outdone by Tochiro and Gubaba, I shall try my hand at doing a concert write-up.

Firstly, sorry for resurrecting this thread. The main reason I felt this was the best thread to post in to do this write-up is because I had already introduced the band Hummingbird in my first post here, and that's quite relevant here.

Yesterday (Sunday) was the second day of Yoshiki Fukuyama's 20th Anniversary concerts. On Saturday, there was also a Chie Kajiura concert, for some reason scheduled on the same day. You can read Gubaba's excellent write-up of that one here:

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=29483&view=findpost&p=911067

I bought my ticket back in February, if I remember correctly. To be honest, even though it is the 20th anniversary of an excellent performer, I had this feeling that going to this concert felt more of a chore than anything else. I have seen Fukuyama live many, many times over the past ten years, and I know his basic routine. And he often misses notes and screws up lyrics, or mess up some riffs (though this one is quite rare). The last time I saw him was in Osaka over a year ago, and to be honest, it was the worst performance I'd seen, I was quite disappointed. I went to that one because it was the Revival of Fire Bomber gig, which would be the first time I saw Chie Kajiura and Fukuyama together. It was OK, music-wise, not bad, but he just looked beat from the day before in Tokyo, which I heard was pretty good. We got a shorter song list, a few mistakes, and the lack of coordination between Chie and Fukuyama showed quite a bit. And I’d seen most of the songs done live already anyway. There were only a couple of songs from the new album and I was expecting more. I decided to go anyway since I heard that Toshiyuki Furuya, the stray ex-Hummingbird bassist (and leader, technically) was going to be a guest performer.

Well, after all that, I am happy to say yesterday’s performance was much, much better. Fukuyama looks, sounds and plays better, healthier, more confident. He used to cough a hell of a lot between songs, even between lyrics, during a performance, but not anymore. He didn’t do that once. He used to sound quite worn out, unable to hit high notes towards the end of the concert, but no more. He sounds as fresh and SHARP on the last lyric of the last song, as the first shout of the first bar of the first song. And he even noted this himself. A number of times, he said he was surprised at his own performance, where he used to struggle he now makes it look effortless. You can even see it in the Long Long Live DVD: halfway through he is collapsing over himself, barely able to stand, really having a hard time playing and singing, his voice almost a whisper at times. This… was something else. Fukuyama re-born.

So OK, who went to this concert. From MW, Tochiro, Save and myself. Save came fashionably late. There were also the usual suspects of Japanese Macross fans. I got there early and spoke to them for a while. Apparently one of them won a backstage pass, one of two that was mixed in with the prizes in the Gachapon machine. Not bad for 500 yen, huh?

Yamato had their shiny new VF-19kai toy on sale in the lobby, amongst the CDs and T-shirts. They also had a life-size, real Basara guitar on display, which hopefully will be a proper product soon.

I spoke to Tochiro and his friend Richard from the videogame podcast that they do (who has the worst concert luck ever, for reasons I will let Tochiro explain), for a while, mostly about bottled water, Jack Black’s 1999 scrapped TV pilot, derogatory surfboards and other shenanigans when I decided to go to the bathroom before the show started. I took a million wrong turns before I found it, but I’m not complaining, for if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have bumped into this guy, sitting on the ground against a wall.

This is Toshiyuki Furuya, Hummingbird’s bassist, today’s special guest – best known to Macross fans as the guy who wrote Dynamite Explosion. After more than a decade, at last I was able to meet and speak to the guy, and he was really happy to find his music had an audience overseas.

Right, on to the music itself. The concert was made up of three main sections, the first was typical Fukuyama numbers, made up mostly from his solo album material, which was great. It was a good mix, and many songs I’d not heard live before, in particular that “Fukugan” operatta, which we talked about earlier in this thread, Fukyama’s own “Bohemian Rhapsody”, was great. I didn’t know he had written that while recuperating after breaking his collar bone. After a short break, the four Fukuyama Band members became the three, Hummingbird members – which means the keyboardist (whose name escapes me right now, since they’ve changed him THREE times already) and the bassist (Tetsuro Maeda) left, and Furuya came on stage, to give a powerful rendition of “Towa no Tobira”, thus elevating this hitherto “pretty good” gig into an epic performance of godly proportions. I am serious, the raw energy unleashed would have been visible if only they had had their patented Dr. Chiba Song Energy convertors equipped. “1,000,000 Chiba song units!” Every Hummingbird song was absolutely fantastic, and it was then that I felt, man, this is what I’ve been waiting for.

When I lived in Japan for a year in 2001-2002, it was just after HB broke up. I have felt gutted ever since then, not to have seen what I thought was the greatest band in the world perform live (for which Furuya-san profoundly apologized when I spoke to him!). I had to make do with my albums, which I listened to each and every day, and to this day I am not bored of those first two albums. They are masterpieces in rock history. I love Queen, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Who and I put Hummingbird right up there with them. But this really blew me away. Fukuyama’s band is great and all, but, man…. This was just testament to how incredible this band was and is.

And the in-between-song banter with the three of them was great, too. They were taking potshots at each other, reminiscing about their old gigs, old radio shows, laughing like they were at a class reunion.

Fukuyama: “Remember “Hoshi no Tegami” [beautiful song from the “Timeless” album]?? You hated recording that song! I’d look over and you’d be making that horrible face!”

Furuya: “Yeah, ‘cos those harmonies were a nightmare! I’m sitting down, one hand on the keyboard, another playing bass, and at the same time I’m supposed to do backing chorus?? Screw that!”

Or even, when Fukuyama is off on one of his infamous tangents, Furuya would just cut in and say, “Jeez, you talk a lot! Shut up and let’s play!” to which the audience went wild. It was really great to watch.

There was more great banter which I remembered up until a few minutes ago but I forgot now, oh well.

After the HB section, the concert was technically over but the 4-piece Fukuyama band came back to do a few powerful encore numbers, and finally bringing back Furuya on acoustic guitar to close the concert proper with a rendition of “Happy Birthday”, Hummingbird’s debut single.

On the way out there was a camera rolling which you had to give a short message to, and apparently will be on the DVD. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for embarrassment, and our MacrossWorld reps did not disappoint. All will be revealed in the inevitable DVD release.

After that Save, Tochiro and I had some drinks, where we discovered that Save can’t tell his left from his right.

All in all, this was a million times better than I expected just because of how incredible and solid Fukuyama’s performance was, and better than I expected by an incalculable power of ten due to Hummingbird’s one-night-only revival.

They honestly were a really, really great band.

But don’t take my word for it, AT LEAST check out their first album, right here:

http://forums.macrosshare.com/viewtopic.php?t=403

(It’s out of print, so this is your best bet)

Here I am with Furuya-san:

Yamato’s Basara Guitar:

[danth]

I'm so damn jelly.

[Tochiro]

To be FIRE! - New Fire Bomber fashion merch preorders start today.

http://www.macrossworld.com/fire-bomber-fashion-merch/

[Renato]

The jacket is really nice. It's not cheap, but it's genuine lambskin leather, and made to a certain standard.

That said, I think it's a major problem that they are selling this online and not accepting returns. How can you buy an article of clothing without first trying it on? Especially one with as steep a price tag as this one? I know they have the measurements on the webpage, but seriously, you have to wear it to find the right size for you, the numbers don't really mean that much when it comes to comfort, in particular with leather.

[Jasonc]

Each maker makes their jackets differently according to size. I have one leather jacket that Is my size, but fits extremely tight. I have another one that is quite free around the shoulder area (still in my size), and one that I had custom made from a shop in Athens, Greece, that fits perfectly (due to me going in to get fitted for it and them making it). For the insane price this jacket is, I'd want it custom fitted. It's way too expensive to be a general size jacket, IMO.

[Renato]

100% agreed. This is sort of similar to that Basara guitar. I remember you saying after playing it just for a short while that had you known what it felt like beforehand, you would have gotten one. Guitars and jackets are so specific with their little variations that it is ridiculous to limit them to web-only pre-orders.

[Blaze Battery]

Did they happen to base the appearance of Basara on Per Gessle from Roxette at all?

[Renato]

I highly doubt it.

Edited January 14, 2015 by Renato

[The Shade]

That's too bad, because that would have been totally awesome!!

[Gubaba]

I think basing at least the glasses on John Lennon is probable awesome-er.

[Primus1X]

Our attempt at covering Totsugeki Love Heart during Karaoke night at AmeChibi 2015.

Edited April 13, 2015 by Primus1X

[Tochiro]

Wow, an honest to goodness Tomo Sakurai fan page....without any mention of Macross 7... ^^;

https://morningberryz48.wordpress.com/2013/05/03/「tgif」idols-unzipped-on-way-back-fridays-presents-sakurai-tomosinger-actress-model-seiyuu-volume-44/

[Renato]

Not really THAT honest, then.