SECTION 2
KAKUSEI [AWAKENING]

4. Hatsu Bando "Cain's Feel"
[My First Band "Cain's Feel"]

Cain's Feel is the band I was in during the time when I was in Kyoto. The origin of the name comes from "Cain and Abel," the son of Adam and Eve from Genesis in the Old Testament.

Where do people come from, and where are they going? I had a concept of what the human existence was like. Discerning the meaning of human existence is a hunger for making music, and I think it is why I make music.

Of course, it is an opportunity to meet other people.

In those days, after I quit playing drums, my band activities were blank for a while. I was working multiple jobs at once, and one was as a sound technician at the studio where I went to practice drums. It was once a week and paid hourly, which was fine with me, anyway, because I was touched by music and I didn't want to cut myself off from it. I also got music-related news there.

There was a livehouse in Kyoto that was holding a fairly large event. I was really taken by one of the guitarists. He was extremely cool. He had a [tapper? See note #1] and a great stage presence. His figure remained prominently in my memory and I kept thinking about him.

At work back in the studio, I tried to ask one of the guys who came in.

"Do you know about the event that happened at the livehouse?"

"Yeah, I know."

I would see this guy whenever he came into the studio occasionally. At the beginning, he had a really hostile atmosphere around him. We didn't have a pleasant relationship.

He and the guitarist and vocalist in a group with him were famous for being Yankees [note: thanks to help from some people, I think this refers to a gangster type/rough personality] and having fierce arguments with people, and also were the types of people to get into instant quarrels at livehouses. In the studio, they always had an attitude, and whenever they left, they were a group that [worked hard? See note #3].

Talking about that time that has passed, because I was still a child, I never knew when conditions would make me get into a fight. I kept having the feeling "one day I'll definitely have a run in with that guy."

To practice drums, I carried the drumstick case around with me, but also inside the case I hid a crowbar.

If you ask who had the bigger attitude, I'll probably say it was me.

That guy was one of a group. So at that time in the studio, it was me and him and two others. He always kept his cool and wasn't an expressive type of person, but rather the type to keep his feelings inside. Of course, he never talked to me. But if there wasn't any conversation going on, the atmosphere there was very empty, so I started talking to him.

"At that event, the band that was playing then, wasn't the guitarist awesome?"

And he said calmly, "That was me."

My eyes got really big. No way, I couldn't believe it! I never expected the cool guitarist from that time to be this aloof guy sitting right in front of me.

"You're not him, jerk!"

So we got in a fight.

"I'm him."

"No way."

"Yes I am!"

"Prove it!"

"Well, I've got pictures at my house, so you'll have to come over to my house."

When he showed me the pictures at his house, of course they were the pictures from that live. I'd taken pictures too, but the guy I was seeing in front of me didn't look like the one in the pictures. That was because he was wearing makeup. But even more than that, the guy I saw on stage and the one I saw casually everyday were completely different. The casual one was really aloof and quiet. But on stage, he was incredibly awesome. I liked the gap between the two.

That was You. You, the member of my band.

"Is that really you? It was wrong of me to not believe you."

"Well, now you know, so it's ok."

The guitarist that I was looking for was here now. From the bottom of my heart, I was glad.

From that time on, we became friends, and started saying spontaneously, "Shouldn't we form a band?" and began looking for other members.

However, the biggest thing was that we didn't have a vocalist. At the time, we said to each other, "Ah, we haven't got a vocalist," and then half jokingly, I said "I wonder if I can do it."

But then, You, who was commonly a gentle person, burst out, "Don't be ridiculous!" [4]

"It's not ridiculous!" I said back. We argued back and forth. At any rate, it was a confusing mess.

At that time, I really hated my voice. I never sang in front of other people. Neither You nor I knew anything about singing.

"Well, if it's not ridiculous, then in a week, try singing these songs," You said. He was still giving me grief about it.

So I said, "All right. I'll sing!"

A week later, at practice, I sang in front of him for the first time. After he heard me sing, You murmured, "You….why haven't you been singing?"

Even now, he often says that.

However, I had never imagined I would ever be a vocalist. In the band back when I was an assistant [note: I haven't read most of the beginning of the book, but Gackt writes "help" in katakana here, so I'm assuming that's what he means], to me, that vocalist was a really cool vocalist. He was not only fierce, but his singing was very beautiful, and he was a vocalist who could touch your heart with his feelings. He was very charming.

Back then in the time of the band boom, most vocalists had a very high range.

Great voices sang in the high register. My voice was low and my range was narrow. I had no idea how to make my voice high like that. Even if my voice was vocalist material, and even if I could sing in a higher range, at any rate, I was of no caliber to be a vocalist.

But, since there was no one else, that was the only thing I could do.

Singing in front of You was an opportunity, and in order to become a vocalist, I started voice training again. Though my voice remained low, through training, I broadened my range a little.

In order to gather band members, we made a demo tape of me singing and played it to all the guys who were said to be good.

"The vocalist is pretty good. Who is it?"

"It's me."

"You can sing?"

"Temporarily."

Even though I knew people when I played the drums, I didn't know anybody as the vocalist.

So because of that, we found members all at once and resumed band activities.

That was "Cain's Feel." It was my first band.