Lately, thanks to the influence of some talented friends, I’ve been thinking about getting a real microphone and recording some songs. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a singer. I can’t sing, although I can usually hit notes at the right pitch. I’ve just never thought about singing the way I thought about drawing. That is, at some point in my life I considered myself an aspiring artist, and I thought I might have some talent for drawing. I never had that illusion about singing.
But in looking back on what could be fueling this new desire to record, I realized that I had recorded a song in the past…the English version of “Kamase! Tanegashiman.” Tanegashiman is a brigade of local heroes/mascots of Tanegashima, a tiny island in Japan in Kagoshima prefecture. Digging back through my memory, which is difficult now that I’m dying of mortification, I also recorded the song for the antagonist of Tanegashiman, Jasurou. (You will, of course, never find copies of such things on this site. Instead you can go to this silly video of Tanegashiman appearing on SMAP’s TV show!)
I remember, at that time, thinking that recording equipment was very cool, and that in another lifetime I would have thought about being in a band. It was also around the time that I first went to karaoke the Japanese way, in Japan. That is, in a booth with drinks and usually prim and proper people standing on tables, taking off shirts and swinging neckties in the air! (The last time I went to karaoke with Japanese neurosurgeons, this activity involved jumping on chairs…)
All that aside, I realized that this is all because I just love music. I have no illusions that I’ll interpret my favorite songs in a new way that anyone would admire. I just want to celebrate how much I like a song, and that’s why I would want to sing karaoke or produce an inferior recording. And isn’t that the reason for most people, what with all the “utatte mita” (“tried to sing”) videos up on YouTube these days?
// j.
Tableau Blanc 