A band's life

Well the band is going well. We've been making a lot of attempts to record lately. Some of them are simply lo-fi, acoustic versions that we record on Daniel's laptop in his room in the guest house. But I think probably some people don't like the noise. Anyway, one night Andy, Daniel and I were all sitting in the lounge being social when we realized we really just felt like singing. We had all had Patti Smith's version of "Gloria" stuck in our heads throughout that week for some reason and really felt like recording our own version of it. However, it was about 1am and we were pretty sure we'd either get murdered by our neighbors that night, or kicked out of the guest house by management the next day if we tried recording in the guest house at that hour. The obvious solution was to go to Musashino park, about a 20-30 minute walk from the guest house. We decided that I should borrow this girl Ruth's bicycle so we could get there faster and we all cycled out to the park toting a laptop, a harmonica, and two acoustic guitars. We wandered the forested park until we found a nice picnic table that was too far from civilization to piss anyone off. We set ourselves up and proceeded to record three different songs, singing at the top of our lungs until 4am. We got eaten alive by mosquitoes and we forgot most of the lyrics to Gloria anyway, but we had an amazing time doing it.

Another hilarious story was when we were all riding the train home from band practice one Sunday night. We entered the train car to find three young, perhaps 20-something, Japanese guys sitting on each other's laps. Basically, the first guy sat on the seat, the second guy sat on his lap, and the third on his lap. We were pretty amazed because this isn't really something that most guys would do anywhere in the world, let alone in Japan. People are usually pretty reserved in Japan, and this was pretty out there. Many of the other Japanese people on the train were staring at them and whispering and shooting them disapproving looks. But, as crazy foreigners we of course, totally endorsed their behavior. We chuckled and gave them our little ECC thumbs up. The third Japanese guy, then motioned for Andy to sit on his lap. After a moment of hesitation, Andy accepted his offer. At this, a middle-aged man who was especially enraged by all this, stormed off the train. Well, that was it. Things got out of control. Next, Daniel sat on Andy's lap. Then I, of course, was obliged to sit on Daniel's lap. We made such a long chain that I literally reached the other side of the train car. It was just utterly hilarious. Our drummer, Leo, took a photo of us all sitting on each other's laps. It's taken me awhile to get ahold of this desirable photo, but here it is. Too bad it's a bit blurry.