"Japan Invasion" this September...

I don't know how many people actually read this, but a couple of you know I play bass in a band called The Kobanes. The other day, Mark, Eddie and myself went to a travel agent and bought some plane tickets to Tokyo for September 18. Nonstop flight from O'Hare and everything. We were given the option to stop in Texas for $62 less but having to get your stuff, go through customs and then re-do all that in two hours all while risking the safety of our guitars seemed a little much. Anyways, a nice sum of money's worth later, we're going to Japan to play six shows in about a week and a half.

We're going to arrive September 19 in the afternoon sometime and stay the night in Tokyo. On the 20th, we're playing some festival in Tokyo with over 30 bands, which is gonna be rad. Here's the itinerary the dude from the label sent me:

9/19(Sat.) Arriving Tokyo Airport

9/20(Sun.) Tokyo-Akihabara (Club Goodman)
Punk Rock Fest with over 30 bands!!

9/21(Mon.) Nagoya (Memory Pops)
w/Sense Of Identity, The Because, Navigations, Navel

9/22(Tue.) Okayama (Pepperland)
w/What's What, The Urchin, The Because, Origin Of M

9/23(Wed.) Hiroshima (Border)
w/So-Cho Pistons, The Urchin, Residents, Dug Out, Wrong Way, Jailbird

9/24(Thur.) Off - Sightseeing Hiroshima/Moving Tokyo

9/25(Fri.) Tokyo-Shinjuku (Nine Spices)
w/So-Cho Pistons, See Her Tonite, Disgusteens, Zero Fast

9/26(Sat) Tokyo-Musashisakai (Statto)
w/So-Cho Pistons, Headbangers, Idaho Rainys, The Cumings, Havanas

9/27(Sun.) ????

9/28(Mon.) Leaving Tokyo Airport

I have a Japanese neighbor who keeps asking me for a CD and an itinerary and stuff and I keep hesitating to give it to her because a lot of the lyrics are pretty offensive but she seems rad enough. She said she used to go to Anthrax shows so that's cool. Anyways, that's the Japan tour part. Now I'm going to talk about the new album actually called "Japan Invasion."

It's gonna be 11 or 12 songs. Five of them are up on the MySpace player now. This is the artwork: It's in the works but that's it more or less.



Kobanes Theme
Please Don't
You Are The One
Ice Scream (Instru-mental)
Population: One
I'm Not Right
Nobody (Chixdiggit! cover)
I Can't
Fan Mail (The Dickies cover)
Me Vs. Myself
A new fast Queers-style song

A lot of those aren't even named yet and I might be missing a song in there but yeah that's pretty much what the album is going to look like (and not in that order). Fixing A Hole Records and Dumb! Records I think are going to do the same thing they did with the first album and co-release it. Both labels are out of Japan and fucking rock. Hopefully this album goes over well. I'd like to send out a bunch for review to Maximum Rock n' Roll and other mediums of the sort. I'll share my review here and talk about the recording process and all that fun stuff when the time comes but for now, I have to learn that new fast Queers-style song and it would be nice to write another one. Also, Knowhere Records expressed interest in putting out a Kobanes 7'' so we might do two or three songs there. One of which will be a Sheckies cover of "Then She Got Married." Mark wants to do that one really bad. Also I'm going to learn "She's The One" by The Ramones...we'll probably play that in Japan and at shows. They used to play it before I joined the band but that is actually one of my favorite Ramones songs so yeah, that's about it for now. Expect a new CD in about a month or so and if we get lucky maybe a nice label will put it out on vinyl! Oooohhhhhhh.