Finally the sakura (cherry blossom) season is coming again this year. In this weekend there is the sakura festival in my place. It's held every year. But it was cloudy and windy today, so some of the sakura flowers are falling down on the ground. I hope it will be sunny tomorrow ... Sakura is really beautiful in this season. If it will be a good weather tomorrow, I will take some photos. April will start tomorrow, so I put sakura flowers falling on the top page of my Doug Aldrich fan site. How does it look?
Bon Jovi's new album "Lost Highway" seems to be completed. It will be out in June ... great! The producer is Dann Huff and John Shanks. I like Dann Huff as the singer and the guitarist too, so I really look forward to their new album. Bon Jovi will come to Japan for the special live in June. I can't see it, but I want to see them again on the next tour with this new album.
I was shocked to know that John West left Royal Hunt. I was shocked too when I knew that D.C. Cooper left the band before. But John was a really great singer, so I liked him easily. He did great at the show in Japan. And I went to see his acoustic show at the CD store when he played there for the promotion of his solo album. His vocals was fantastic. I wonder who will be the new singer, but I want John to keep singing the great songs.
On March 16, I went to see the Flametal show at the live house called Y2K in Roppongi. This band, Flametal was formed by the Whitesnake's bass player, Uriah Duffy and the flamenco guitarist, Ben Woods, and their music is the mixture of flamenco and metal. This band features 5 members including 2 bass players, but this time only Uriah and Ben came to Japan for the promotion of the album released in Japan on March 7. At the show, the flamenco dancers danced on some songs and they played the famous Japanese animation song "Yamato", but it was too heavy for me. Ben's flamenco guitar was great, but I think his death metal vocal breaks the mood. But maybe his vocals make the sound like metal ... ?
After the show, they had a aftershow party in Shinjuku, so I went there too. I had already met Uriah on the Whitesnake's Japan tour last year, but I met Ben for the first time. Both of them were nice and very friendly. Uriah was drinking until early morning on the next day, and looked funny. Uriah has some bands, and he said he like all of them. Ben and Uriah are the roommates. They look good friends. I talked with Uriah for a while, and I felt he was young. Actually he's younger than I ... he was surprised to know that, though. He said he wanted to come to Japan again with the whole band. I hope they are going well.
You can hear the Flametal songs on MySpace.
Flametal MySpace