Introduction The day of the Los Angeles stop of the Benten Label US tour, the girls of Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re and Titan Go Kings took a break with me for lunch, shopping, and interviews back at the hotel. Look for the accompanying Titan interview next week. back to features		Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re Hana: All right, please state your name and position. Yayoi: Yayoi, bass. Mari: Mari, guitar and vocals. Mizue: Mizue, drums. Hana: What was your first interest in music? Yayoi: Hmm... at age 5 I started learning piano, that was first. Later, as a college freshman, I joined a college [music] club and started bass. Mari: Since I was about 3, I've loved singing songs. So I've been singing all sort of songs since I was little, and I've wanted to be a singer. I had a guitar in middle school, but quit playing it pretty quickly. Then I joined the college club and wanted to write my own songs, and then wanted to play guitar. But I've always been singing. Mizue: I also started playing piano at 4, and continued to. In elementary school, I started listening to CDs every night. I sang Japanese singers' songs all the time. When we got into college we started the band, and now I'm a drummer. Hana: When and why did you start playing your current instruments? Yayoi: In the club, well, before I even got into college I thought I'd been in a band once I [got into college]. I loved deep bass notes, so I wanted to play bass. So I decided to do so when I got into college. Mari: Not even a year after we started Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re, I got my current Jaguar. Until then I'd been using a cheap guitar. It was like 20 or 30,000 yen. But when we were together we were itching to make music, so I bought the most expensive one I wanted to. 169,800 yen. Everyone: (laughs loudly) Titan Go-Kings: It must be American. Mari: And when? Ah, why I wanted to play guitar. I said it before, but it was because I wanted to play and be able to make my own songs. Because I wanted to be able to write my own songs. Mizue: In middle school and high school I was in the suisouraku-bu, do you know what that is? A brass band. So, I did percussion and was always hitting the big drums and such. Then, when I got into college, really I wanted to be a vocalist. But there were so many other talented ones, and I thought it would be pointless, so I decided to drum. Yeah. I decided to be a drummer. Hana: How did Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re come to be signed to Benten? Yayoi: We wanted to release a CD (laugh) We sent in a demo. Hana: How did you know about Benten? Mari: Benten Label has so many girl bands, and it's famous among indie labels. It doesn't just care about technical skill, there are so many good and bad people; even if they're poor musicians, the bands have flavor. Because of that, even though Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re wasn't fully matured, we thought Benten might release a CD for us. Well, before then we did a number of auditions, and the people at Toshiba EMI contacted us. They told us Benten Label would be interested, and introduced us. That was how we first met Audrey Kimura. Hana: The three of you write your songs together. What is your songwriting process like? Yayoi: It's kind of different for every song, for example... Mari: What song do you like, Hana? (laugh) I'm asking the interviewer a question! Hana: All of them but (laugh) maybe Ebihara Shinji in particular. Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re: Ebihara Shinji. Yayoi: Ah, Ebihara Shinji, the three of us were doing street lives, doing shows in front of train stations and such. When was this? Mari: About two years ago. Yayoi: Yeah, we all drove together in a car. Mari: Yeah. That time, it was at Kashiwa Station in Chiba, which is famous for street lives. It was our first street live, but there was thunder and a ton of rain so we didn't have any customers. There was one homeless man, though, and he was our only customer. That man was Ebihara Shinji. Yayoi: And on the way home in the car... Mari: On the way home in the car, after we heard his story, we decided to make a song about him. Mizue: Yeah. And we decided to use his name, Ebihara Shinji for the title. Mari: We collected stories about him. Hana: But how do you come up with the melody? Mizue: Well, we have a working session, first of all, and [comment on things we do] like "that phrase was cool" and stuff. Or, "that has a nice beat". We put that all together, and it gradually flows together into a song. When we have it together, Mari puts together polished lyrics, and yeah. It becomes a song. Mari: But I don't think that's an interesting example of how Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re does things, agreed? How about CAMABOCO? CAMABOCO is like, C, A... wait, that's (writes) C A M A B O C O, written like that, right? Really those are guitar chords. C, A... do, la, la, ti, la, do, la. Oh, see [M], it's the fret. M is maru [circle], so it's 0, open. Um, C... (plays CAMABOCO riff) O, C, O is how we made it. Kamaboko was was too boring, so we decided to make the song CAMABOCO. Yayoi: Yeah, it's kamaboko, but we wanted to make it into chords. Mari: This was how we made the riff. Oh, and in the rests in between we said names of things in oden. Yayoi: Do you know what oden is? Mari: Do you know oden? The food with chikuwa and hanpen in it and stuff. Hana: The only reason I know so many of the names is CAMABOCO. Everyone: (laugh) Mari: Other parts were like... the chorus is G, A (plays) GANMODOKIN. I guess we skipped some of the letters. Then there's SATSUMAAGE. Sa is 3[rd fret], tsu is 2, ma is 0, a is A and ge is G. And that's how we made it. Hana: Thank you very much! Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re: Thank you. - 2005.03.30 Hana
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