Happy 2010!
Live at the Art Blender, January 17, 2010
We kicked off the New Year at the Pink Cow’s “Art Blender” event. It was an interesting combination of DJing, VJing, live painting, live hair-cutting, and an extended set by Missing Scene. Although we were without Hide, we managed to punch out a good number of upbeat original tunes; a couple of slower, moody originals; a CCR cover; and a Beatles cover. Geoff, Joel, and Rodolfo also pulled off a drumless version of Missing Scene’s soon-to-be-released “What’s On Your Mind?”, which we had never done before. Unfortunately, the audio on the streamed video is damaged, so all you can here is a loud electric hum…but hopefully you can make it out to the next event and won’t need to bother with any sort of stream! We would also like to extend a special thank you to our new friend Adam from Poland for sending us this picture he took during our soundcheck. Hope to see you all next time!
We have some great news from the worlds of sports, video games, and music: Missing Scene sold a song to Konami Corporation for the 2010 edition of its massively popular “Pro Evolution Soccer” video game (released last month)! We were asked to write a “UK Rock” song, so I talked to Joel (Missing Scene’s resident expert on Britain) about coming up with a riff to build the song around. A few days later, we had the first version of “Always and Always” recorded. A week and several iterations after that, we handed the final version to the client. The original riff was dropped and replaced with a more straight-forward guitar line, and we filled up the choruses with four-part harmony and some heavy slide guitar. All in all, we’re very pleased with the song. Let us know what you think! Here it is:
I recently met up with Missing Scene cofounder and singer/songwriter Dave Zikovitz in Shibuya on a cold afternoon for lunch. It was our first time hanging out in ages. We were a bit strapped for time, and as we were eager to get out of the rain, we decided to dart over to Ootoya. His band, the Moist Towelettes, recently returned from a successful tour in Canada. It sounded like a fantastic time and made me really miss playing venues back in the States. We caught each other up on all of the exciting things that had happened since we last spoke, and then on some of the difficulties and frustrations that accompany any venture one invests his heart in.
We eventually began reminiscing about some of the great times we had playing together, and I couldn’t help but think back to World Festa Yokohama (October 10, 2004), where we played two venues in three hours, one of which was outdoors in a typhoon! Here is a song from one of those sets called “Vanessa”:
Thinking back and talking about some of our experiences made me realize that the heart of Missing Scene has always been the harmony. While the face and the sound of the band will continue to change and evolve, all of the songs that we were writing had the same basic roots. Perhaps it is time to go back to basics.
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- Dave and Geoff in a haunted studio in Asakusa-bashi
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- Geoff, Hide, Dave, and Mitsu
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- Live at Patrush in Jiyugaoka – Dave, Geoff, Mitsu, and Hide
So, we’re not making any promises, but be sure to check the schedule from time to time as we may do a special show or two for old times, to bring things back into perspective, and because…well…why not?!
Some of you may have noticed that there haven’t been any new entries as of late. And, if you scroll past the very first page, you’ll notice that there are no photographs. Well, there used to be photographs. Many photographs. But there are none there now. Just lots of blue question marks that lead to a page explaining that the item clicked on no longer exists. Shocker.
What happened was that we had been using an old version of WordPress, and over time the bugs took over, disallowing uploads of things like pictures, sound files, and video. So, I figured the only thing to do was to download the newest version, promptly install it, and be on my way in mere minutes. Easy, right? Back-up everything? Of course not! It is hardly a task worthy of trying to figure out what other special back-up program to download and install that syncs with this one. Besides, my web-building software makes regular backups.
Well, you can guess what happened next. So after several days of facing the “white screen of death”, I contacted Bren of Tokyo Republik, who did the complete redesign of our site the year before, and he was able to complete the upgrade and find the missing text. Unfortunately, the photos were wiped from the server. And it turns out, the web page back-up function does not work for blogs. That’s a different program altogether. Lovely….
So, now I’m hunting for lots of pictures that are stored on various media in various places. Hopefully we’ll get most of them back up, little by little. In the meantime, we’ll try to get this blog up-to-date and schedule some new shows. Hope you check back soon!