Friday, November 21, 2014

All Alone With You

I've been watching this Japanese anime called Psycho-Pass lately. I ended up not only liking the anime. But also loving the ending theme songs of the series. Both ending theme songs are from an artist called Egoist. I remember this artist from their theme song in another anime called Guilty Crown.

As always when my head is in a dark place, music always somehow carries me through. So I will share one of the two ending theme songs that really hit me. I found and downloaded most of the band's music just a while ago. I keep listening to this particular song over and over for some reason. Call me a hopeless romantic, or someone who needs to take his skirt off and end this sap fest. But this is me.

I can enjoy music unconventionally. I can enjoy how a song sounds and appreciate the lyrical meaning behind the song even if I don't understand the language it's in. Here's the lyric video with English subtitles from the anime, as well as the Egoist music video of the entire song. I've put both the English translation and original Japanese lyrics below the video. So you can read along while listening to the song. The English translation is a tad crude. But I got the gist of what the song is trying to say.







All Alone With You (English Translation)
Vocals: EGOIST
Lyrics: Ryo
Composition: Ryo
Arrangement: Ryo

There’s no way
that I can love someone
But I want someone to love me
Even if yesterday stayed unchanged forever
We couldn’t go anywhere
You and me

Dear God, where did you go? Hey
But there’s no answer; it’s always like this
Are you still here?

You’ll never walk alone
I’ll go with you
Bearing
any sin you’ve got
I’ll walk
down the uncharted path
All alone with you

Come over here
Touch me and kiss me
You may
mess me up even more, okay?
If everyone is going to die
and be forgotten someday
Then I’ll only believe in what’s certain now

Dear God, those who are pretentious say
that people are strong
But that’s a lie
Do you agree?

I will stay with you
Hug me
with your hands
and with all your heart
Don’t be scared
I’m all better now

Even if your hands
ended up getting dirtied
I’d still want you
to love me

You’ll never walk alone
I’ll go with you
Bearing
any sin you’ve got
I’ll walk
down the uncharted path
with you

I will stay with you
Hug me
with your hands
and with all your heart
Because I desire
any and everything that you have
All alone with you


All Alone With You (Japanese)
Vocals: EGOIST

Dareka o aisuru koto nante
Dekiru wake naku tte
Dakedo dareka ni aisaretakute
Kawaranai kinou ga zutto tsuzuita to shite mo
Doko ni mo ike ya shinain da
Watashi to kimi

Kami-sama   doko e itte shimatta no   nee
Henji wa nakute   itsu datte sou da yo
Are you still here?

You’ll never walk alone
Anata to yuku
Donna tsumi mo
Seotte ageru
Michi naki michi o
Aruiteku no
Anata to futari de

Kocchi ni kite
Watashi ni furete   kisu o shite
Motto mechakucha ni
Shitatte iin da yo?
Itsuka dare mo ga shinjatte
Wasurerareteku nara
Ima tashika na mono dake o shinjiru wa

Kami-sama   kidori no hito ga iu no
Nee   hito wa tsuyoi tte
Sonna no uso da yo
Do you agree?

I will stay with you
Anata no te de
Dakishimete yo
Omoikkiri
Kowagaranaide
Mou daijoubu   watashi nara

Sono te ga yogorete
Shimatta to shite mo
Aishite hoshii
Watashi no koto

You’ll never walk alone
Anata to yuku
Donna tsumi mo
Seotte ageru
Michi naki michi o
Aruiteku no
Anata to

I will stay with you
Anata no te de
Dakishimete yo
Omoikkiri
Nozomenai mono wa
Nani mo nai kara
Anata to futari de



END OF LINE...

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Jack Versus the Crab Album Launch



Long overdue blog post about one of my bands' album launches. I was originally going to blog about SunDownMuse's album launch. But remembered that I haven't casted into the proverbial stone any details about Jack Versus the Crab's album launch last year. So I better do it now, before it complete escapes my memory into the blur of all the gigs since last year.

Our album launch was held in a place called Purgatory. The place actually was called Peligro eons ago. And was resurrected as Purgatory. The place is much bigger than when it opened as Peligro back in the day. When we scoped the place out a few weeks back, I was actually wondering how we can manage to fill up the place come our album launch.


Our call time as decreed by our fearless band leader, Waxie, was 4:00PM on the day of the launch. I thought that was way too early. But Waxie had all these elaborate plans for the launch. So who am I to question his schedule choices.

When I got there, there were a few band members already there. We checked out all the gear onstage. And ran a few rather painful sound checks. There was bad feedback coming from the mics for some reason. Perhaps it was the placement of the speakers or perhaps the monitors themselves. We eventually got it sorted out. But it meant that some mics had to be lowered in volume. And thus the entire band had to tone down a little. I realized then that a 4:00PM call time to sound check was definitely a good idea.

I don't own any of the pictures that I will embed on this post henceforth.

Waxie had us his sister and Dad take photos of us around the venue. Impromptu photoshoot it seems. They got us to go to this or that corner of the venue making weird poses and stuff. I was just glad that I didn't have to wear make-up (I horridly had to wear make-up for a photoshoot when Jack Daniel's was still sponsoring the band. Que horror.)


After all that, we went out to eat dinner and reconvened in the small part of Purgatory that seemed to be the VIP area. As expected with this band, we can't help but start drinking when we hang out together. So as early as 7:00PM. The beers started coming. Take note, the launch itself starts at 9:00PM. Typical Filipino behavior usually means people won't start coming in until around 10:00PM onwards. So we were drinking straight until people started arriving.

Waxie apparently arranged for press to interview us. So they all gathered around us in the VIP area, asking us questions about the band's backstory, from the meaning behind the band name to musical influences and experience of each of the members. A few of press people were pleasantly surprised to find out that our drummer is Fritz Barth (Dr. Stix). One of them even came out and asked Fritz directly, "You mean Dr. Stix of Spy and Pinikpikan?" When Fritz said yes to the question, all of the press people immediately wrote it down in their notes. That was amusing.