Can't Get It Out of My Dang Skeptical Head
I would never have imagined that I'd hear something so kakkoi from such a gathering of young talents whose resumes speak volumes of their statuses chiefly as idols, actors, and performers.
But I have to admit that I was rather quite skeptical about this whole Horikoshi D Band fronted by a gal named "Chielu" or Cindy Rachel Hana. I've exhausted the net (or rather, I was more exhausted by all the redundant and unrelated stuff) about info regarding their (only) song unofficially released so far over at this myspace page. The song is entitled つながる想い or "Tsunagaru Omoi" - quite a nice catchy song too. I think most of you already know that this band has quite a stellar composition even for high schoolers whose schedules would put my current work schedule to shame - especially with the males members. Chielu on vocals, Asami Tanaka on backing vocals, Shougo Sakamoto and Hayato Ogawa on guitars, Jingi Irie on acoustic guitar, Ryunosuke Kamiki on bass and not surprisingly, a Johnny's made it into the line-up with Yuto Nakajima rounding out the band on drums. I was KYA-ing when I first heard the song over at Youtube which had a rather amusing and kawaii vid clip of it to boot. Thank AyukiTheta by the way for her spreading this song to the rest of the HSJ fandom.
So why exactly was I skeptical that maybe it wasn't really the people listed above (save for Chielu) performing the song?
Well, for starters, I used to play in a band back way back in my high school and college days and I have to admit that the instrumentation of this song is quite elaborate from the complementing guitar riffs to the upbeat drum rolls. The guitarists must be really quite talented because I seem to recall reading somewhere that both boys have been quite busy performing on stage musicals, dramas and even in kabuki (in Hayato's case) in the last few years. Wow, so where did they find the time to work out the riffs and arrangements for this song alone? You can barely here the acoustic guitar in that song but the bass, since I used to be a bassist myself, really rocked and had the earmarks of a relatively-experienced bass player. Kamiki must be quite talented for him to become that good of a bass player despite all the acting and voice-acting he has been doing for close to a decade now. Another thing would be the date of release of the song on Chielu's myspace page: December 7, 2008. Yuto must have been practicing the drums for quite some time now if he did indeed pull off the drumming you hear in that song. Yuto and Hey! Say! JUMP had just debuted barely a year before that date and Yuto had also just started playing the drums in their concerts. Well, the song might not be an official release but I think Johnny's management has stringent rules for artist collaborations especially if the collaborators come from different agencies. The vocals sounded just average to me as it sounded really quite familiar (although as of this writing, I still cannot pin down which solo artist or frontwoman has a similar voice with "Chielu"). So the whole point of this is exercise is: I still can't quite believe that the band's members (except for Chielu) actually took part and recorded the song in question.
So my apologies if I'm whining and ranting right now because information and verification hasn't been really quite forthcoming. Feel free to correct me or come forward with proof that the band members listed above really took part in the recording of this promising song. I'm willing to give the members of 'Horikoshi D Band' a benefit of the doubt. It'd really make my day if someone can verify if it's really, REALLY them playing in that song. The blog and the myspace pages aren't really sufficient enough but for what it's worth "Tsunagaru Omoi" is a great song and deserves an official release. It's quite upbeat and one of the few songs that I choose to put on endless replay in my media players. Make no mistake, I'd be more than happy to purchase it if it gets a CD single release in the future - with or without Johnny's approval. d(>_<)b Hehehe.
On a side note, I'm quite happy with Hey! Say! JUMP's second performance of "OVER" on Music Station yesterday for two reasons: 1) Chinen did away with that lateral twist and did a one-handed backflip instead - I was really quite concerned that he'd get injured every time he performed it so I'm glad that he chose something that he's quite comfortable doing and 2) all of them sung better compared to their first foray in performing "OVER" a few weeks back on the same show. I kind of found it funny and a bit annoying that halfway to ending the song, all these little Juniors came out to perform alongside HSJ. I also like some of their hairstyles - Chinen's, Yabu's, Yamada's, Hikaru's and Keito's particularly. Chinen's makes him look more mature and yet reminds us a bit of his younger years if you stare at it long enough. Yabu's easily complements Yamada's and vice-versa since it's like looking at two singing siblings every time they get center stage in one part of "OVER". Hikaru's reminds me of his role in "Orthros no Inu" - he was badass back then but he's so kakkoi this time with his current style and color. It looked liked a cookies-and-cream ensemble surrounding ten cherries at the middle. Let's face it: "OVER" is not really something you'd choose to have backup dancers in the mix. Ten, after all, is already quite big a number for a boy band. And I'm already quite happy with each and everyone of them.
