Music

BACKGROUND

The roots of the band go back to 2003 when I arrived in my new neighbourhood of Kokubunji in Western Tokyo. Finding a bar called Rubber Soul, I wandered in for a drink and met the owner Cheryo for the first time. Sharing many similar tastes in music, we hit it off straight away despite language limits. When I was putting the 'Peace Not War Japan' CD together, I asked him for a track and got 'Hallelujah Jambo' by Cheryo & The Berovolas for the project.

The following year we decided to put our own band together. Brother Chisato joined on drums and a bass player was pulled in from the many young musicians that played at Rubber Soul, later to be replaced by Jun. We spent a couple of fun years playing our favourite stormers and standards from rock's back pages to local audiences. By 2006, we'd begun to start writing our own material.

OUTPUT

After a year of crafting the songs, we released our first album in December 2007. 'Best Before End' draws musical inspiration from The Beatles, The Who and The Clash amongst others, and covers expatriation, global warming and world peace amongst its riffs and choruses. We also made a video with a renowned J-Pop director for 'Endgame', the anthem that closes the collection and which can be found lower down this page. 

In 2008, we played with South Africa's Cassette who'd performed at Nelson Mandela's 46664 show and I returned to the UK. That summer, the band played our first dates outside of Japan with a short British tour, including dates in Brighton and London. The last performance was a 2010 reunion show at Rubber Soul.

FUTURE

There is plenty more archival video footage online via Globalism Films. The next album is slowly being written as a distance collaborative effort. We hope to have more occasional live events too, but there are no current plans for this.

The band can be contacted at shelflifemusic[at]gmail.com