Introduction With the following flights of fancy, Icon Girl Pistols intrigued me and fanned me from the first listen. Icon Girl Pistols formed in March 2008, when retired porn star Shinnosuke Shirakura (gt/pf/vo) discovered Ken Fukuda (dr) tapping chopsticks on tin cans in the alleyways of Tokyo. They spent their time jamming and writing... Interesting. ...when Shinnosuke Shirakura (vo/gt/pf) and Ken Fukuda (dr) began jamming together in the studio where they should have been working. Soon the pair had a significant collection of songs that they were performing live - either as a two-piece or with support from their invisible friends... What!? What I do know; Icon Girl Pistols delivered more than just a witty read. This Tokyo based foursome takes Rock and roll, and adds their own brand of indie edge that is unmistakable and refreshing. Icon Girl Pistols are frontman Shinnosuke Shirakura, drummer Ken Fukuda, bassist Christopher O'Reilly, and guitarist Takashi Hasegawa. Recently, I talked to Shinnosuke Shirakura and Christopher O'Reilly about the band's origins and Icon Girl Pistols' new album New Currency. back to features		Icon Girl Pistols Please introduce yourself and what instruments and brands of instruments do you play? Shinnosuke Shirakura: My name is Shinnosuke and I sing and play guitar in Icon Girl Pistols, a Rock and roll 4-piece based in Tokyo. I play an Epiphone Casino. Christopher O'Reilly: I'm Christopher, and I use a battered old Ibanez bass. The other members of the band are Takashi, who plays a telecaster, and Ken, who pounds and breaks whatever sticks he can get his hands on. How old were you when you picked up your first instrument? Under what circumstances? Shinnosuke: I started playing music when I was 3 or 4 when my parents made me learn piano, but it was at about 14 that I started writing my own songs. I realized then that music was something I was destined to do for the rest of my life. Could you tell me a little history of how Icon Girl Pistols was formed? Christopher: Icon Girl Pistols began in March 2008 in Sugamo prison where S and K worked as janitors. S was always playing air guitar with the mop, and K was always tapping buckets with pencils, so they knew they shared a dream to be rock stars. One night they met C, who was in the slammer for being a dirty foreigner with no visa. Upon hearing that C played bass, S and K helped him escape on condition that they formed a band once he was out. Meanwhile, T, a young hotshot cop from the academy, had just got back from FBI training in Washington D.C. Called in by the Japanese government to investigate C's escape, a midnight pursuit led him to the nightclub where the three scoundrels were playing. He attempted to arrest them all, but upon hearing the music he just couldn't fight the groove and ended up grabbing a guitar and joining in. Shinnosuke: Yeah, it was something like that. Where did the name "Icon Girl Pistols" come from? Shinnosuke: I wrote a song a few years ago called "Icon Girl Pistols" and the name came to mind again when I was thinking of a name for this band. I think everyone has been shot in the heart by an icon girl at some point. Then there are some people who shoot their icons. It's a strange world. Icon Girl Pistols' biography changes from site to site, who is the genius behind these brilliant pieces of comedic farce? And tell me what inspired them? Christopher: There's nothing new about exaggerating on your CV. Some of the early Bob Dylan interviews are superbly filled with complete rubbish. The truth is just a lot less interesting. How would you describe Icon Girl Pistols' sound? Shinnosuke: Free, passionate and honest. Christopher: It's cool and groovy. You don't need to understand the language to dig it. Your 1st album New Currency is out. What are listeners going to hear and what was the concept behind the album? Shinnosuke: The concept behind "New Currency" is of changing ideas of value; the idea that everything we believe in today could come crashing down tomorrow. It is so easy for things to take a sudden turn and for everything we value to become worthless. I guess we are trying to make music with a value of its own; a new type of currency. The lyrics of all the songs are open to various interpretations, but Chris utilized the theme of the album more explicitly in his lyric to "Black Tuesday", the only English song on the record. It was the last song we wrote and sums up the album quite well; we are all willing to sell ourselves out for a paycheck, and while we might think we are in control, money ends up controlling us. Christopher: Before writing that song I had translated most of Shinnosuke's lyrics and loved lines like; "Everything is locked up in the hole in the coin." Recent years have been filled with talk of recession and the credit crunch etc., and it coincided that we were releasing the album on the 80th anniversary of the stock market crash. You never know when the shit might hit the fan again. We initially considered using "Black Tuesday" as the album title, but we worried that putting ‘black' in the title of our debut album might make people mistake us for a metal band. Remembering back to your first time in front of a live audience, what comes to mind? Shinnosuke: The same thing that comes to mind every time I step on stage. Every time is like my first gig. I think about giving the audience something they have not experienced before, and wonder whether our music will remain in their memory. Certainly I get nervous thinking like that, but in a good way. It keeps it exciting. What is your favorite Icon Girl Pistols song to perform live? Why? Shinnosuke: I enjoy playing all of the songs, but at the moment I like "America." Why? Because: "When I woke up this morning, America was lying on my blanket." It is a very typical Icon Girl Pistols song – simple, free, a little old-fashioned and very danceable. Christopher: I think we all also really enjoy playing ‘Elephant's Tail'; the energy of everyone when we play that song is something special. It usually finishes with Ken taking his clothes off and Takashi throwing his guitar somewhere. Let's hear a little about your tastes not related to music - Could you name some of your favorite books or movies? Christopher: I have been really enjoying a lot of George Orwell recently; his essays and earlier novels. My favorite book of all time though might have to be Kerouac's "On the Road", just because I have read it so many times and it still fills me with a desire for life and madness. As for Japanese writers, I'm currently writing my Master's thesis about Shimao Toshio – a survivor of the kamikaze boat squadrons during the war. Intense reading, but absolutely brilliant. I haven't seen a good film for a very long time though. I lament all this 3-D because people forget that you actually do need a plot to begin with. What has been your Icon Girl Pistols biggest triumph? Icon Girl Pistols greatest challenge? Shinnosuke: Our greatest triumph has been working with so many amazing artists – Marina Nakagawa who shot our music videos, Hana Sekitori who duetted with us on our newest single, Yorke. and Greq who respectively designed our posters and t-shirts, Kite Okachimachi and Naotaro Moriyama who appeared at our release show… and all the other great people we have had the chance to work with. Our challenge for the future is to appear at the biggest music events in Japan such as Fuji Rock. But first of all we want to get as many people as possible downloading our monthly free singles. Do you have any upcoming/current events/releases you want to promote? Christopher: This year we are releasing a new single every month absolutely free for download from our website www.icongirlpistols.com. After releasing "New Currency" we still had a lot of songs left over, so we decided to make them available for free over the course of 2010. Shinnosuke is an extremely prolific songwriter, so we are now starting to put aside songs for the next record whilst also recording and releasing new tracks every month. So please download them and have a listen. We are especially pleased with our recent collaboration with Hana Sekitori who is a fantastic young singer who is going to be huge one day. Live, we are playing at Shimokitazawa Garden on August 10th and we have pretty regular shows at Barnobara and Gamuso. Is there anything you would like to add, or say to fans? Shinnosuke: Please come and see us live! Let's party and dream together! Oh yeah! Christopher: Eat your greens and stay in school. Interview from 2010.08.01. Keikaku.net staff would like to thank Icon Girl Pistols's for their participation in this interview. Icon Girl Pistols @ youtube - Homepage - MySpace - Facebook - Denise
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