#the greatest generations 10th anniversary tour
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cameoutstruggling93 · 1 year ago
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Theres no devil on my shoulder, he's got a rocking chair on my front porch, but I won't let him in. No I won't let him in.
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blast0rama · 2 years ago
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Daft Punk – “Prime (2012 Unfinished)”
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Last night at Midnight, many excited fans finally got a hold of something they’ve wanted for a very long time.
I, of course, am talking about The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the long-awaited sequel to Breath of the Wild, the beloved Switch installment of the long running franchise. That said, I couldn’t join them last night1.
Instead, I found myself hitting play on another long-awaited release, last night’s drop of the 10th Anniversary edition of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories.
Besides being gobsmacked that it’s been 10 years since the release of what would — unbeknownst to us — become Daft Punk’s last album, I immediately wanted to jump into the second “disc”2, filled with different odds-and-ends from the album’s sessions.
When Random Access Memories dropped a decade ago, the response was mixed, to say the least. Daft Punk was coming off of the stunning career one-two punch of their score to Tron: Legacy, an amazing step-up in profile and difficulty for the French dance music duo, and their Alive: 2007 tour and album, an amazing, enthralling mix of literally their entire career to this point. A mashup of literally all their work to this point, Alive: 2007 served as a celebration of their success, recontextualizing songs from Homework, Discovery and Human After All into one massive celebration of music, grooves and a career well spent. They dug deep into the music they made and generated a new appreciation of it all.
When the massive marketing campaign for Random Access Memories hit, people were expecting something the next Discovery, but instead, they got something quirkier. Sure, Daft Punk received the greatest charting single of their career in “Get Lucky”, but after decades of sample fueled dance hits, the masked robots of Thomas and Guy-Man chose to look back to the records that made them, and put together a true 70’s disco record. In the 2010s.
This was extremely polarizing. Though the appreciation of the record has grown over the years, the hardcore Daft Punk fan base didn’t know what to do with the album placed before them.
And that’s part of what I found so intriguing with this 10 year release. Sure, you’d be getting the expected international release B-Sides (“Horizon”), but you’d also be getting a look at the duo’s creative process, with a number of demos and unspoken of lost tracks. Even the bitter-sweet alternate version of “Touch” which soundtracked their 2021 farewell video.
But there was one track that piqued my interest.
“Prime (2012 Unfinished).”
I’d heard “Horizon” previously, and knew there was a lost Julian Casablancas song (“Infinity Repeating”), but what was this?
In turn, at about midnight last night, that was the first track I hit play on.
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I played it once. I played it twice. I played it three times.
Turns out, for a fan of Daft Punk, this track is almost like a Rosetta Stone.
It’s the inflection point from the Tron: Legacy score into the Random Access Memories-era.
The groove is there, but so are the real instruments. The strings, the hypnotic vibes, you lose yourself in it. And yet, you’re teased by what could’ve been. It says it in the title — 2012 Unfinished — this was a song they weren’t able to figure out. It’s a puzzle minus a key piece.
Yet, at the same time, it’s incredible. It’s funny how a creative never sees the full positives of their work. They see the poorly drawn lines, the grammatical errors, the hook that didn’t hit the heights they wanted. “Prime”, even in this form, snakes its way into your brain, and won’t let you go.
I was immediately reminded of another of my favorite musical acts, The Appleseed Cast, who in 2012 as a creative project, opened the doors to their demos in process. Those have been long since archived, but one track lived on on a compilation album. The song later became “North Star Ordination” on Illumination Ritual, but in hearing the demo, found here, there’s a similarity to “Prime”. It’s a work trying to find itself. All the pieces may not be there, but you’re enthralled. And you wonder what could be.
It’s been two years since Daft Punk called it quits. One half of the duo, Thomas Bangalter, did press recently surrounding his original ballet(!), speaking to the BBC.
In it he said, about their robot-era:
As much as I love this character, the last thing I would want to be, in the world we live in, in 2023, is a robot.
Is it any wonder then, that today, 10 years after the release of Random Access Memories, with “Prime”, we’re getting a look at Daft Punk at their most human. Creating something real and true, and wondering what could have been.
Random Access Memories (10th Anniversary Edition is streaming now.
I promised my wife, who is out of town, that I’d wait until she got back to start the game. She likes watching me play through different games. It’s like real-life Twitch, I guess?
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Weird to call it that, given, you know, streaming.
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hotarutranslations · 3 years ago
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Okinawa!!
Morning Musume '22 CONCERT TOUR ~Never Been Better!~
The last of the hall performances, we finished 2 performances in Okinawa
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Everyone supporting us,
Really, really, thank you very much
I loveee youu--- 😭❤️
We received a lot of applause, it was really passionate applause, the applause wouldn't stop,
I felt that, it was applause with various feelings packed in
I also felt this from talking about it, the fans that couldn't come to the venue, its like I could hear your applause
really
Therefore I was even happier
Aah, it was really warm......
For us, I'm happy to convey, the feeling of, the 13 of us are here!! 🍀
With the feeling of tanoshinjou! and being entrusted with Panda-san Power!
We did our best at the Okinawa performance
Next time, I'll take a picture with the 13 of us 🍀
I had been resting, so I was fulll of feelings I had been holding......
Everyone, Morning Musume as a group, these members, supporting everyone, in this space, we make this together with the team of staff, We're here thanks to you...... I really love everyone
My greatest respects!
The end of the halls, huh......
Its Chii-chan's last time standing a hall It feels mystery as it doesn't really feel like it
I love her! Chii!
The next time everyone will stand on stage, will be June 20th at Nippon Budokan
Fully, fully, fully, thank you very much for your support again!
Yeah! see you then!
June 20th Nippon Budokan Performance 🔥
⚪ Live Viewing  ⚪
  ⚪ Live Broadcast ⚪
Kaibutsu / YOASOBI Dance Thank you for watching it a lot 😳🔥
🕺Hello Pro Dance Academy🕺 🕺Amazon prime Video🕺  May 31st (Tue) 7:57PM~ 🟠 Utacon 🟠  This will be a live broadcast, look forward🟠 June 1st (Wed) 12:04AM~ 🔵Da-iCE music Lab 🔵 Dancing and singing to, 🕺  LOVE Machine and Renai Revolution 21 with everyone in Da-iCE-san Look forward to it 🔵 Every Wednesday, Tokyo sports note Series updates 🔵 #66 Its A Once In A Lifetime Thing, So Be Conscientious About It 🔵
A place to talk in depth
6/8 release 🟠Chu Chu Chu Bokura no Mirai/Dai Jinsei Never Been Better!🟠 Dai Jinsei Never Been Better! Chu Chu Chu Bokura no Mirai I WISH!
Thank you!   September 19th, We'll be performing 🟡Inazuma Rock Fest 2022🟡  🟢Morning Musume 9th, 10th Generation 10th Anniversary BOOK🟢
Because I was in Okinawa,
Kachaashi--!
I tried to imitate it during the performance, its really difficult to dance to that 😕 lol
I wonder if those from Okinawa can do the dance naturally~?
see you ayumin <3
https://ameblo.jp/morningmusume-10ki/entry-12745259839.html
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dailytomlinson · 4 years ago
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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”
The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?
“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”
“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.
July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.
It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.
Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”
In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.
“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”
“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk
To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.
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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”
One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.
“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.
“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”
Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.
“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”
Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.
Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”
Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.
At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”
“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”
At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”
Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.
“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”
Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.
Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.
“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”
Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.
But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”
“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”
That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”
For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”
“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”
Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.
“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”
Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.
“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.
“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”
“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.
“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”
Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.
“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”
A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”
Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.
But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.
“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”
After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”
In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.
“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says
There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”
But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.
“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”
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stylesnews · 4 years ago
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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”
The second takes place a few years later. Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words…” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, what if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?
“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, what if [the next line was] ‘More than a feeling’? Well, that would actually be tight!”
“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live show staple. It’s a mid-tempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock and roll bands of the 21st century.
July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was re-defining the contours of fandom.
It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.
Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of boy band history. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”
In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted only did it once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.
“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatles-esque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, pop-y guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”
“The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” says Carl Falk
To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘N Sync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars.
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The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”
One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.
“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.
“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”
Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.
“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”
Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.
Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”
Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.
At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”
“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”
At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”
Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.
“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”
Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.
Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.
“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”
Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible.
But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”
“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”
That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of ���Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”
For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”
“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”
Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.
“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.”
Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.
“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.
“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”
“A lot of the songs were double,” Bunetta says, “like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.
“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”
Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.
“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”
A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”
Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.
But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.
“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”
After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”
In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.
“Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing,” Kotecha says
There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”
But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.
“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”
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A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.”
The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England — this one in Manchester — where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. Liam Payne was there, too. At one point, Payne got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody. They taped it immediately. Most of it was mumbled — a temporary placeholder — but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show — Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where — Payne asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?”
“Songs in general, you’re just sort of waiting for an idea to bonk you on the head,” Ryan says from a Los Angeles studio, with Bunetta. “And if you’re sort of winking at it, laughing at it — we were probably joking, ‘What if [the next line was] “More than a feeling”? Well, that would actually be tight!’”
“Better Than Words,” closed One Direction’s third album, Midnight Memories. It was never a single, but became a fan-favorite live-show staple. It’s a midtempo headbanger that captures the essence of what One Direction is, and always was: One of the great rock & roll bands of the 21st century.
July 23rd marks One Direction’s 10th anniversary, the day Simon Cowell told Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson that they would progress on The X Factor as a group. Between that date and their last live performance (so far, one can hope) on December 31st, 2015, they released five albums, toured the world four times — twice playing stadiums — and left a trove of Top 10 hits for a devoted global fan base that came to life at the moment social media was redefining the contours of fandom. 
It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop — rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé.
Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.”
In 2010, Kotecha remembers, “everybody was doing this sort of Rihanna dance pop.” But that just wasn’t a sound One Direction could pull off (the Wanted did it only once); and famously, they didn’t even dance. Instead, the reference points for 1D went all the way back to the source of contemporary boy bands.
“Me and Simon would talk about how [One Direction] was Beatlesque, Monkees-esque,” Kotecha continues. “They had such big personalities. I felt like a kid again when I was around them. And I felt like the only music you could really do that with is fun, poppy guitar songs. It would come out of left field and become something owned by the fans.”
To craft that sound on 1D’s first two albums, Up All Night and Take Me Home, Kotecha worked mostly with Swedish songwriters-producers Carl Falk and Rami Yacoub. They’d all studied at the Max Martin/Cheiron Studios school of pop craftsmanship, and Falk says they were confident they could crack the boy-band code once more with songs that recalled BSB and ‘NSync, but replaced the dated synths and pianos with guitars. 
The greatest thing popular music can do is make someone else think, “I can do that,” and One Direction’s music was designed with that intent. “The guitar riff had to be so simple that my friend’s 15-year-old daughter could play it and put a cover to YouTube,” Falk says. “If you listen to ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ or ‘One Thing,’ they have two-finger guitar riffs that everyone who can play a bit of guitar can learn. That was all on purpose.”
One Direction famously finished third on The X Factor, but Cowell immediately signed them to his label, Syco Music. They’d gone through one round of artist development boot camp on the show, and another followed on an X Factor live tour in spring 2011. They’d developed an onstage confidence, but the studio presented a new challenge. “We had to create who should do what in One Direction,” Falk says. To solve the puzzle the band’s five voices presented, they chose the kitchen sink method and everyone tried everything.
“They were searching for themselves,” Falk adds. “It was like, Harry, let’s just record him; he’s not afraid of anything. Liam’s the perfect song starter, and then you put Zayn on top with this high falsetto. Louis found his voice when we did ‘Change Your Mind.’ It was a long trial for everyone to find their strengths and weaknesses, but that was also the fun part.” Falk also gave Niall some of his first real guitar lessons; there’s video of them performing “One Thing” together, still blessedly up on YouTube.
“What Makes You Beautiful” was released September 11th, 2011 in the U.K. and debuted at Number One on the singles chart there — though the video had dropped a month prior. While One Direction’s immediate success in the U.K. and other parts of Europe wasn’t guaranteed, the home field odds were favorable. European markets have historically been kinder to boy bands than the U.S.; ‘N Sync and Backstreet Boys found huge success abroad before they conquered home. To that end, neither Kotecha nor Falk were sure 1D would break in the U.S. Falk even says of conceiving the band’s sound, “We didn’t want it to sound too American, because this was not meant — for us, at least — to work in America. This was gonna work in the U.K. and maybe outside the U.K.”
Stoking anticipation for “What Makes You Beautiful” by releasing the video on YouTube before the single dropped, preceded the strategy Columbia Records (the band’s U.S. label) adopted for Up All Night. Between its November 2011 arrival in the U.K. and its U.S. release in March 2012, Columbia eschewed traditional radio strategies and built hype on social media. One Direction had been extremely online since their X Factor days, engaging with fans and spending their downtime making silly videos to share. One goofy tune, made with Kotecha, called “Vas Happenin’ Boys?” was an early viral hit.
“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha says. “And they did that by being themselves. That was a unique thing about these boys: When the cameras turned on, they didn’t change who they were.”
Social media was flooded with One Direction contests and petitions to bring the band to fans’ towns. Radio stations were inundated with calls to play “What Makes You Beautiful” long before it was even available. When it did finally arrive, Kotecha (who was in Sweden at the time) remembers staying up all night to watch it climb the iTunes chart with each refresh.
Take Me Home, was recorded primarily in Stockholm and London during and after their first world tour. The success of Up All Night had attracted an array of top songwriting talent — Ed Sheeran even penned two hopeless romantic sad lad tunes, “Little Things” and “Over Again” — but Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub grabbed the reins, collaborating on six of the album’s 13 tracks. In charting their course, Kotecha returned to his boy band history: “My theory was, you give them a similar sound on album two, and album three is when you start moving on.”
Still, there was the inherent pressure of the second album to contend with. The label wanted a “What Makes You Beautiful, Part 2,” and evidence that the 1D phenomenon wasn’t slowing down appeared outside the window of the Stockholm studio: so many fans, the street had to be shut down. Kotecha even remembers seeing police officers with missing person photos, combing through the girls camped outside, looking for teens to return to their parents.
At this pivotal moment, One Direction made it clear that they wanted a greater say in their artistic future. Kotecha admits he was wary at first, but the band was determined. To help manage the workload, Kotecha had brought in two young songwriters, Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, who’d arrived with a handful of ideas, including a chorus for a booming power ballad called “Last First Kiss.”
“We thought, while we’re busy recording vocals, whoever’s not busy can go write songs with these two guys, and then we’ll help shape them as much as we can,” Kotecha says. “And to our pleasant surprise, the songs were pretty damn good.”
At this pivotal moment, too, songwriters Julian Bunetta and John Ryan also met the band. Friends from the Berklee College of Music, Bunetta and Ryan had moved out to L.A. and cut a few tracks, but still had no hits to their name. They entered the Syco orbit after scoring work on the U.S. version of The X Factor, and were asked if they wanted to try writing a song for Take Me Home. “I was like, yeah definitely,” Bunetta says. “They sold five million albums? Hell yeah, I want to make some money.”
Working with Jamie Scott, who’d written two songs on Up All Night (“More Than This” and “Stole My Heart”), Bunetta and Ryan wrote “C’mon, C’mon” — a blinding hit of young love that rips down a dance pop speedway through a comically oversized wall of Marshall stacks. It earned them a trip to London. Bunetta admits to thinking the whole 1D thing was “a quick little fad” ahead of their first meeting with the band, but their charms were overwhelming. Everyone hit it off immediately.
“Niall showed me his ass,” Bunetta remembers of the day they recorded, “They Don’t Know About Us,” one of five songs they produced for Take Me Home (two are on the deluxe edition). “The first vocal take, he went in to sing, did a take, I was looking down at the computer screen and was like, ‘On this line, can you sing it this way?’ And I looked over and he was mooning me. I was like, ‘I love this guy!’”
Take Me Home dropped November 9th, just nine days short of Up All Night’s first anniversary. With only seven weeks left in 2012, it became the fourth best-selling album of the year globally, moving 4.4 million copies, per the IFPI; it fell short of Adele’s 21, Taylor Swift’s Red and 1D’s own Up All Night, which had several extra months to sell 4.5 million copies.
Kotecha, Falk and Yacoub’s tracks anchored the album. Songs like “Kiss You,” “Heart Attack” and “Live While We’re Young” were pristine pop rock that One Direction delivered with full delirium, vulnerability and possibility — the essence of the teen — in voices increasingly capable of navigating all the little nuances of that spectrum. And the songs 1D helped write (“Last First Kiss,” “Back for You” and “Summer Love”) remain among the LP’s best.
“You saw that they caught the bug and were really good at it,” Kotecha says of their songwriting. “And moving forward, you got the impression that that was the way for them.”
Like clockwork, the wheels began to churn for album three right after Take Me Home dropped. But unlike those first two records, carving out dedicated studio time for LP3 was going to be difficult — on February 23rd, 2013, One Direction would launch a world tour in London, the first of 123 concerts they’d play that year. They’d have to write and record on the road, and for Kotecha and Falk — both of whom had just had kids — that just wasn’t possible. 
But it was also time for a creative shift. Even Kotecha knew that from his boy band history: album three is, after all, when you start moving on. One Direction was ready, too. Kotecha credits Louis, the oldest member of the group, for “shepherding them into adulthood, away from the very pop-y stuff of the first two albums. He was leading the charge to make sure that they had a more mature sound. And at the time, being in it, it was a little difficult for me, Rami and Carl to grasp — but hindsight, that was the right thing to do.”��
“For three years, this was our schedule,” Bunetta says. “We did X Factor October, November, December. Took off January. February, flew to London. We’d gather ideas with the band, come up with sounds, hang out. Then back to L.A. for March, produce some stuff, then go out on the road with them in April. Get vocals, write a song or two, come back for May, work on the vocals, and produce the songs we wrote on the road. Back to London in June-ish. Back here for July, produce it up. Go back on tour in August, get last bits of vocals, mix in September, back to X Factor in October, album out in November, January off, start it all over again.”
That cycle began in early 2013 when Bunetta and Ryan flew to London for a session that lasted just over a week, but yielded the bulk of Midnight Memories. With songwriters Jamie Scott, Wayne Hector and Ed Drewett they wrote “Best Song Ever” and “You and I,” and, with One Direction, “Diana” and “Midnight Memories.” Bunetta and Ryan’s initial rapport with the band strengthened — they were a few years older, but as Bunetta jokes, “We act like we’re 19 all the time anyway.” Years ago, Bunetta posted an audio clip documenting the creation of “Midnight Memories” — the place-holder chorus was a full-throated, perfectly harmonized, “I love KFC!”
For the most part, Bunetta, Ryan and 1D doubled down on the rock sound their predecessors had forged, but there was one outlier from that week. A stunning bit of post-Mumford festival folk buoyed by a new kind of lyrical and vocal maturity called “Story of My Life.”
“This was a make or break moment for them,” Bunetta says. “They needed to grow up, or they were gonna go away — and they wanted to grow up. To get to the level they got to, you need more than just your fan base. That song extended far beyond their fan base and made people really pay attention.”
Production on Midnight Memories continued on the road, where, like so many bands before them, One Direction unlocked a new dimension to their music. Tour engineer Alex Oriet made it possible, Ryan says, building makeshift vocal booths in hotel rooms by flipping beds up against the walls. Writing and recording was crammed in whenever — 20 minutes before a show, or right after another two-hour performance.
“It preserved the excitement of the moment,” Bunetta says. “We were just there, doing it, marinating in it at all times. You’re capturing moments instead of trying to recreate them. A lot of times we’d write a song, sing it in the hotel, produce it, then fly back out to have them re-sing it — and so many times the demo vocals were better. They hadn’t memorized it yet. They were still in the mood. There was a performance there that you couldn’t recreate.” 
Midnight Memories arrived, per usual, in November 2013. And, per usual, it was a smash. The following year, 1D brought their songs to the environment they always deserved — stadiums around the world — and amid the biggest shows of their career, they worked on their aptly-titled fourth album Four. The 123 concerts 1D had played the year before had strengthened their combined vocal prowess in a way that opened up an array of new possibilities.
“We could use their voices on Four to make something sound more exciting and bigger, rather than having to add too many guitars, synths or drums,” Ryan says.
“They were so much more dynamic and subtle, too,” Bunetta adds. “I don’t think they could’ve pulled off a song like ‘Night Changes’ two albums prior; or the nuance to sing soft and emotionally on ‘Fireproof.’ It takes a lot of experience to deliver a restrained vocal that way.”
Musically, Four was 1D’s most expansive album yet — from the sky-high piano rock of “Steal My Girl” to the tender, tasteful groove of “Fireproof” — and it had the emotional range to match. Now in their early twenties, songs like “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” “No Control,” “Fool’s Gold” and “Clouds” redrew the dramas and euphorias of adolescence with the new weight, wit and wanton winks of impending adulthood. One Direction wasn’t growing up normally in any sense of the word, but they were becoming songwriters capable of drawing out the most relatable elements from their extraordinary circumstances — like on “Change Your Ticket,” where the turbulent love affairs of young jet-setters are distilled to the universal pang of a long goodbye. There were real relationships inspiring these stories, but now that One Direction was four years into being the biggest band on the planet, it was natural that the relationships within the band would make it into the music as well.
“I think that on Four,” Bunetta says with a slight pause, “there were some tensions going on. A lot of the songs were double — like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well.”
He continues: “It’s tough going through that age, having to spread your wings with so many eyeballs on you, so much money and no break. It was tough for them to carve out their individual manhood, space and point of view, while learning how to communicate with each other. Even more than relationship things that were going on, that was the bigger blanket that was in there every day, seeping into the songs.”
Bunetta remembers Zayn playing him “Pillowtalk” and a few other songs for the first time through a three a.m. fog of cigarette smoke in a hotel room in Japan.
“Fucking amazing,” he says. “They were fucking awesome. I know creatively he wasn’t getting what he needed from the way that the albums were being made on the road. He wanted to lock himself in the studio and take his time, be methodical. And that just wasn’t possible.”
A month or so later, and 16 shows into One Direction’s “On the Road Again” tour, Zayn left the band. Bunetta and Ryan agree it wasn’t out of the blue: “He was frustrated and wanted to do things outside of the band,” Bunetta says. “It’s a lot for a young kid, all those shows. We’d been with them for a bunch of years at this point — it was a matter of when. You just hoped that it would wait until the last album.”
Still, Bunetta compares the loss to having a finger lopped off, and he acknowledges that Harry, Niall, Liam and Louis struggled to find their bearings as One Direction continued with their stadium tour and next album, Made in the A.M. Just as band tensions bubbled beneath the songs on Four, Zayn’s departure left an imprint on Made in the A.M. Not with any overt malice, but a song like “Drag Me Down,” Bunetta says, reflects the effort to bounce back. Even Niall pushing his voice to the limits of his range on that song wouldn’t have been necessary if Zayn and his trusty falsetto were available.
But Made in the A.M. wasn’t beholden to this shake-up. Bunetta and Ryan cite “Olivia” as a defining track, one that captures just how far One Direction had come as songwriters: They’d written it in 45 minutes, after wasting a whole day trying to write something far worse.
“When you start as a songwriter, you write a bunch of shitty songs, you get better and you keep getting better,” Ryan says. “But then you can get finicky and you’re like, ‘Maybe I have to get smart with this lyric.’ By Made in the A.M. … they were coming into their own in the sense of picking up a guitar, messing around and feeling something, rather than being like, ‘How do I put this puzzle together?’”
After Zayn’s departure, Bunetta and Ryan said it became clear that Made in the A.M. would be One Direction’s last album before some break of indeterminate length. The album boasts the palpable tug of the end, but to One Direction’s credit, that finality is balanced by a strong sense of forever. It’s literally the last sentiment they leave their fans on album-closer “History,” singing, “Baby don’t you know, baby don’t you know/We can live forever.”
In a way, Made in the A.M. is about One Direction as an entity. Not one that belonged to the group, but to everyone they spent five years making music for. Four years since their hiatus and 10 years since their formation, the fans remain One Direction’s defining legacy. Even as all five members have settled into solo careers, Ryan notes that baseless rumors of any kind of reunion — even a meager Zoom call — can still set the internet on fire. The old songs remain potent, too: Carl Falk says his nine-year-old son has taken to making TikToks to 1D tracks.
There are plenty of metrics to quantify One Direction’s reach, success and influence. The hard numbers — album sales and concert stubs — are staggering on their own, but the ineffable is always more fun. One Direction was such a good band that a fan, half-jokingly, but then kinda seriously, started a GoFundMe to buy out their contract and grant them full artistic freedom. One Direction was such a good band that songwriters like Kotecha and Falk — who would go on to make hits with Ariana Grande, the Weeknd and Nicki Minaj — still think about the songs they could’ve made with them. One Direction was such a good band that Mitski covered “Fireproof.”
But maybe it all comes down to the most ineffable thing of all: Chance. Kotecha compares success on talent shows like The X Factor to waking up one morning and being super cut — but now, to keep that figure, you have to work out at a 10, without having done the gradual work to reach that level. That’s the downfall for so many acts, but One Direction was not only able, but willing, to put in the work.
“They’re one of the only acts from those types of shows that managed to do it for such a long time,” Kotecha says. “Five years is a long time for a massive pop star to go nonstop. I know it was tiring, but they were fantastic sports about it. They appreciated and understood the opportunity they had — and, as you can see, they haven’t really stopped since. Most of them weren’t necessarily musicians before this happened, but they loved music, and they found a love of creating, writing and playing. To have these boys — that had been sort of randomly picked — to also have that? It will never be repeated.”
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bthenoise · 4 years ago
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Live Show Memories: The Last Concerts Your Favorite Bands Attended Before Lockdown
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Welp, we’ve officially (and sadly) reached the one-year mark without any live shows. While we know how much of a bummer this can be to think about -- trust us, we know -- we have decided to try and spin this in a lighter, much more positive manner. 
Instead of mourning the fact that no one’s been to a “real” live show in over 365 days, how about we look back at some of our last concerts and remember the good times? You know, like when we saw Thrice play Vheissu on their 15-year anniversary tour and we screamed our lungs out to “The Earth Will Shake.” 
Looking to compile other fun last show memories, we reached out to bands like State Champs, Neck Deep, August Burns Red, Wage War, The Spill Canvas and more to see what some of their last shows were like. 
To see which band members paused their live music run watching Panic! At The Disco or Tool or even Ariana Grande, be sure to look below. 
TYLER SZALKOWSKI - STATE CHAMPS
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Dan + Shay and The Band Camino
WHERE WAS IT: Nationwide Arena, Columbus, OH
WHEN WAS IT: March 8th, 2020
HOW WAS IT: Absolutely incredible. It was my second time seeing TBC and like my 5th or 6th seeing D+S and both bands are so freakin’ good live. It was also very cool to see D+S on their own headline arena gig. Big bada$$ production and all that!!
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I would love to see the 1975!! They’re so good live. Would be a hell of a first gig back!
MATT WEST - NECK DEEP
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Blink-182
WHERE WAS IT: Brooklyn, NY
WHEN WAS IT: September 19th, 2019
HOW WAS IT: The show was bittersweet as it was the last date of our tour with Blink-182. I remember the show [being] amazing though, Blink came out and took apart Dani's kit halfway through our last song. Ben got to sing with Blink, so a great way to cap off the tour.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Honestly, fucking anybody, I've forgotten what a gig feels like.
WILL LEVY - THE STORY SO FAR / COLD MOON
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WHO DID YOU SEE: The last show I went to I saw the band Young Guv perform and they kicked major ass. 
WHERE WAS IT: Rebel Lounge in Phoenix, Arizona.
WHEN WAS IT: The show was on March 10th, 2020. 
HOW WAS IT: The show rocked, I think most of us knew that some major change was on the horizon so we lived out the moment to its fullest potential and partied until the sun came up. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I think I'm most excited to see either HAIM or Billie Eilish once the pandemic is over.
TYLER POSEY
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WHO DID YOU SEE: KUT U UP
WHERE WAS IT: San Diego!!!
WHEN WAS IT: Feb 29th, 2020
HOW WAS IT: There was a documentary blink-182 made called Riding In Vans With Boys that featured KUT U UP. This documentary changed my life. Getting to watch KUT U UP AND PLAY WITH THEM!!! Fucking dream come true. I crowd surfed the entire bar.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I would really love to see phem perform. I’ve gotten really close with her and her music and want to mosh to all of it. Even if I’m by myself.
JB BRUBAKER - AUGUST BURNS RED
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Jimmy Eat World
WHERE WAS IT: The Capitol Room at HMAC, Harrisburg, PA
WHEN WAS IT: November 12, 2019
HOW WAS IT: The show was fun. It was a sold out show in a 1,000 capacity venue so it felt intimate. Jimmy Eat World sounds great live and always play well. I went with my wife and our bass player Dustin and his girlfriend. They played all the hits and some fun deep cuts we weren’t expecting!
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Milky Chance
TINO ARTEAGA - OF MICE & MEN
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Ghostemane
WHERE WAS IT: The Observatory OC, Orange County, CA
WHEN WAS IT: Around Halloween 2019
HOW WAS IT: Absolutely insane! Listening to his albums is one thing but seeing him live & how loud the bass is & how hard the band goes is next level. The audience goes absolutely bananas as well. It was a really cool performance!
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Would love to go to Furnace Fest to see all the OG metalcore bands perform later this year.
PORTER MCKNIGHT - ATREYU
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WHO DID YOU SEE:  Nothing More
WHERE WAS IT: House of Blue New Orleans
WHEN WAS IT: 2019
HOW WAS IT: Honestly, if you’ve never seen this band live you’re missing out! Atreyu were off tour so I drove from my home in Alabama to New Orleans and treated myself to a show. We had recently played ShipRocked with Nothing More, but this show blew that one out of the water! Such an energetic, captivating, and honest performance.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Literally ANY BAND… but Nothing More, Turnstile, or Sturgill Simpson would rule.
WAGE WAR
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CODY QUISTAD 
WHO DID YOU SEE: Dan + Shay, The Band Camino and Ingrid Andress
WHERE WAS IT: Bridgestone Arena. Nashville, Tennessee
WHEN WAS IT: March 7, 2020
HOW WAS IT: It was incredible! Truly one of the best shows I’ve been to.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: LANY
SETH BLAKE 
WHO DID YOU SEE: The Acacia Strain, Rotting Out, Creeping Death, Chamber, Fuming Mouth, & Scatter Shot.
WHERE WAS IT: Soundbar, Orlando FL.
WHEN WAS IT: March 5th, 2020. HOW WAS IT: The show was great. Super high-energy crowd packed into an intimate venue. Had a great time watching the bands with a few good friends. I just wish I would have known it was my last concert for the next year+!
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Kublai Khan
CHRIS GAYLORD
WHO DID YOU SEE: Polaris, Wage War, Crystal Lake, Alpha Wolf
WHERE WAS IT: The Tivoli - Brisbane, QLD Australia
WHEN WAS IT: February 29th, 2020
HOW WAS IT: It was our last night on tour together. I remember the show being a blast and the hang backstage being even better. We formed some lasting friendships with Polaris in the US and in Australia and had mixed emotions not knowing the next time we would see each other... not knowing the pandemic would follow.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Architects / Spiritbox
STEPHEN KLUESENER
Last show I saw: A Day To Remember, Falling in Reverse, Fever 333, and Whitechapel
Where: Self Help Fest, Worcester Massachusetts 
When: Fall 2019
HOW WAS IT: Weather was perfect, crowd was strong, and ADTR destroyed at the end of the night. It was the first time they had played “Rescue Me” live. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: One of the first bands I want to see when gigs return is Polaris.
JOSH SMITH - NORTHLANE
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Tool
WHERE WAS IT: Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne
WHEN WAS IT: Honestly I don’t even remember dude, like everything is a blur since COVID started. This is the last show that I remember. It was about a year ago with some change.
HOW WAS IT: It was incredible. The best production, sound and show I have ever seen. Tool are one of my favorite bands and I had never seen them live after being a fan for 15+ years. I was left absolutely speechless. Mind blown, nothing comes close.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Honestly I’d love to just see Tool again!
NICK VENTIMIGLIA - GRAYSCALE 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: The Get Up Kids and Dashboard Confessional
WHERE WAS IT: Saint Andrew’s Hall in Detroit, MI
WHEN WAS IT: March 3rd & 4th, 2020
HOW WAS IT: I went to both nights back-to-back actually. It was the 20 year Dashboard anniversary so Chris Carrabba played A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar in its entirety one night and then The Places You Have Come to Fear The Most in its entirety, both sets with some other stuff sprinkled in. I’m a big fan of both bands but it was good to see a lot of these songs I wouldn’t have been able to see probably ever again. There’s nothing better than singing at the top of your lungs to songs that shaped you as a musician and a person in general. My brother Lupe Bustos (The Maine/Dashboard photo) met us after the second night and we all went out with him and the Dashboard guys to have drinks, it was a blast.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I almost don’t care who it is, I’d just like to get to a show. I’d love to see The Night Game, I would kill to see Poison the Well again at some point. I saw recently they’re playing Furnace Fest in Alabama so I’m glad they’re doing shows again. Honestly, any show will do at this point!
SCOTT CAREY - HOLDING ABSENCE 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: The 1975
WHERE WAS IT: The Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
WHEN WAS IT: 23rd Feb 2020 - Right in the middle of recording our new album The Greatest Mistake Of My Life!
HOW WAS IT: Best band I’ve ever seen live. They played a load of older, slower songs which I love. I had to come home from the studio for the day to see them as I wasn’t missing the show - very glad I didn’t miss it!
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I’ve been spinning the new Teenage Wrist record a LOT recently so I’d love to see them. Or The Cure as I’ve never seen them live!
THE SPILL CANVAS
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NICK THOMAS 
WHO DID YOU SEE: Noah Gundersen
WHERE WAS IT: The Social - Orlando, FL
WHEN WAS IT: Feb 21st, 2020
HOW WAS IT: His performance was by far one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen. I had the goosebump waves nearly every song. It was stunning what he was able to do with just his voice and an acoustic.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Circa Survive on their Blue Sky Noise anniversary tour. It's my favorite album by them, and although I've seen them countless times, it's been quite a while.
LANDON HEIL 
WHO DID YOU SEE: Panic! At The Disco.
WHERE WAS IT: Fiserv Forum - Milwaukee, WI
WHEN WAS IT: Jan 27, 2019
HOW WAS IT: I don’t attend concerts much when I’m off tour, but our old guitarist Mike had just joined Panic and was able to get my wife and I some tickets. It was really exciting and slightly surreal to see Mike performing in such a massive venue. They put on an excellent show and we had a great time.  
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Still need to see John Mayer or Jimmy Eat World live.
BRYCE JOB
WHO DID YOU SEE: Pinegrove
WHERE WAS IT: Icon - Sioux Falls, SD
WHEN WAS IT: Sept 16th, 2019
HOW WAS IT: I absolutely loved being able to experience them in such an intimate setting. They played an extended set and took requests called out by the crowd.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: In South Dakota we don’t have a ton of options for entertainment but I have the chance to see Willie Nelson in August. If it doesn’t get canceled, I’m probably not going to pass it up. 
EVAN PHARMAKIS
WHO DID YOU SEE: Hot Water Music & The Menzingers
WHERE WAS IT: St Augustine Amphitheater - St. Augustine, FL
WHEN WAS IT: Oct 2019
HOW WAS IT: The show was phenomenal. I’ve been fortunate enough to catch Hot Water Music a handful of times over the years, and this last time I saw them they gave another great performance. The Menzingers were killer as well.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I’d love to catch Phoebe Bridgers again, she’s wonderful live. Also would really love to see Alexisonfire tear up a stage again too.
HYRO THE HERO
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WHO DID YOU SEE: It was Dia De Los Deftones. I got to go see Megan Thee Stallion, Gojira, Chvches, and Deftones WHERE WAS IT: Petco Park in San Diego 
WHEN WAS IT: Late 2019 I believe
HOW WAS IT: Such a great time with the epic lineup. The vibes were incredible and also went backstage to kick it and say waddup to Chino and the fam.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Beartooth 
LAUREN SANDERSON
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Ariana Grande
WHERE WAS IT: Los Angeles / The Forum
WHEN WAS IT: December 22, 2019
HOW WAS IT: Incredible. Amazing vocals, amazing show, amazing choreo. God is truly a woman.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: My top 3 would be Meg Thee Stallion, Doja Cat and Machine Gun Kelly. But honestly, at that point, I’m gonna be down to go see literally anyone.
ALEX MAGNAN - YOUNG CULTURE 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Have Mercy (their last show), Idle Wave, we also played the show
WHERE WAS IT: Hard Luck, Toronto, ON
WHEN WAS IT: March 15, 2020
HOW WAS IT: It was such a weird feeling, we didn’t know for certain what was going on yet but we could tell that it was gonna be the last show of the tour. By the time the show started and the turn out wasn’t the greatest, we knew this was something serious. Show was a blast nevertheless and I was glad to leave it on a good one.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN:  Phoebe Bridgers (not a band but still)
DANIEL SEYMOUR - WAXFLOWER 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: The Menzingers
WHERE WAS IT: The Zoo, Brisbane
WHEN WAS IT: March 2020, the night of my birthday!
HOW WAS IT: Brilliant! I think it's become even better in hindsight. The memory has aged like a fine wine after the struggles of the past 12 months. Seeing one of my favourite artists surrounded by the people I loved was the best way to celebrate a “last show.”
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Being in Australia, it feels like a while before overseas acts will be touring here BUT I'd love to see The 1975 or Enter Shikari as one of the first overseas acts to come here post-pandemic. The energy both those acts bring will surely make up for months without live music!
MALIA ENDRES - GLACIER VEINS
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WHO DID YOU SEE: My last show was our own show with Overgrow and Mouth Movements.
WHERE WAS IT: Donato’s Basement in Columbus, OH
WHEN WAS IT: Right before everything shut down in March. 
HOW WAS IT: There was definitely some interesting energy because of the uncertainty yet growing concern of COVID, but we knew it was going to be our last show of that tour so I really took in the joy and excitement of our performance. It was also really sweet to spend the last show with our Common Ground Collective family Jake from Overgrow and our agent John Rausch. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Winter! She put out my favorite album of 2020 so I am looking forward to seeing those songs live. 
COLIN JACQUES - WE WERE SHARKS
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Anti-Flag, Grade 2 & Positive Charge
WHERE WAS IT: The 27 Club Ottawa - Ottawa, ON
WHEN WAS IT: March 11th, 2020
HOW WAS IT: Amazing show. Anti-Flag is one of my childhood favourites and a pleasure to see at home in Canada. Awesome show in a 300 cap room before the world shut down for a full year.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: My Chemical Romance
MAGGIE SCHNEIDER - GLIMMERS 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Rex Orange County
WHERE WAS IT: The Tabernacle in Atlanta
WHEN WAS IT: The last week of February 2020
HOW WAS IT: It was so much fun. I went with my best friend Natalie after a very long day. We danced the entire time and had no idea that’d be our last show. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: My Chemical Romance, pretty please! 
CHRISTIAN NEONAKIS - MY KID BROTHER
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Modest Mouse
WHERE WAS IT: The Anthem in DC
WHEN WAS IT: Late 2019
HOW WAS IT: It was such a good night... they had always been one of my all-time fave bands so seeing them at such a sweet venue was a dream. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Would love to see Tame Impala or Portugal. The Man next, can't pick between the two.
BENJI SPOLIANSKY - NOT A TOY
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Tyler the Creator 
WHERE WAS IT: It was at Red Rocks in Morrison, CO which is one of the greatest places to see a show in the world.
WHEN WAS IT:  It was in October of 2019 :( 
HOW WAS IT: It was incredible. Tyler is extremely funny on stage and he actually slipped and fell while performing. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: The first show I want to go to isn't necessarily for just one [band]. I just want to go to a hardcore show and rage my fucking face off!
BRADLEY KEARSLEY- CARPOOL TUNNEL
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WHO DID YOU SEE: The last band I went to see was The Red Pears! 
WHERE WAS IT: Brick and Mortar in San Francisco.
WHEN WAS IT: February 25th, 2020... I think!
HOW WAS IT: After we played with The Red Pears in Reno, they offered me to come out to their show in San Francisco which one of my friends' bands were opening up for. I remember coming into the venue and seeing so many people that I knew, something I really miss having these days. They absolutely killed it and it was somebody in the band's birthday, so the whole crowd sang him happy birthday. I just remember dancing and having a great time.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: I really want to see the band Loving again. I was able to catch them once at the Rickshaw Shop in San Francisco and it was one of my favorite show experiences to date! Can't wait to see them again.
NICK ZAWISA - BREAKUP SHOES
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Summer Salt, Okey Dokey & we (Breakup Shoes) performed
WHERE WAS IT: Fox Theatre - Boulder, CO
WHEN WAS IT: 3/12/20
HOW WAS IT: An absolute blast of a show. It hadn’t been confirmed yet but with how serious the initial COVID-19 outbreak was seeming, we knew in the back of our heads that this was gonna be our final show of tour. We gave it our all on stage for our set and then made cameos as backup vocalists, dancers, percussionists, etc. during our tour-mates set, which made the night feel like something really special.
CAMM KNOPP - NEVER LOVED
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WHO DID YOU SEE: The All-American Rejects
WHERE WAS IT: The Beacham in Orlando, FL
WHEN WAS IT: September 2019
HOW WAS IT: It was a great time. We actually just finished a writing session with Nick from AAR the week before so it was ironic they were in FL the following week.
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Armor For Sleep!
LUCA MARGI - DREAMSHADE 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Bring Me The Horizon
WHERE WAS IT: FORUM ASSAGO / MILAN
WHEN WAS IT: 13.11.2018
HOW WAS IT: Powerful and exciting, awesome band to see live and lots of pyro!  
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Architects
ROLY VELAZQUEZ - AVAT 
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WHO DID YOU SEE: Bring Me the Horizon, Sleeping With Sirens, Poppy WHERE WAS IT: The Fillmore Miami Beach
WHEN WAS IT: October 2019 HOW WAS IT: It was amazing. It’s very inspiring to see a band in the rock/metal genre mobilize such a broad audience. 
BONUS - WHO'S THE FIRST BAND YOU WANT TO SEE POST-PANDEMIC THAT ISN'T YOUR OWN: Definitely Metallica. Getting to attend their drive-in concert was as close to the atmosphere of a show that most of us here in Miami got to experience.
TELLE SMITH - THE WORD ALIVE
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The last show The Word Alive played was just over a year ago this week, at the Los Angeles Emo Nite. We had just wrapped an insanely successful tour with Falling In Reverse, had a day off in LA and then March 6th we had plans to celebrate the release of our album MONOMANIA with our friends, family, label and fans. We weren’t quite sure how the reception would be, given that we weren’t an iconic emo band which is who the majority of the music patrons come to listen and sing along to, which is what made the performance even more memorable.
Right when we went on stage the energy was amazing. To see how many friends, peers from the industry, and fans from all over came to celebrate with us really meant a lot.
I was just watching videos the other day from different posts fans had made, and you can hear how loudly they were singing the songs that had just been released -- some louder than any song we have ever had.
It was bittersweet because, while it reinforced in my head just how special our album was, it has been the only glimpse into the world of touring on MONOMANIA may have been like.
I’m very excited to get back at it with the boys once everything is safe and sound. And I have zero doubt in my mind that it will feel a million times better than even our best show memory to date. See you there.
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neonredglow · 5 years ago
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Cate what I don’t get about zouiam vs narry. Aren’t all five of them supposed to be under contract still ? If she why don’t narry get the same treatment as zouiam. Because narry has toured and released albums. Lilo haven’t don’t either and Z has two amazing albums but hadn’t toured. And I know some people say that narry never got “punished” hoe fucked up would that be that they would let their band mates take all the bad ? I jist as so confused about this.
it is very likely that the x factor uk contract that they all signed is supposed to last for 10 years, given the other leaked contracts from other shows simon’s run and what kelly clarkson has said about american idol. if this is true, then 10 years is 2020 so simon still has control over each of their public images (not their music.) it would also appear that syco’s (and i believe modest’s) contract with one direction is not complete yet either given the release of the souvenir edition of uan through syco. also for context, in 2010 1d signed with syco to release 3 albums and in 2013 they resigned to release 3 more (5+1) albums. 1d has released 5 albums. (i know there’s been a lot of theories about the +1 bit, like maybe being fulfilled by mom, the perfect ep, etc but the release of the new uan edition in the us makes me think it hasn’t been fulfilled yet- perhaps a greatest hits album? around the 10th anniversary next year?) so all of them (except zayn) are still “1d members” meaning syco/modest will have some say over how they are portrayed (for lack of a better word) cause that affects how the band is portrayed (generally i think that syco/modest want ot4 to be publicly united as that would best serve the future of the band they own and that’s the official 1d narrative and anything that goes against that is not)
ok, so narry vs zouiam, a tale as old as time. louis is still signed to syco & zayn was passed onto rca by syco without the ability to negotiate his own contract. louis we know pissed people at syco off when he fought for 1d to have their own sound (and generally fought for the band) so it’s no surprise that they have sabotaged his music (and it’s no surprise that when he signs to new management & a new american label in addition that his music actually gets released/promoted.) zayn would have had no say on his contract, so no surprise that it wasn’t what he wanted. and rca has a reputation for fucking their artists over anyway so. and as for liam, republic used to support him back when he first went solo really up until their ceo got fired and replaced in like october(?) 2017. and then later ariana (another republic artist) made her comeback and republic seemingly put all of their time/money into her and then taylor (yet another republic artist) made her comeback and then republic seemingly put all of their time/money into her. and yet a coincidence that things really seemed to have gone downhill for liam after ariana released no tears left to cry and only started to pick back up after taylor released her album. narry, i think, both have good relationships with their record labels
as for narry sitting back while zouiam got “punished” well.... narry never appeared to have done anything that needed to be “punished.” all of zouiam in some way, shape, or form acted out against simon, syco, and/or modest. narry never did (as far as we know.) so yeah, narry are in better situations than zouiam both in terms of their public images and their music. and it wouldn’t be fair if their public images were just as shitty as zouiam’s cause they never did anything to “warrant” it
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royz-yade · 6 years ago
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「Royz THE BEST2009-2019」 「TRACKS」
Subaru’s LINE entry 2019/4/30 01:52
We’ve finished all 8 concerts of our best album tour “TRACKS” without any incidence. Thanks to everyone who got in touch with us during the tour.
And well, since the tour has ended I thought of talking a bit about our best album “Royz THE BEST2009-2019“
About one year ago (it’s unsure though) we’ve started working on this constantly. We’ve waited for the right timing and on 4/3 we could finally let it out into this world. You’ve already listened to it, haven’t you?
The compilation consists of the rerecorded version of our lead tracks from when we were still five members, of the lead tracks of the time after we became four members, of bonus tracks and the songs No Fate and Anniversary that weren’t featured on any CD before. Also, a rerecorded and rearranged version of kuroageha, marble palette and toumei na yuki.
To be honest, when in a meeting the topic of releasing a best album came up I was absolutely for releasing it but I was against rerecording the songs.
You wonder why? Because in the past I didn’t love the rerecordings of the artists I like 笑 Of course I thought that they are good but... the bad sound quality, the insufficient skills, the fact that it was still in the process of being properly formed​ ... I think it’s good that way. Rather than wanting it to be better I appreciate the memories that come up when listening to these songs.
Sure, I thought [the new versions] were good but it’s also hard. We became adults... That’s what I also think [with a sad feeling]. I relive those memories and they take me back to that place, to the one of that smell or how I was looking up at the sky from that window while listening to that song. They made me think: “Let’s try giving my best again!” That was good. That time.
That’s why it’s not good or bad. “That” became my companion. That’s why I hate the feeling of exchanging “that” with “this”. “That” is hard to explain. But I’d like you to understand. This isn’t the first time we rerecorded songs. I just thought it’s different when it’s for a best album.
But it’s also a practical thing. Around the time we released CORE Kazuki left and Kuina became the only guitarist. Desperately and with pain in his hands he said “I can do it!”. I think he played a lot of the guitar without us even realizing. I barely tell him he goes against the flow but that’s one great point of him. I also think that it was difficult for Koudai to become the only person on the left side of the stage, also in a negative way. I don’t think we could do anything about it but when we went on stage the people in front of us were almost all crying. There were a lot of painful concerts. And during all that we could work out who we really are. Like... I could come to say that this is my place. Nobody can end this here.
I think Tomoya had to bear a lot of weight as leader. His character is lively and positive, so usually he always seems to be fine but I really don’t think that this is always the case. There are many people who always seem fine but cry in secret. Please keep an eye on the people around you!
Our manager was desperate, too. Worrying about Royz.
We are clumsy, so there were also times when we talked past each other. But Royz was still loved. But you all know that, don’t you?
Rey who joined as support member also saved us a lot. I think it would have been impossible without him.
But for Kuina the hurdle​ was too high and we became a band with four members. The label owner, the label and label mates... if I start talking about it there is no end, so I will stop here. I don’t really like talking about the past and this moving story and already got lost in writing about it but this is an obvious fact. The longer we’re active the more people are there who don’t know about all this.
“But somehow the four-member Royz is cool, isn’t it?” We could gather new power for this. This prologue got so long... But that’s why in general our songs are for five people. It’s not true for all though. We’ve also synchronizing more of the songs. I started to understand more about putting things in order and the timing. On our CDs as well as when we perform our songs live. That’s what you do when you decide on keep on going.
That’s why while accepting [to rerecord new versions] I thought that when we do it you will understand it. The start that I was thinking about it and getting prepared for it was that I wondered with which feeling I would sing these songs if we rerecord them.
I think what I wrote until here was quite long-winded but when I listened to our first rerecordings of eve:r and ACROSS WORLD I thought “no no, the rerecordings are so good!” ( 笑)
Yeah~ these 10 years were more serious than I thought. Or not? We held concerts step by step and even though I thought I got used to listen to our songs they sounded completely different after rerecording them. We became adults, didn’t we? That’s what I think. The songs in the past were cute, so I like them so much. Especially songs like haru no yoru no yume. It was something we could only do back then the way we did it. Back then we gave our very very best together. 
But in the end, the new one is good. It’s not wrong to say that even though I didn’t like to say it. I thought that we’ve changed without changing. That’s what I realized before creating this new version.
And also, we thought if it’s possible to release “Anniversary” on the best album then we should do it. That’s what we decided the first time we performed it (was it 4 or 5 years ago? It’s unsure).
I also came to like No Fate a lot. In the end the lyrics are very formal (笑) There are songs for which we used downtuning, we created the songs in a way that it fits for one guitar since we became four members. We have grown up, so I think we express that image now with more adult-like clothes.  But on the contrary there are also songs that were sung in a fresh way. If I start talking about details now then here as well there is no end, so please just listen to them a lot! I know you do though! Please try to feel it. It would be nice if you can enjoy it double as much as before. And please tell me whatever you think about it in fanletters, fanmails, replies or letters. In the end I’m the happiest when you’re happy.
So, we released that album and went on our TRACKS tour to Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka and Nagoya like weekend heros. It was fun to see you all having fun, you who haven’t seen us in these clothes live, who know us only from music videos on youtube or from photos. And everyone who did see us back then probably felt nostalgic. This was also an opportunity to meet old friends again. Speaking of that, this timing for releasing our best album... there might also be a lot of people who came to like us just recently. You probably have all different thoughts about it. In the end, we wanted to grab everyone and everything and make it a rehearsal for our 10th anniversary live that we’re aiming at. With that in mind we decided on this title “TRACKS” [like “cart track”]. During this TRACKS tour more than in anyone else there was something big inside of me that started to bloom. Right afterwards I was asked for an Rock&Read interview and we talked about many things. I could make many dreams come true.
No, this is still a talk of a dream that is lying ahead. Way before. I wonder how it will be in the end. That’s why even though I talk so much about it I don’t know what strength we will have. Whatever it is it feels like you always lose to the things you said before, so I will talk about it again when time comes. But for me the things we could accomplish were really huge. It’s painful to just keep on running without knowing where you go. I think if you do that your heart will shatter for sure. Even at times when I didn’t know where I was running, it was a huge help to know my goal.  In that story about the dream that is lying ahead there are Kuina and Koudai and Tomoya. Also our manager and the staff. That’s why they have to be there. More than anything, I want them to be happy. Starting with the members, I want to become a person that can shoulder also the lives of people around me. A person that other people want to have around and about whom they are happy to have spend their live together with. That’s what I want to become. I want people to think about me: “I’m happy I picked him.”
When I think back of this tour it makes me remember how they are with me for already more than 9 years and that we’ve appreciated all that together. That’s what this talk is all about. This isn’t amazing and I don’t want to talk about it in a self-satisfied way. But it is cool. Just, for me this is something big. Because I’m a vocalist.
It feels like until now I’ve only lived for myself. But now, for the first time, I’ve hoped for the happiness of other people from the bottom of my heart. I realized that this has become my greatest joy. Maybe thoughts are smaller now. Maybe it’s because so many big things have happened around me. And that’s why, in the end, I want to become a person that can pull them with me [=motivate them] in an extraordinary way.
There are people who think “I can’t do this.” or “This live is shit.” But only by continuing this band there were times, when, rather as bandman but as person the way of seeing life has changed. I’m sure the other members have experienced it as well. That’s the nature of words. This happens if you choose tomorrow. If you believe in Royz. That’s the way I am.
That’s the sproud that started blooming thanks to this tour. And I’m also really happy that we could become a band that can release a best album. The atmosphere of the tour was awesome and great and it was an awesome month. It was SO much fun! Thank you so much.
Well well, IGNITE was released on May 1st, the day when heisei turned to reiwa. We uploaded the IGNITE MV before but it would be great if you looked forward to the coupling songs. We can grow even more. If we were satisfied and stopped here we wouldn’t be able to show all the hope to the people who come to like us from here on. We became a band like that.
This is an unorganized long entry, as always, but thank you for reading until here. It seems like it will be a good 10th year. Well then, talk to you in the next era! (so cool)
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mistress-of-the-obvious · 6 years ago
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Thoughts On Hikaru Quitting Spacecraft and Idle Speculation
Hikaru quitting Spacecraft was surprising and also not. Her message months back stating there was “more behind the scenes” could have meant anything.
It could have meant that she was happy, working on a single, and to please wait. It could have meant she was unhappy and planning to leave Spacecraft when her contract was expiring…that could also have meant she was working on a single since we didn’t know when that is. I just sort of shrugged.
Since that message I have been very unhappy when I’ve seen Hikaru and Wakana. Hikaru’s message was deliberately vague and the idea the she was miserable counting down the days to the end of her contract was heartbreaking. The fact that she was clearly getting email, snail mail, and messages sent to her directly asking what was going on because Spacecraft, her own representative company, refused to explain even a tiny bit and thus refuse to do their job upset me. She was clearly upset enough to write a message about and yet Spacecraft never addressed it. I don’t doubt Wakana is getting similar mail.
In more strangeness, Yuuka Nanri is still listed on Spacecraft’s official site. There is going to be a big anniversary event for Flying Dog with FictionJunction Yuuka. This is pretty big news as she’s been inactive since 2016. Nowhere on the site. She has her own little site that while it has its own domain name has the same design as some of the other sites hosted by Spacecraft. Last news: 2016. Her blog has an update from September saying she’ll be at the Flying Dog event. I suspect her to disappear from Spacecraft’s roster either before the event or sometime after.
In the case of Yuuka, I didn’t think much of it before the event as she went inactive when she became married and had a lot of health problems going back to 2013 slowing her career. It’s pretty typical for Japanese society to expect women after they get married to have children and thus be full time mothers. That is changing though, especially as not all married Japanese women want to or do become mothers.
So when I first saw Yuuka some months back, it was “Wait a minute…oh she’s retired and they’re keeping her on there because she’s still technically under contract. If Spacecraft were to terminate her contract before it was up, they would owe her money.” Now, there’s this event…and they aren’t promoting her.
Going back to Keiko’s trademark claim, I have some new information where the results are rather curious.
I found this great youtube channel called TheJapanChannelDcom. It’s by an Australian man with a Japanese wife, children, and has been living in the Nagano region for over a decade at least. While enjoying the channel, I found a video that indirectly dealt with Keiko’s trademark claim.
There was a video dealing the then potential breakup of the huge group SMAP (you can see the video here: https://youtu.be/gPBgFZYu9iw). SMAP was a boy band. The now former members are in their 40s and in everything. Movies, tv shows, and at the time still active in their music group. Their talent agency was Johnny and Associates sometimes referred to as Johnny’s. The group broke up in December of 2016 and it was all over Japanese news.
The big rumor at the time was that four of the five members wanted to quit Johnny’s, but still continue in some fashion together. Fans were worried for three reasons: 1) the trademark was owned by Johnny’s. 2) Johnny’s could make their lives very difficult, as they are a very powerful talent agency. 3) There is a stigma of shame surrounding leaving a talent agency, mostly if you have been with one for a long time. This is the perception that the agency built the talent up and that the talent owes it to the company to stay.
What happened was one member stayed with the agency, one went on to something else, and three went to another agency called CULEN. It seems it’s theirs as right now CULEN is just listed as them. They also have a website called atarashiichizu. At this time they are promoting their individual works and have not released anything together, but it’s only been almost two years.
So what does this have to do with Keiko? Typically a talent agency will decide they want a music group or singer and hire them. They trademark the name and choose the songwriters the singer/group will work with. They also work to have a contract signed with a record company. I might be wrong on a few details, but that’s the general picture. The only thing different with Spacecraft was Yuki Kajiura and whether she owned any of that trademark. The fact that after Yuki left, the name Kalafina continued suggested it was owned by Spacecraft.
Would Keiko not know any of this? Highly doubtful. Not only was speculation regarding SMAP all over the news in late 2016, there were also negotiations with Yuki Kajiura and Spacecraft prior to her leaving that affected the group. Knowing how active Keiko was in her advocating for both herself and Wakana and Hikaru (we see this in the 10th anniversary film), she would have kept tabs on it. This on top of the fact that she was signed with Spacecraft with Ayaka Ito for Itokubo. She seems like she has a good idea how the Japanese entertainment industry works.
Even if she didn’t know, the company she hired to represent her would be able to find out if anyone registered that trademark. As someone who has dealt with civil court paper work here in the US regarding my mom and my uncle, I can tell you lawyers and law firms don’t make much money filing these paper work claims. Most of the fee goes to dealing with the bureaucracy. I doubt Japan is much different. In fact, Japan’s bureaucracy seems worse. They would tell her not to waste her time and theirs…unless there was some other point.
What that point was, I don’t know. What we do know is that after she formally told Spacecraft she was leaving, a few days later she filed that claim. Unlike Kaori’s long blog post when she left or Hikaru’s handwritten letter, Spacecraft posted Keiko’s mere one paragraph statement for her. Then there was the letter released for Harmony 4 where people thought it sounded like they were blaming Keiko. While I wouldn’t quite go that far, it was cold in the English translation.
Japan is interesting in that there’s this spectator sport regarding apologies. When a celebrity screws up, like in the case of a member of SMAP a few years back, whom was caught being drunk in public at night, said celebrity will publically apologize on television. People will watch and discuss this apology: how good it was or wasn’t, whether the person bowed deeply enough, whether they meant it or not, etc. Celebrities will be sent on apology tours on various shows.
With this in mind Spacecraft was at best completely tone death at worst they’re arrogant. Since new management took over they have lost 12 people. Most this year. It’s not just people associated with Yuki Kajiura but also long established voice actors.
Based on the little bit I know, what happened with Yuki Kajiura and Spacecraft is that the new management wanted to add restrictions to her. The previous administration let her do what she wanted for the most part.
With Keiko I suspect something similar. Again complete speculation on my part. What we know is the official line is that Keiko didn’t see a Kalafina without Yuki Kajiura as the songwriter. We know this isn’t quite the case as there was that interview where Yuki revealed she was taking a step back allowing them to use other songwriters, she would likely contribute a few songs, and be more of a manager and mentor.
One thing I found surprising was with the tabloid news articles, which were highly accurate, was the statement that if Keiko had stayed they would have headed to the recording studio early this year. Of course, the three of them were touring all last year, so where would they have the time to vet songwriters and find out how well the interaction is…unless Spacecraft wanted to manage them as a standard pop group where they were the sole deciders. If they were being controlling with Yuki Kajiura, why wouldn’t they do that with Keiko, Hikaru, and Wakana?
I suspect this in part with how Hikaru opened her letter, “I, Hikaru, left Spacecraft on good terms (paraphrasing)…” Why would she say that unless someone left not on good terms recently? Again that’s speculation, but we do have some albeit small bit of evidence Yuki and/or Keiko didn’t exactly leave on the greatest terms. She certainly wanted to squash any rumors before they started.
Interestingly, I also suspect that Wakana has more freedom with Spacecraft being solo since there is less money and expectations.
As far as more idle speculation on my part:
Yuki stated recently she has 18 new songs done for a project and is still at the studio recording more. I suspect Keiko to pop up in some of those songs. It might even be a Keiko centric project.
The reason why Hikaru has a Twitter and was interested in having an Instagram, is in part because she’s floating going solo. She maybe in some FictionJunction concerts here and there, but she’s more interested in going solo. Yuki stated she was considering going solo for some time. Also based on her massive support, about 6,000 followers within around 24 hours, not only fans but Yuki, FMB members, Atsuko from Angela, and a director from Animelo concert series, tells me she’s in good position. It also tells me that industry professionals have an idea what was going on with Spacecraft and didn’t like it.
I find it interesting that while there has been an announcement for Wakana’s new single, there has been nothing about an album. Based on her tour setlist she already has enough original songs for an EP. I’m curious what record company she’s on. Is this a new contract or is she piggybacking on Kalafina’s? That might be the reason why Spacecraft refused to fold the group. They are still listed on Spacecraft’s site as though they’re active. It will be interesting to see if the next Harmony magazine contains the name Kalafina on it or if it turns into Wakana’s fanclub. Simply put, I wouldn’t be surprised if Wakana’s contract ends sometime next year and she chooses not to renew.
If Wakana leaves, I do not see a full reformation of Kalafina. While this can be done under a different name, the three of them do not have the finances to form a special group like the three former members of SMAP (which even they have not yet released something together yet). Instead, I anticipate things like the three of them performing an old Kalafina song or two during a FictionJunction concert or a song released by Yuki Kajiura here and there that is essentially a Kalafina song (Wakana, Keiko, Hikaru and Yuriko and/or Remi as assist).
Be on the look out if Keiko tries to go after that trademark claim after Spacecraft drops using Kalafina. I’m not sure if she will or how long a trademark needs to be inactive in Japan to file a claim, but it will give us a good idea if she filed this last one for mysterious unknown purposes or not.
I suppose that’s enough silly idle speculation on my part. Much of this stuff we will never know and frankly don’t have a right to know since all of this is very personal.
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moriavis · 6 years ago
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Hello, everyone! It has been a month, let me tell you. I honestly have no idea how long this entry is going to be, so I'm just going to stick everything behind a cut.
To be honest, I don't even really know where to start. I didn't write anything for all of February because I went into a blurry, weird depressive slump where the very idea of opening my laptop seemed too exhausting. What a trial, I'm shocked I managed to get it open today. I went in for my annual physical almost two weeks ago and my nurse practitioner (a very lovely woman, super easy to talk to) diagnosed me officially with anxiety and depression, so she changed the appointment from general health to mental health so she could get me on meds ASAP. So I've been taking a generic version of Prozac (Fluoxetine) for a week and all I've experienced are side effects — drowsiness, mostly, and last night headaches became an issue, too. I don't really know how they're supposed to make me feel in the long run, but I suppose 'better' is subjective. I also went to three performances over the month, because there were some fun things at UCA. There was We Shall Overcome, a musical revue of African American musical traditions mixed with MLK Jr. speech excerpts, and I found it lovely. It was five extraordinary black performers, and their version of Still I Rise made my heart fly. One of them was also a chorus member on the The Greatest Showman soundtrack, and he won a Grammy for performing in This is Me. They were really stunning. Dad and I also saw Travis Tritt — when I was a teenager, I used to listen to country music much more than I do now, and he was one of the few I remembered fondly, even though I don't particularly agree with his politics. (Yes, I am one of those people who can't separate the artist from the art. Sorry, not sorry.) That being said, his entire performance was two hours of him and two guitars, and I found it to be an intimate little concert. He was funny and personable on stage, and I was really surprised. The last thing we saw was the 10th Anniversary National Tour of Rock of Ages. First of all, I can't believe I listened to that soundtrack ten years ago, I feel so fucking old! On the other hand, it was charming and funny and very meta, even though it wasn't as queer friendly as I hoped. (There was a queer couple, but queerness in itself seemed to be a punchline. I can't tell if that was the general OTT nature of the show, or if it was a flaw in the book. All the same, it made me a little uncomfortable.) BUT. The performances were great, it was funny and cheesy in all the right ways. Other than that one thing, it was a total blast. I guess the last thing I've done happened yesterday — @mintdivision and I wandered the city yesterday because we didn't want to stay cooped up in our apartment, and we impulse bought ourselves a couple of ukuleles. After two days of practice, the fingers on my left hand are very sore, but I can almost play You are my Sunshine decently, so I consider that a win. :DDD
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cameoutstruggling93 · 2 years ago
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THE WONDER YEARS ARE GOING ON TOUR FOR THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GREATEST GENERATION ALBUM!!
HOW HAS IT BEEN 10 YEARS?!?!?
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blankasolun · 5 years ago
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It is the 10th anniversary of Ronnie James Dio’s death today so I am posting this article from Metal Hammer. Expect more Ronnie related articles next week.
Ronnie James Dio: A Life In Metal
By Malcolm Dome (Metal Hammer) March 03, 2014
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In 2014, Metal Hammer celebrated the released of tribute album Dio: This Is Your Life by looking back at the man’s inspirational career
Ronnie James Dio is more than an icon. He is among the most articulate and exhaustive representatives the metal community has ever had. See, even now, some four years after his death, you still think of the man in the present tense. A measure of his continuing impact.
“If you wanted to introduce aliens to what metal stands for, then you’d pick Ronnie as the man to convince them it’s got a lot going for it,” said the late Deep Purple keyboard master Jon Lord. And it’s hard to argue with that sentiment.
Born in New Hampshire to parents of Italian descent, Ronald Padavona listened to a lot of opera when growing up, but it was in 1957 that he got the rock’n’roll bug and formed his first band, the Vegas Kings. He was a bassist at the time, but quickly switched to vocals, as he strived to find the right style to suit his voice.
His first official single, with the band that started to make his name, The Red Caps, was released in 1958. Titled Conquest, it arrived at a time when Elvis Presley, Dean Martin and Chuck Berry still ruled the charts.
“I got into rock’n’roll through the radio,” Dio would recall in 1988. “It was an escape from reality, but like so many others, it inspired me to try my luck in a band.”
By 1960, he’d changed his name to Ronnie Dio – allegedly inspired by the Italian-American gangster Johnny Dio – but despite releasing a succession of singles under different band names, nothing appeared to be working for the young singer.
“I always knew something was wrong,” he later admitted. “But when Elf arrived, I found my home in heavy music.”
Originally formed as The Electric Elves in 1967, the band became Elf in 1972 when they released their first album. Self-titled, it was produced by Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover, and drummer Ian Paice, and kickstarted Dio’s journey into heavy metal history.
“You knew that while the band were good, it was Ronnie who was outstanding,” Roger recalled with admiration years later. “Elf were doing a lot of touring opening up for Deep Purple in the States, and they were getting bigger. It appeared this lot would be the next big thing out of America.”
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Sadly, that wasn’t to be the case; they recorded just two more albums, including the celebrated 1975 Trying To Burn The Sun, before Ritchie Blackmore took a major hand in the future of Dio’s career.
“We were on tour, when on a day off Ritchie’s guitar tech knocked on my hotel room door,” recalled Dio. “He said the man would like me to sing on a track he was gonna record away from Purple.”
The song in question was Black Sheep Of The Family, a cover version that Ritchie had failed to convince the rest of Purple to go along with. But what was intended as a one-off session with Dio and the rest of Elf (inevitably minus guitarist Steve Edwards) would ultimately turn into Rainbow. There was an obvious magic here from the start. Dio and Ritchie, together with a revolving cast of huge talents, worked on three studio albums and one live release. And it was 1976’s Rising, the band’s second offering, that proved the first of a number of true classics to feature the great vocalist’s name.
“I knew we had something special at the time,”
Dio said 10 years later. “But did I know it would stand up? You hoped that would be the case, however you can only see this retrospectively. I’m grateful so many people rate the album.”
However, Ritchie Blackmore’s steady drift towards a more commercial approach was at odds with Dio’s own penchant for a more romantic, gothic style of lyrical imagery.
“I love writing about fantasy,” Dio mused. “To me, this reflects the epic quality of our music. While there is a place for realism, it doesn’t allow me as much scope for allegory as I can get through my accepted style.”
Things came to a head after the recording of 1978’s Long Live Rock ’N’ Roll album. Itself successful, this only fuelled Ritchie’s desire to streamline the band.
“We just agreed to differ,” Dio remembers, while keyboard player Don Airey (who had just been brought into the lineup) has a vivid memory of his first day in rehearsal:
“I walked in as Ronnie was walking out. When I asked what had happened, I was told ‘He’s just quit the band.’ I was so looking forward to working with him, but it wasn’t to be.”
Over the subsequent years, Dio remained diplomatic about his relationship with the guitarist who gave him his big break:
“I have nothing but the highest respect for him, and if the chance came to work with Ritchie again,then I’d be delighted. My door is always open.”
The end of his tenure with Rainbow brought a fresh challenge for Ronnie Dio, who had now firmly established himself as one of the great singers on the heavy rock scene. Black Sabbath were floundering after firing Ozzy, but a chance meeting with Tony Iommi in late 1979 at the conveniently named Rainbow Bar And Grill in West Hollywood altered Ronnie’s life. He was asked to join Sabbath. And we all know what followed.
“None of us had any money,” Dio said of those early Sabbath days. “But what we did have was a real belief. I know what I can do, and was convinced I could help to take Sabbath in a different direction. The other guys were on the same wavelength.”
“We wrote Children Of The Sea on the first day, and it flowed from there,” laughed a still-amazed Tony several years later. “Ronnie was exactly what we needed.”
Heaven And Hell was released in 1980 and has since become, quite rightly, regarded as amongst the greatest metal albums of all time. A year later, the heavier Mob Rules proved this was no flash in the pan. By this time, Dio had made another bit of metal history by trademarking the devil’s horns gesture, which has since become the signature sign of metalheads across generations.
“Ozzy used the peace sign, so I wanted something different,” recalled Dio. “I remember my grandmother used this sign to ward off evil; I thought it would work in the context of Sabbath. But I had no idea it would catch on.”
But, following the release of Live Evil in 82, Dio left the band because of interminable arguments appearing during certain production cycles.“It was a misunderstanding,” Tony has said since.
“The studio engineer was telling us that Ronnie would come in and turn up his vocals when we weren’t there. And he told Ronnie that Geezer Butler and I were turning up our instruments in his absence. The result was confusion and anger.”
“I got a call from Geezer, who told me I was sacked,” admitted Dio. “But in a way that was so positive, because it meant I was free at last to do things my way.”
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However, the new band was starting from ground zero, as Dio revealed later on.
“I wasn’t even thinking about doing anything outside of Black Sabbath, until I got the call from Geezer,” revealed Ronnie. “I certainly wasn’t holding back any songs from the band, that’s not my way. So, when Vinny Appice [drums] and I got together, I quickly wrote two songs – Holy Diver and Don’t Talk To Strangers.”
Not a bad start. With bassist Jimmy Bain and then unknown guitarist Vivian Campbell completing the line-up, the band took the name of Dio.
“It wasn’t an ego thing on my part,” insisted the frontman. “I had a certain reputation, and it just made sense.”
Holy Diver came out in 1983 and made a huge impact in the UK and the States, where Dio’s stature with Rainbow and Sabbath stood him in good stead. This was the third iconic album he had blessed in a mere smattering of years, and his reputation grew steadily as 1984’s The Last In Line and 85’s Sacred Heart cemented Dio’s place as one of the elite hard rock bands on the planet. Ronnie even found time to put together the Hear ’n Aid project to raise funds through the metal community for the starving in Africa. While such endeavours were testament to the man’s character, it was his band that remained his chief focus over the following decade or so, with Dio’s lineup shifting a few times to keep the band’s creative output fresh and interesting.
In 1992, Dio returned to the Sabbath fold for the Dehumanizer album, as the band showed they had the rigour and vision to update their sound without losing their innate place in history. However, while the album was well-received, Dio’s reunion with his Sabbath chums came crashing down when the band agreed to support Ozzy at the Costa Mesa Amphitheater in California later the same year.
“I have no problem with Ozzy,” Dio remarked at the time. “But I just feel that it’s beneath a band of this stature to support their former singer. It shows a lack of self-respect, and I wouldn’t be part of this.”
Sabbath did the set with Rob Halford on vocals, and the reunion was back in the dumper. As for Dio, he returned to his own band, putting together a new line-up which was altogether more rooted in the realism of the era.
“It was a different Dio at that time,” insists keyboardist Scott Warren. “It was cool. And intense. It was the 1990s. Things had changed I remember thinking, ‘This is biker music.’”
“Every night, Ronnie would come up to each of us individually and say, ‘Have a good gig’,” sighs bassist Jeff Pilson. “That was the measure of the man. He cared about people, and wanted you to feel part of everything. I don’t think I have ever had so much fun working with anyone. Each night was a pleasure.”
Dio continued to enjoy a lengthy stint with his main band, with five studios albums released to generally positive acclaim between 1993-2004. After that, however, there was to be yet another twist in the tale, when Dio regrouped with Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, together with Vinny Appice (who had been a part of the Dio-era Sabbath line-ups, as well as a crucial member of Dio’s solo band). They avoided any diplomatic fallout with the Ozzy camp by taking the name Heaven & Hell, touring to huge acclaim and releasing the album The Devil You Know in 2009 to overwhelmingly positive reviews. But it was all stopped in its tracks when Ronnie was diagnosed with stomach cancer in late 2009. Tragically, despite all the hopes and prayers around the world, Ronnie James Dio passed away on May 16, 2010. The tears and tributes to him at the High Voltage Festival two months later in London underlined what a massive loss he was to the metal community, and how much he was loved by hundreds of thousands of fans across generations and continents.
“Ronnie Dio can’t be replaced,” Anthrax’s Scott Ian said shortly after he died. “He was unique. As long as Ronnie’s music is played, he’ll be in our minds.”
Now, some of the greatest names in metal are paying homage to the man, and in doing so raising funds for the Stand Up & Shout Cancer Trust, set up in his memory. From Metallica to Anthrax, Motörhead to the Scorpions, and Halestorm to Killswitch Engage, there are a plethora of major metal mavens who’ve lent their considerable talents to make this album come to fruition. They perform songs from Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio, yet again emphasising the insurmountable debt we all owe this most treasured and unique of metal singers.
And while he may have been born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, his heart was certainly won over by metal’s homeland.
“Ronnie loved the English way of life,” opined Tony Iommi in 2010 of the man’s penchant for his would-be adopted country. “He enjoyed a beer and a curry, and even took things so far as to have his house in LA built like a castle!”
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Above all else, though, and as loved as he was across every country his music touched, Ronnie James Dio himself always knew his worth. “I never underestimate my talent,” he said during one of the last interviews he gave before his death. “But nor do I overestimate it. I believe if you get that balance right, then you’ll have a healthy perspective on your place in music.”
At the time, Dio hinted that he could see an end to his performing days, but not to his involvement in music. When it was suggested to him that he might retire if he dropped even a small distance from his exacting standards, even if nobody else could detect it, he responded:
“Maybe there is some truth in there. I would never like to be one of those singers who carries on long past the point at which they can deliver. It’s a shame when a legend is diminished, and while I would never put myself into the category of ‘legend’, I can’t ever see myself disappointing fans who have paid good money.
“But the one thing I will never lose is my love of music. I still enjoy coming across young talent, and helping to guide them if I can.”
The breadth and depth of the classic songs on Dio:This Is Your Life proves that, more than anything else, Ronnie Dio’s life is defined by the music he has left us. And that’s an enduring epitaph.
This was published in Metal Hammer issue 255.
ROCK ‘N ROLL CHILDREN
COREY TAYLOR
“I heard that they were putting together this tribute album and they were trying to get hold of me and I was like, ‘Dude, I have to be on that record!’. When it looked like it was going to be difficult to get either of my bands together to do it, I was just like, ‘Fuck it’ and I put a band together myself, just me and some of my buds. I was that desperate to be involved. I was lucky enough to meet Ronnie on a few occasions, in fact I can remember the first time… It was at an awards ceremony and we were both nominated for the best vocalist award, which, to me, was an honour just to be in the same category as him. He won and I was so stoked, then I was being interviewed later on and he walks in to say ‘Hi.’ If you watch the video you can see on my face I’m just totally awestruck by the guy. The thing that most impressed me about Ronnie onstage was that he just made it look so effortless, so natural. The Dio era was my favourite time of his because it’s when he stepped out on his own. He wasn’t a member of Rainbow or Sabbath, he was just Ronnie. The guy’s a legend.”
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DORO
“I first saw Dio in 85 or 86. I didn’t meet him then, but it was the first time that I saw him. I went to his show somewhere in Germany, and we were standing on the sound desk, because I’m small! I tell you, I haven’t had this kind of experience before or after. I got chills, I couldn’t stand up, it was unbelievable. The sound blew me away, and really, I was so fascinated. I thought it was the greatest, most mindblowing thing I have ever seen. I was deeply, deeply impressed. I met Ronnie later on tour in 87 – he was playing pool, and we talked and he said, ‘We’re so happy you’re on tour with us. If there’s ever a problem, don’t go to the manager, don’t go to the tour manager, don’t go to my assistant. Just come straight to me.’ He was always very kind and lovely. We developed a great friendship.”
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GLENN HUGHES
“Ronnie was a human being who had time for all people – those he worked with and his family. But more importantly, he devoted a lot of his aftershow time to his fans, and would listen to them tell their stories of how their lives had been touched by his work, and he never, ever forgot a fan’s name. He was an amazing one-of-a-kind artist, who gave his love and life and art to the heavy metal genre. I first met Ronnie in the fall of 1973, when he fronted his upstate New York Band, Elf. They were opening for my band at the time, Deep Purple. I remember being backstage when Elf started playing, and I heard this thunderous super-lung voice echoing around the arena, so I went onto the stage to see and hear what was calling me. I was immediately turned on to something, someone, who I had not heard before, and that was a thrill for me. He was a master at his craft and soon, before our eyes, he would become heavy metal’s greatest vocalist. Ronnie was so believable in his realm, singing of dragons, dark lords and distant oceans that carried us all away. We knew we were not alone, because Ronnie was our formidable rider in the eye of the sky, who would lead us back to our safe land. Ronnie, my brother, I want to thank you for all the hours, days and years that we spent together, and on behalf of your loving fans – we believed we’d catch the Rainbow… See you again, dear heart.”
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WENDY DIO
“I’m so pleased with how this album came out, everyone involved has just been a pleasure to work with. I know Ronnie would have been so humbled and so proud with these incredible artists paying homage to him. When you have Metallica saying ‘We can’t pick one song – we have to do a medley of four!’… well, he’d have been honoured. I’ve so many wonderful memories of Ronnie, we had 30-plus years together and we were so happy. It’s hard to pick out one specific memory, but the early days when he was starting out was an exciting time and he was so happy to get back together with Sabbath and rebuild those bridges at the end of his life. That was fitting. I think people loved Ronnie because they could relate to him, he never changed, he stood for what he believed in and never wanted to let people down. He was always delighted to speak to his fans, as I said, he was a humble man, a genuine man. He always gave everything, even towards the end when he was suffering with these stomach pains, which he thought was just indigestion, he never gave less than everything he had. I just hope this album raises a lot of money for cancer research and carries on the memory of Ronnie and keeps his legacy alive.”
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The 10th Anniversary of Ronnie’s Death It is the 10th anniversary of Ronnie James Dio’s death today so I am posting this…
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homestuckcanonconfirmer · 5 years ago
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15 Tips About best beginner piano
Correction Appended
On an album of bittersweet childrens tunes that she wrote in excess of a decade back, the woman who came to generally be known only given that the piano Instructor offered what, in hindsight, looks like an eerie glimpse of her have long run.
Im going away currently to an area so distant, in which no person appreciates my title, she wrote within the lyrics of the music referred to as Going.
When she wrote that track, she was young and vivacious, a piano Instructor and freelance tunes writer who beloved Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river Seems, long walks and anything about The big apple.
On a kind of beloved walks, through Central Park in the intense Sunshine of a June day in 1996, a homeless drifter conquer her and attempted to rape her, leaving her clinging to everyday living. Once the assault, the phrases to her track arrived real. She moved absent, outside of New York City, from her aged life, and all but her closest buddies didn't know her identify. To the remainder of the earth, she was -- such as a lot more well-known jogger attacked in Central Park seven many years before -- an nameless symbol of the urban nightmare. She was the piano Trainer.
Now, around the tenth anniversary from the assault, she is celebrating what is apparently her total recovery from brain trauma. She is forty two, married, with a small youngster. She's Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and she or he hopes to explain to her Tale, her way.
Her medical doctor advised her it would consider 10 years to recover, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I feel my lifetime has actually been redefined by Central Park, she explained many times ago, her voice gentle and hopeful. In advance of park; immediately after park. Will there at any time be a time when I dont Imagine, Oh, This is actually the 10th anniversary, the eleventh anniversary?
She spoke in her modest ranch home inside a wooded subdivision inside a Ny suburb. She sat inside of a dining space strewn with toys, surrounded by photographs of her cherubic, dim-haired two-year-aged daughter. A Steinway grand filled half the area, and at one stage she sat down and played. Her playing was forceful, but she appeared humiliated to Enjoy various bars, and shrugged, as opposed to answering, when questioned the identify of the piece. She requested that her daughter and her city not be named.
She phone calls that working day, June 4, 1996, the day After i was damage.
Hers was the first in a string of assaults by exactly the same guy on four Females around 8 days. The last target, Evelyn Alvarez, 65, was beaten to death as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleansing store, and in the end, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to existence in jail.
Nevertheless the attack over the piano Instructor will be the a single people today seem to be to remember quite possibly the most. Component of the fascination should do with echoes from the 1989 attack within the Central Park jogger. But In addition it frightened men and women in a method the assault around the jogger did not mainly because its circumstances had been so mundane.
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It didn't take place in the remote Section of the park late in the evening, but in the vicinity of a popular playground at three in the afternoon. It could have transpired to anybody. The tension was heightened by the mystery on the piano academics id.
For 3 days, as law enforcement and Medical doctors tried to see who she was, she lay in a coma in her clinic mattress, nameless. Her mothers and fathers have been on holiday vacation and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Lastly, one among her students recognized a law enforcement sketch and was in the position to detect her inside the hospital by her fingers, mainly because her facial area was swollen beyond recognition. The police didn't launch her title.
The very last thing she remembers about June four, 1996, is offering a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Avenue, then putting her extensive hair in a ponytail and heading out for the stroll. She isn't going to remember the assault, Despite the fact that she has listened to the accounts on the police and prosecutors.
To me its just like a simple fact I learned and memorized, she reported. As if I were being a university student in school researching historical past.
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She isn't going to take into consideration The person who did it. I might have been angry for a moment, although not for much longer than that, she reported. How could I be offended at John Royster? He was declared not crazy, but I assume by our standards he was.
Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her medical doctor at Ny Hospital-Cornell Health-related Middle, as it was recognized in 1996, advised reporters that she had a ten percent possibility of survival. Physicians experienced to get rid of her forehead bone, which was afterwards changed, for making area for her swelling brain. When her mother produced a general public appeal to pray for my daughter, 1000's did.
After 8 times, she arrived away from a coma, very first in the vegetative point out, then in a childlike condition. As she recovered, she slept minimal and talked regularly, at times in gibberish. I had been finding mad at folks when they didnt respond to these text, she said.
Like an Alzheimers affected individual, she experienced minor quick-time period memory and would neglect visitors when they still left the place.
More than many months, she needed to relearn ways to walk, dress, read through and publish. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, frequented daily to Perform guitar for her. He encouraged her to Perform the piano, against the advice of her physical therapists, who believed she might be disappointed by her incapacity to Perform the way in which she the moment had. Mr. Scherr performed Beatles duets with her, taking part in the left-hand part even though she played the right.
That was my greatest therapy, she mentioned.
In August, she moved back again dwelling to New Jersey, together with her father, an engineer, and mom, a schoolteacher. She visited aged haunts and named pals, striving to revive her shattered memory. I used to be quite obsessed with remembering, she reported. Any memory decline was to me an indication of abnormality or deficit.
Her therapists imagined her development was great, but her two sisters protested that she was not the deep thinker she were.
What bothered her most was that she experienced misplaced the chance to cry, as if a faucet inside her brain had been turned off. One night, nine months after she was damage, she stayed up late to view the John Grisham movie A Time to Get rid of. Just after her father had gone to mattress, she viewed a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on trial for killing two Gentlemen who had raped his youthful daughter.
The faucet opened, as well as tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought about my mother and father, my father, and the things they went as a result of, she stated. Minimal by little, my sensation returned, my depth of brain returned.
Urged by her sisters, she went back again to school and acquired a masters degree in audio education.
Not every thing went effectively. She and Mr. Scherr split up five years following the assault, nevertheless they continue to be friends. She dated other Males, but she generally informed them in regards to the assault instantly -- she couldn't aid it, she mentioned -- and they hardly ever called for any second date.
We have to search out you a person, her Good friend David Phelps, a guitar participant, claimed 4 yrs in the past, ahead of introducing her to Liam McCann, a pc technician and newbie drummer. For as soon as, she didn't say anything concerning the attack until eventually she acquired to find out Mr. McCann, then when she did, he admired her energy.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who experienced usually frequented her at her bedside when she was from the hospital, married them in his Times Sq. office. She wore a blue costume and pearls. Although she was pregnant, within a burst of creative imagination, she and her friends recorded When Had been Young, an album of childrens tunes that she experienced penned ahead of the assault, including the music Relocating. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, generated the CD. On it, her husband performs drums and he or she plays electric powered piano.
Is her existence as it had been? Not specifically, although she's hesitant to attribute the discrepancies to her injuries. Her final two piano pupils left her, without having contacting to clarify why, she claimed. She has resumed taking part in classical songs, but simple pieces, mainly because her daughter doesn't give her the perfect time to exercise. As for jazz, I dont even check out, she explained.
She would like to drive much more, emotion stranded during the suburbs, but she is easily rattled. She attempts to be written content with being dwelling and caring for her daughter.
Dr. Ghajar, a scientific professor of neurological surgical procedures at precisely what is now known as NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare facility/Weill Cornell Healthcare Middle, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann following the attack, claimed previous week that her degree of Restoration was unusual. Shes basically usual, he explained.
Other professionals, that are not Individually informed about Ms. Kevorkian McCanns scenario, tend to be more careful.
Regaining the chance to Engage in the piano may entail an Virtually mechanical process, a semiautomatic remember of what the fingers ought to do, reported Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of clinical rehabilitation drugs at Big apple University University of Drugs. As soon as brain-injured, you're generally Mind-hurt, for the rest of your daily life, Dr. Ben-Yishay mentioned. There's no heal, there is only intensive payment.
The more telling Element of a recovery, in his look at, is psychological, and on that rating he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns marriage and child as an important victory.
For her aspect, the piano Trainer understands she has adjusted, but she has built her peace with it. I was kind of a hyper ---- I dont know if I had been a kind A, but I had been bold, she states. Why was I so formidable? I used to be a piano Instructor. I dont know what the ambition was about. I really did return to the individual Im designed to be.
Correction: June thirteen, 2006, Tuesday An short article on Thursday about Kyle Kevorkian McCann, a piano teacher who was beaten and sexually assaulted ten years back in Central Park, misstated the title of her album of childrens music. It can be Even though Have been Youthful, not When Have been Young.
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i-traveller · 5 years ago
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Nagasaki
Friday 8 March
We have sailed around the bottom of Kyushu island, Japan’s most Southerly island and are now on the western coast at the town of Nagasaki.
Nagasaki was the site of the 2nd Atomic Bomb that effectively ended WWII on 9 August 1945 so is steeped in history, albeit modern warfare history.
When the bomb was dropped with the enormous loss of life it was said that nothing would grow again in at least 70 years, now 73 and a bit years on, the City is flourishing and indeed some plants started growing again only a few weeks after the bomb was dropped.
Nagasaki tram
We are moored close into the town and as we have an afternoon tour booked, take a stroll around the immediate area with it’s quite ancient looking tram a few shops and Oura Catholic Cathedral, the oldest wooden church built in 1865 which withstood the bomb albeit with some damage.
Oura Catholic church, Nagasaki
The shops in the area near the port were selling Japanese cartoon memorabilia or so it seemed, nothing to get excited about.
Our tour this afternoon is to Mount Inasa which has a commanding view of the valley.
From the observation deck at Mt. InasaP overlooking Nagasaki
The coach drops us at the Cable Car station where we ascend to more or less the top as the last bit is by lift to a walkway through a car park.
Another lift takes you to the top although if you are able, the 79 steps up the broad circular stairwell is achievable in about the same time.
The cable car attendants are typical Japanese friendly staff, bowing to you and pointing to where the cable car is going.
One of the reasons why the atomic bomb damage over Nagasaki was not as widespread as Hiroshima is the geography with the blast being confined to the valley.
Japanese housing estate – steep hillside variety
Housing was scattered around us by the Cable car, very steep steps to the houses and no car parking.
Japan has an issue with housing as no one now wants to live in such housing, preferring modern houses so these are hard to sell.
Japanese shrine
Once down from the Mountain, we viewed some of the memorials and shrines although for once in Japan, there was not a lot of English in the descriptions. (Generally, they had a good translation.)
We then continued our tour stopping at The Peace Park. Unfortunately, the Peace Statue and the water fountains at the Peace Park were both under renovation. 
Peace Statue undergoing refurbishment
It was somewhat poignant that nearly all of the memorials in the Peace Park were from countries with Communist sympathies.
The Peace Statue dates from August 1955, the 10th Anniversary of the Bomb.
The elevated right hand points to the threat of Nuclear weapons and the outstretched left symbolyses tranquility and World Peace.
I am not sure what I was expecting but it was not as dramatic as I had anticipated.
Interestingly, a crew member on the tour with us said she had visited the Kamikaze museum the previous day which she found very moving with the other side of the war being told.
Original parts of the church not destroyed in 1945
Our final stop of the day was at the Peace Museum.  Sadly not enough time was allowed here and in any event, with no internet for about a week, advantage was taken of the good Internet there.
The Museum was approached from across a road from a park which is directly below where the bomb exploded and of course has many reminders.
Part of the church that stood there still remains and a new statue erected at the 50th anniversary.
Description of the 50th Anniversary monument
Once inside, the museum there is a great deal to see including the church clock that was stopped as the Bomb went off and has been kept in it’s condition as it was at the time, a reconstruction of the church and of course many photos of the devastation that occurred.
A very moving experience even after so many years. One of the most poignant comments though was from the tour guide who when talking about the bomb said that as a result, Japan surrendered.
That must still hurt a very proud nation to have to say that.
Photographs of the devastation
We are back to the ship now, passing the one pillar of the San Shinto Shrine that remained after the blast.
This was an exceptionally moving tour and experience.
Let us hope that this is a salutary lesson to all countries and that devastation like this never happens again. I think I will remember this tour for a very long time.
Entertainment tonight was from the Headliners with a new show based on The Greatest Showman – a new show but the same type of dance routines as we sail off towards Hong Kong.
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Date & time of the devastation
Nagasaki, Japan Friday 8 March We have sailed around the bottom of Kyushu island, Japan’s most Southerly island and are now on the western coast at the town of Nagasaki.
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top1course · 5 years ago
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Behind-The-Scenes Tour Of Dan Peña’s MASSIVE Guthrie Castle – Part 2/2
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This is this, this is him or less when I first met in, and is 2324, it’s hard to believe it’s, the same young man, we came down to visit me and, 2003 when I said that, buy me breakfast, i really think it was going to come, it’s coming from Canada, but he showed up, and they and we spent a couple hours., and that was the beginning, and, proud, and the remarkable about 10 years ago, and now he’s back, are you coming back, and the, the kids, add interface with, and, we will be doing this, but he hasn’t successful, and I bet the otter speaking in front of, and where I’m going to beat him like a rented mule, i mean, to get more out of it because, they ought to be at 7, seven-figure tickets, is Amity Road Rage, excellent, the top of his game but he’s going to make it better, Is that even make it better and the, any is going to continue because heart, amish people, are all they can be all the time, high performance, all they can be everything in their life, rochester in, services, provides, for the kids, i can’t tell you how often, htci, because it come out of his stable, and, i never, and, improved you know how many millions, alive, where they, provide themselves more money, what my name is, support the family, etc and, take a tour, part of the grounds, if you were here, and the, and I look forward to, thank you very much, so-so Dance YouTube Rodney King, remember 10 years ago, remember what’s bigger, much bigger than I thought, this even my hell is that the lawn I know how much it cost, how much it cost to add a hundred grand a month, that’s nothing breaks and a new machine, With the wall Garden that there is to it is to Hector’s that’s 4 and 1/2 acres, the ground 256 acres in a golf course, 9-hole golf course which is on both sides of the debate with a lock which is Lakewood, and we have Royal swans I don’t own the swans, the queen owns, that’s her property, currently we have the two adult swans and we have poor signal, before babies, overlooking at a lock, and his manicured as you know the estate’s manicured, most of my neighbors, not only do we live in all, whereas most of my neighbors living, horsham the castles they have it walled off because of the heating in it, you don’t need air conditioning, but, and most of the Lawns aren’t uncut manicured and of course we have the, glitch with the lights around the stage and the roads are tarmac, and it didn’t used to be that way I mean, San Jose.
Combination of gravel and dirt, and it’s, it’s a beautiful place in the world, weather forecast, crafts Direct, but I don’t drive 25 years and we have a driver, lady driver, or What She Drives Me In, and it sounded drives, aston Martin and the Ferrari but I can’t even, bedtime, southeast electric Drive the rolls, i don’t drive anymore and we used to back in the day when I had a helicopter to land a helicopter ride here, i Know video, hey, land about, 50 60 70 yards from the plane, then I walked, and I on to the British air jet, normani, airlines that I normally use, thinking about how much time, we’ve sold off our other, we had a place overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Rolling Hills California we had a place in actually a cheap, places in London, we have picture Monte Carlo, But it’s become a fishbone now, taurus, whataburgers are we got rid of all those over the last 5 or 10 years and, so the only home we have now is got three, and we celebrated last year are 450th anniversary of the castle, and, james the 3rd of Scotland gave Sir John Guthrie, in 1468, acres, about 2 million Acres, plus, bi-Rite, to Build a Home Care, different parts, celebs are going over the years, the newest part of the castle was in the late 1800s 1898 295, what is it the Ender and then there was some parts in the 1700s, and then it was joined in the middle 1800 it was joining you can see the difference in me, the stonework and it’s, 55000 square feet, if you live in all of it and the, of course you become famous, and we’re expecting a program to come out and BBC investment and the, Sports, at my age I just turned 74 at my age I’m still, very healthy, and I’m you know I’m in demand, and so are the, so I’m fortunate and blessed in my career, a lot longer than I ever thought, if I know you, for teaching and, is higher than teaching, when knife when can they came the first time it was, cracked right now you have 20 from what you were, you doing more events which I think, with Arthur anything was someone coming here, ., first of all it’s a b**** try to get here, but that’s not easy for a lot of people, the environment, unless you hear you don’t really know, spireon remember back then 10 years ago like coming here the biggest thing for me I got out of it, expanding the context, what I believe, what was living with my mom, when I saw this it was such a, Conch, and, to believe it’s one thing to say you believe but it, dicks, and it’s quite spectacular, and I was very impressed, i’m very impressed, and then I’m sure when the kids come and see that they’re Blown Away, i can’t be your nuts blown away and, the, or the next level is Big Chateau someplace or big it up someplace in the, helicopter helicopter, but I mean, you never going to, outdoor overdue or go over your wildest expectation, and the most, the more wild expectation the better, and so the kids the kids to follow you and the kids to follow me, they have to dream bigger, i have to think figure you’ve heard that some of the webinar some of that, students say that one of the best things the greatest things are the most, advantageous things they got away from experience here and experience with me, Is that the thing finger.
And you know guys were going to do 10 million dollar deals I’ll do a hundred million dollar deals, $10 billion dollar deal, and the not dissimilar to my thought process, when I you know when I when I die, realized and I flipped, my my idea is, do you know the bill real wealth, and that’s what the kids have done in in in fortunately you know I’m at 775 billion dollars in generational, well now with the kids, not dissimilar to yourself, and it is, it’s quite an honor to have done that, but it’s not for everybody, as you well know, yo I mean not everybody want to make the sacrifices, then what would be your, challenge expectations of me, gina from 22 years old and I’m almost, 3738, you’re still a kid, well I mean the place where you live but I mean there’s place, 100 times bigger, okay you leave you make quite a bit of money but and the, i do Porter the kids don’t understand how much it cost to be rich, the expenses that are associated with being rich, yoga, and you mentioned that you had a grand to keep this place going but I mean for yourself I mean to get get, water footprint, expand expand, beyond the shores of North America to to you know we talked about, high ticket closing, certificate, where they’re like an MBA or they’re like you know some sort of college degree or some sort of diploma, accreditation, and I mean that’s all possible, i mean it’s all possible and, what’s up are you done fabulous but I mean you got another I don’t know 10:20 or more years, but you can do this and look what you’ve accomplished, just in the last 10 years, I mean and you can do multiples of that, and I would expect multiples, did the best of the high performance kids, that I’ve had the privilege of coaching and you’re obviously one of them I mean you just scratch the surface, scratch the surface, you know and I say you touch a Billion Lives, and not only will you become a billionaire, what’s your change the fabric of the DNA of the planets, and you know you can touch A Billion Lives because it’s certainly a billion people that need more income, for sure I mean, it’s probably 6 p.m., sorry I mean your universe is is it’s a so large, i doubt you know it it it really depends on, if you get tired, it really depends I assume your health is going to stay good, and but, that looks aside, you know it’s as easy to say wash it I don’t need any more money why do this, But I haven’t seen that and I don’t think that’s going to happen, i think I know it’s not going to happen, the fact that you come here now after these years and you’re getting, refreshing and, yeah and right now there’s so much money, interest rates at 5000 year low, is so much money available on the planet, all you got to do is, this is the one we went public or coal mines, and in Kentucky, this is one of our offshore, rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, back in the day, this is, copy of our first annual report when we went public, india, is why I gave him some of the, menchie’s from a few seminars ago just fucken do it, these are various articles been very speech papers, over the years, has been written about in the, Wall Street Journal in various newspapers.
And this is when we were at 8500, company with 195 and 196, 102b 152 and 195, back in the late 90s, and there was a picture, yep yep this is the picture, christian on social media, that I took out, the company, back on my birthday at 35 years ago August 10th, and the quite extraordinary dig, and continued, a whole lot of, supernatural things over the years, it’s locked up, my office, and I think people need on this, doesn’t like, tractor, calling, doing deal, volume, and, i run the, various organizations and I’m privileged to be the head up, and this is where I come up with the ideas about changing the seminar and, the seminar you seen today was different than the seminar that was in July that was different than the seminar in June, and I, artifact, correct special of frog, Yes NM, price because, i know that, kitchen faucet part of my job, and this is the Frog, that you gave me, 16 years ago, i was wondering never forget, how I got here and it’s by kissing frogs by, and that means turning over rocks, looking at countless., talking to countless people, and, that’s why when I travel around the world, on my website if you want to talk to me for 20 minutes to make an appointment, and what time in Vancouver Los Angeles, dallas Texas or London, i see people normally in the hotel lobby, those could be a total waste., correct, they might be one correct, correct there may be one or two, that, actually come to fruition, and the two-thirds of my time is pro bono, because my time is for free, i’m either doing charity work, or I’m talking to universities, which is, most danger animal pastime, I’m talking at the hyperloop, the guys that are Drilling, elon Musk Underground, los Angeles, a few months ago, and I continue to do that and I could even join back, when we just came back from the Paul I talked at I talk to you one of them, the leading Engineering University, and Cat man do, and, the packhouse, and I really enjoy it, now give me my, my first seminar, one day one day outside the castle of the century in the last 20 years, it’ll be the first time, i’m giving it in, heathrow Airport, at the Sofitel Hotel, on January 18th, all-day seminar, but that the Catholic seminaries where I can make you a cannibal, and that’s really important, and what the kids out there don’t have, and that what we give them here, and I think, youTube, social media, thing called anything is, 74, doing a 5, 7-Day train, i do a two-day training Anaya, do that, to give back, it’s, 10 *, easier, but then Jesus called there, brother correct teach a bunch of kids, scratch, track Finish Line, but I mean our system procedures and, second to none, we don’t have the best of practice, we have the best of best, the best, and even today I mean this week, we’ve seen people in the last few weeks, listen to Jason, who just did this deal., australia, who’s attending the seminar, and the, the system works, it just does, it right now, i mean Levemir Hayden President Trump, exchange Finance, forever, dance around the world, easier to get money, and there’s just, plethora, financial opportunities, they didn’t exist, 5 years ago, and so I’m here to tell you., make hay while the sun shines, i mean, in the end we are, and this is, is grouper a 24 inch, All over the world.
Youngest age 18, is, 55 and actually you’re the average, average age of the 20 for kids, 37, guys gals, children boys and girls I mean go out and get it done I mean, what are you going to ask you what what are you going to tell your grandchildren, did you did during the greatest transformation of wealth, the world has ever seen, sit on your ass with your thumb up your ass, or that you went out, creating generational wealth, it’s up to you you know, up to you how you going to, address, your kids and grandkids, and I’m going to continue to do this one of them healthy, there’s no time limit or anything like that but, i didn’t think I’d be doing it at 74, abraham and so I, the next year’s, and the, unless I’m, i’m called by the president then, i’ll take a hiatus, Couple years off, but then, anita Baker.
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