06-10-2021, 01:31 PM
So...in todays article I give you a (short) history of the (short-lived) mid '80's band 'Dealer' by its founder, and later better known as Marge Litch founder and guitarist Yoshiteru Yokoyama. Yokoyama-san confusingly refers to it as 'Dearer' as the l/r difference is a thing that foxes many Japanese (as the founders of 'Valkylie' could tell you!). I
Anyway, usual warning, I am not a musician (or a professional translator for that matter!) and Yoshiteru is a bit of a gearhead, so if I've mucked up the description of his Amp (or whatever), apologies in advance. But I thought it was an interesting story and, hey, some nice pictures.
Original article here.
DEALER [My guitar & band history]
Vol.09- Completion of guitar style
Since Yamaguchi, the leader of the Progressive Hard Rock band ‘Arc-en-Ciel’, withdrew, it seemed like it would be disbanded. However, the remaining members decided to continue the band and renamed it "DEALER" instead. Guitarist Tanaka came up with the band name. I'm a big fan of the 4th Deep Purple line-up, so I strongly agreed
The original members at this time were Vo/G me, G. Tanaka, Ba. Nomura & Dr. Nakai, I was going to do the vocals from guitar for the time being, until we found an official member so when the band started I also served as vocalist.
For a while after the formation, rehearsals of the new songs continued whilst we were searching for a vocalist.
I was consciously adopting a different playing style from the pentatonic system of H.M.N. The foot keyboard, which I hadn't used very aggressively until then, was used as standard equipment for live performances.
We repositioned the band's music as ‘Accept type’ Power Metal from the previous band’s Progressive Hard Rock. We aimed to create a wild and powerful sound. Nomura on bass changed from a V bass to B.C.Rich's MOCKINGBIRD.
>I have met many talented performers in my long band career, but Nomura was by far the most talented of them.
Nakai's drum also had a bass drum attached to a rack-type stand, and a huge drum was standing behind it.
>Drummer Nakai and I at an Izakaya in Shibuya
At the time I was absorbed in playing the guitar, and I wrote songs one after another.
First of all, I decided to make a decent demo and search for a vocalist based on that, so I started making the first tape.Produced by Mr. Sato of JEWEL, who also worked with the progressive band Black
Page. It was recorded at Akoya Music in Sanjo-dori, Nara.
I recorded two songs, one was an instrumental song and the other was sung by myself.
Introduced by bassist Nomura, Shiga, a high-tone vocalist, came along. Shiga had a Graham Bonnet type singing style, and in a blink of an eye, he had signed on with the band.
Shiga originally played the guitar, so he had an understanding of the instrument ... for example, vocalists who don't have such an understanding, when you play the solo, they can ad lib with ‘wah-wah’ screams. But Shiga, even if I played a long guitar solo, he understood the situation and was easy to work with.
The timing of joining was also good, as it was just around the time I finished modifying my guitar play and started working properly with the other guitarist, Tanaka.
>Tanaka and my twin leads.
I learned a lot from Tanaka, who has a wide-ranging career with bands such as "44 Magnum" and "Snake Charmer". Although there were some changes over time, my basic set of equipment at this time would remain unchanged until the early stages of Marge Litch.
Tanaka and I had different guitar styles, but I think we had a good balance of tone and twin lead techniques.
>Osaka’s Umeda Candy Hall
With the added stimulation of our ideal vocalist joining, the band headed for our first live show.
Since H.M.N, I'd given up using most of my guitars except for the white Strat that I used in the main, so I had to get a spare guitar before the concert.
>The Aria that somehow survived was then covered with snakeskin to become a guitar only used for photography.
One day, Shiga said to me, "You still playing that old thing?" so I started thinking “Maybe I should I buy a new Strat?”
I barely even looked at the guitar before I said "Sold!". Because there was no sound, he gave it to me for an extraordinary 5,000 yen ...that was the Squier Strat...it was the encounter with a guitar that changed my destiny.
I immediately took it home as a part exchange and repaired it.Shiga was good at woodworking, so he changed the neck into a scallop himself, but since the pickup was remodelled to H-S-S, I left DiMarzio's Super Distortion on the rear as it was, the center is a dummy and for the front, I used the Bill Lawrence single that was already attached. The bridge was a synchronized tremolo unit attached with a very thick and large arm. The body material was ash and it was a very heavy guitar, but it produced a dramatically hard sound, from the first sound I made with it, I immediately liked it.
“But what about the natural colour?” I thought. Ishida, my playing partner from ‘British Steele’, came to see it and praised it, so I came to think "It's a good colour!" without really knowing why.
If I hadn't found this guitar, which I later named the No-02 Strat, I think my band career would have been a lot different.
After that, until early Marge Litch, I played live and recorded with this guitar.
>The No. 02 Strat appears!
The guitar I had used at that time was the White's Strat was a triple humbucker that has been carried over from the H.M.N era. DiMarzio Super 2 at both rear and front and the center was DiMarzio's Super Distortion.
The equipment was guitar → Maxon wireless → Boss Volume pedal → Boss octaver → Maxon Sonic Distortion → Maxon Master Switch ↑ Korg Signal Delay ↓ Guyatone Chorus → IU rack Maxon 31 band EQ → 1U rack Maxon harmonizer → IU Rack Maxon Digital Delay → G Amp
The G amp was basically Guyatone's PHILIP CONCERT-5000 Head in twin stereo. The Heads were used in two twin cabinets. In detail, I'm using the old 5000-1 for dry, the later 5000-2 for effects with inputs 1 and 2 on opposite sides.
> Behind me is Guyatone's PHILIP CONCERT 5000 4-tier stack (The head 5000-2 on top and 5000-1 on the bottom)
From around this time, I decided didn't like the way the tuning of the analog synths was going astray with the foot keyboard, so I switched to a MIDI keyboard and digital sound generator called a KORG MPK-130 + KORG's EX-800 (Poly 800 sound generator only version).
DEALER's memorable first live show was at Morinomiya Youth Hall.
>I played the No. 01 Strat from my high school days.
The band was full of energy and laughter, and it was supposed to move forward triumphantly ... but then Shiga had to withdraw due to family circumstances.
It is often said that when they say “A band member has left due to musical differences” it’s really because of a fight…. in truth, that's often right, but this time it wasn't ... I’d lost my ideal vocalist. The hole left by Shiga withdrawal was just too big After that, I auditioned many vocalists, but none was what we wanted to work together. The band stalled completely and all the talk became, "This looks like the end, will we break up?”.
One day, I went to play with Nakai on drums at the house of a bassist friend of his. When we said we're still looking for a vocalist, for some reason, he suddenly introduced me to the vocalist singing in own band.
The new song was done, so I immediately started on a second demo tape for live bookings with new member Saeki. However, at the rehearsal stage, it became apparent that there were some issues, both good and bad.
At this time, I had decided to turn DEALER into a more guitar-centric band... so activity would not be so affected by the other members not being there.I was looking for a system that would work if I personally worked hard at it.
>I play a Brad Gillis model with a black pickguard on a red body
As a result, the sound output, musicanship, and balance of the instruments in the songs were greatly disrupted, and my partner Tanaka left.
Actually at this point, I think DEALER was effectively disbanded ... but the band abandoned the twin lead guitar formation and I put together demo tape 3 in the direction I was trying to proceed with the four-member group.
At this time, I’d also moved to an open reel 8-track MTR and mixed it ourselves.
I learned what recording was really like and that experience helped a lot in making the completely self-produced early demo tapes for Marge Litch. The band's live performances went smoothly thanks to our skillful management, and tours to Kyushu and Tokyo went ahead.
>At Kyushu Hakata
Instead of Tanaka who’s left, Kotaro, a temporary keyboardist, joined us and we recorded a live SE on the MTR in his room ...it was later repurposed into the intro of the song "Mage Lich (not Marge Litch)".
Even after Tanaka left, I came up with a variety of ideas for the band and I also put a lot of effort into live performances, but even if the sound of the guitar is emphasised, any decisive defects in the ‘essence of music’ cannot be hidden, so I begin to think, "No matter how hard I try, there’s just no future."
I felt that I had experienced all the things I could in DEALER's activities, multi-track recording, etc. Because my sister lived in America, I thought I should go to America too, just as before that, I wanted to live in Tokyo ...so, just like that, I began thinking about quitting DEALER when the talk of making a record started.
There were already CDs out at that time, but vinyl was still the mainstream.
At that time, when I went on Tokyo tour with DEALER, Shino, a drummer who worked with me in ‘British Steele’ & ‘Heavy Metal Noise’, was working at Kawagoe in Saitama. After the live event, I went to Kawagoe alone without talking with the other members, and I was talking with him about a plan to move to Tokyo and do a band there.
Around this time, Shino was sending me housing listings magazines for Tokyo properties to my house in Nara as often as he could. So my potential withdrawal from DEALER depended entirely on my own whimsical mood.
At the time, I thought it would be worthwhile to experience a full-scale recording process in order to prepare for the new band in Tokyo, so I eventually decided to delay my withdrawal until the record was completed.
This was the first recording in which I tried Studer's 24-channel multi-recording, after which I wouldn't want to go back. In terms of the results, the record production was nothing more than a waste of time ... but the recording equipment was gorgeous and a it was a great recording by a talented professional engineer ... so it was natural that we could record much more precisely than before. It was just that, the "problems" that the band had were highlighted even more beautifully than with the demo tapes.
After the recording is finished, I had no choice but to go on a "Commemorative Record Tour". So I had to play live venues all over the country and when things are bad, it’s sometimes true that more bad things pile up - the ever-important record itself was delayed in production, and finally came out only after the Osaka show on the last day of the tour.
> I don't still have a copy so I got this on the internet
After the show, at the hurriedly-prepared merchandise section, I took the records out of the cardboard boxes to sell, told the manager and other members I was quitting, and left the place.
The last tour for the record release was mentally tough, like punishment really, so it was "work without profit".
So what was I trying to do? It really wasn’t a great ending…
>It actually goes on for ever after this, so I’ll cut it here!
Looking back now, it's thanks to DEALER that I started playing the guitar again after a long barren period, and I learned a lot of useful things in making and playing the guitar, recording techniques, etc.
I think of it as the most important stage of my musical development.
Before DEALER, I took a “it’s just one of my many hobbies" approach like it was really someone else's affair, but I became genuinely absorbed in the guitar in earnest through this band.
Therefore what was different from the end of ‘Heavy Metal Noise’ was that it was an attempt to seriously work on a band. As I gained experience and increased my knowledge, the biggest difference is that I had got clear ideas of "Let's do these things in my next band" and “I won’t make the same mistakes again!" in my mind back then.
However, I think that the reason why I felt it was such a defeat at the end was that I tried really hard to make something that just didn't work.
After I left DEALER I didn't move to Tokyo immediately, but for about two months I was exploring the option of activities in Osaka using all of my personal connections. However, in Osaka at that time, many famous long-established live houses and halls were closing in quick succession due to the troubled circumstances. And many local bands were suspended or disbanded because of that, so my temporary retirement continued, somehow ... it was an odd situation.
The last rehearsal I went to in my band activities in Osaka was at a studio near Kanzakigawa station in Hyogo prefecture.
The other guitarist at that time was my former DEALER band mate Tanaka.
I linked up with Tanaka again and we played Arc-en-Ciel style type hard prog rock. I was trying to form a musical band that fused power metal with that like DEALER, but unfortunately I couldn't find any members. Only four months later, the idea would eventually be realized by forming a new band called Marge Litch in Tokyo.
>The early Marge Litch trio era was a reproduction of what DEALER couldn't be.
A few years later... Tanaka formed a new band... Marge Litch's tour came to Osaka, where his band played on the same bill.
After the show, there was a lively end-of-tour party at a pub in Dotonbori...I'd been to hundreds of these, but I'll never forget the fun of that day, everyone who was there was rolling about with laughter and I was in complete hysterics.
Dragging the other members of Marge Litch, who’d got drunk and become as floppy as jellyfish, we wobbled over to the parking lot of Nagahoridori where the equipment car was parked. I drove the West Meihan Expressway back to my parents' house in Nara at that time, but... I had no memory of driving it!
... I personally think that the band DEALER, which I had formed at the end of my activities in Osaka, was the band I needed at that time.
At the beginning, I practiced a lot and every day I made a series of new discoveries ...the first half of my time at DEALER was a treasure trove of fun and laughter, the second half was a waste of time and energy. The difference was so unbelievably intense.
DEALER ... it really was a strange nightmare of a band.
Anyway, usual warning, I am not a musician (or a professional translator for that matter!) and Yoshiteru is a bit of a gearhead, so if I've mucked up the description of his Amp (or whatever), apologies in advance. But I thought it was an interesting story and, hey, some nice pictures.
Original article here.
DEALER [My guitar & band history]
Vol.09- Completion of guitar style
Since Yamaguchi, the leader of the Progressive Hard Rock band ‘Arc-en-Ciel’, withdrew, it seemed like it would be disbanded. However, the remaining members decided to continue the band and renamed it "DEALER" instead. Guitarist Tanaka came up with the band name. I'm a big fan of the 4th Deep Purple line-up, so I strongly agreed
The original members at this time were Vo/G me, G. Tanaka, Ba. Nomura & Dr. Nakai, I was going to do the vocals from guitar for the time being, until we found an official member so when the band started I also served as vocalist.
For a while after the formation, rehearsals of the new songs continued whilst we were searching for a vocalist.
I was consciously adopting a different playing style from the pentatonic system of H.M.N. The foot keyboard, which I hadn't used very aggressively until then, was used as standard equipment for live performances.
We repositioned the band's music as ‘Accept type’ Power Metal from the previous band’s Progressive Hard Rock. We aimed to create a wild and powerful sound. Nomura on bass changed from a V bass to B.C.Rich's MOCKINGBIRD.
>I have met many talented performers in my long band career, but Nomura was by far the most talented of them.
Nakai's drum also had a bass drum attached to a rack-type stand, and a huge drum was standing behind it.
>Drummer Nakai and I at an Izakaya in Shibuya
At the time I was absorbed in playing the guitar, and I wrote songs one after another.
First of all, I decided to make a decent demo and search for a vocalist based on that, so I started making the first tape.Produced by Mr. Sato of JEWEL, who also worked with the progressive band Black
Page. It was recorded at Akoya Music in Sanjo-dori, Nara.
I recorded two songs, one was an instrumental song and the other was sung by myself.
Introduced by bassist Nomura, Shiga, a high-tone vocalist, came along. Shiga had a Graham Bonnet type singing style, and in a blink of an eye, he had signed on with the band.
Shiga originally played the guitar, so he had an understanding of the instrument ... for example, vocalists who don't have such an understanding, when you play the solo, they can ad lib with ‘wah-wah’ screams. But Shiga, even if I played a long guitar solo, he understood the situation and was easy to work with.
The timing of joining was also good, as it was just around the time I finished modifying my guitar play and started working properly with the other guitarist, Tanaka.
>Tanaka and my twin leads.
I learned a lot from Tanaka, who has a wide-ranging career with bands such as "44 Magnum" and "Snake Charmer". Although there were some changes over time, my basic set of equipment at this time would remain unchanged until the early stages of Marge Litch.
Tanaka and I had different guitar styles, but I think we had a good balance of tone and twin lead techniques.
>Osaka’s Umeda Candy Hall
With the added stimulation of our ideal vocalist joining, the band headed for our first live show.
Since H.M.N, I'd given up using most of my guitars except for the white Strat that I used in the main, so I had to get a spare guitar before the concert.
>The Aria that somehow survived was then covered with snakeskin to become a guitar only used for photography.
One day, Shiga said to me, "You still playing that old thing?" so I started thinking “Maybe I should I buy a new Strat?”
I barely even looked at the guitar before I said "Sold!". Because there was no sound, he gave it to me for an extraordinary 5,000 yen ...that was the Squier Strat...it was the encounter with a guitar that changed my destiny.
I immediately took it home as a part exchange and repaired it.Shiga was good at woodworking, so he changed the neck into a scallop himself, but since the pickup was remodelled to H-S-S, I left DiMarzio's Super Distortion on the rear as it was, the center is a dummy and for the front, I used the Bill Lawrence single that was already attached. The bridge was a synchronized tremolo unit attached with a very thick and large arm. The body material was ash and it was a very heavy guitar, but it produced a dramatically hard sound, from the first sound I made with it, I immediately liked it.
“But what about the natural colour?” I thought. Ishida, my playing partner from ‘British Steele’, came to see it and praised it, so I came to think "It's a good colour!" without really knowing why.
If I hadn't found this guitar, which I later named the No-02 Strat, I think my band career would have been a lot different.
After that, until early Marge Litch, I played live and recorded with this guitar.
>The No. 02 Strat appears!
The guitar I had used at that time was the White's Strat was a triple humbucker that has been carried over from the H.M.N era. DiMarzio Super 2 at both rear and front and the center was DiMarzio's Super Distortion.
The equipment was guitar → Maxon wireless → Boss Volume pedal → Boss octaver → Maxon Sonic Distortion → Maxon Master Switch ↑ Korg Signal Delay ↓ Guyatone Chorus → IU rack Maxon 31 band EQ → 1U rack Maxon harmonizer → IU Rack Maxon Digital Delay → G Amp
The G amp was basically Guyatone's PHILIP CONCERT-5000 Head in twin stereo. The Heads were used in two twin cabinets. In detail, I'm using the old 5000-1 for dry, the later 5000-2 for effects with inputs 1 and 2 on opposite sides.
> Behind me is Guyatone's PHILIP CONCERT 5000 4-tier stack (The head 5000-2 on top and 5000-1 on the bottom)
From around this time, I decided didn't like the way the tuning of the analog synths was going astray with the foot keyboard, so I switched to a MIDI keyboard and digital sound generator called a KORG MPK-130 + KORG's EX-800 (Poly 800 sound generator only version).
DEALER's memorable first live show was at Morinomiya Youth Hall.
>I played the No. 01 Strat from my high school days.
The band was full of energy and laughter, and it was supposed to move forward triumphantly ... but then Shiga had to withdraw due to family circumstances.
It is often said that when they say “A band member has left due to musical differences” it’s really because of a fight…. in truth, that's often right, but this time it wasn't ... I’d lost my ideal vocalist. The hole left by Shiga withdrawal was just too big After that, I auditioned many vocalists, but none was what we wanted to work together. The band stalled completely and all the talk became, "This looks like the end, will we break up?”.
One day, I went to play with Nakai on drums at the house of a bassist friend of his. When we said we're still looking for a vocalist, for some reason, he suddenly introduced me to the vocalist singing in own band.
The new song was done, so I immediately started on a second demo tape for live bookings with new member Saeki. However, at the rehearsal stage, it became apparent that there were some issues, both good and bad.
At this time, I had decided to turn DEALER into a more guitar-centric band... so activity would not be so affected by the other members not being there.I was looking for a system that would work if I personally worked hard at it.
>I play a Brad Gillis model with a black pickguard on a red body
As a result, the sound output, musicanship, and balance of the instruments in the songs were greatly disrupted, and my partner Tanaka left.
Actually at this point, I think DEALER was effectively disbanded ... but the band abandoned the twin lead guitar formation and I put together demo tape 3 in the direction I was trying to proceed with the four-member group.
At this time, I’d also moved to an open reel 8-track MTR and mixed it ourselves.
I learned what recording was really like and that experience helped a lot in making the completely self-produced early demo tapes for Marge Litch. The band's live performances went smoothly thanks to our skillful management, and tours to Kyushu and Tokyo went ahead.
>At Kyushu Hakata
Instead of Tanaka who’s left, Kotaro, a temporary keyboardist, joined us and we recorded a live SE on the MTR in his room ...it was later repurposed into the intro of the song "Mage Lich (not Marge Litch)".
Even after Tanaka left, I came up with a variety of ideas for the band and I also put a lot of effort into live performances, but even if the sound of the guitar is emphasised, any decisive defects in the ‘essence of music’ cannot be hidden, so I begin to think, "No matter how hard I try, there’s just no future."
I felt that I had experienced all the things I could in DEALER's activities, multi-track recording, etc. Because my sister lived in America, I thought I should go to America too, just as before that, I wanted to live in Tokyo ...so, just like that, I began thinking about quitting DEALER when the talk of making a record started.
There were already CDs out at that time, but vinyl was still the mainstream.
At that time, when I went on Tokyo tour with DEALER, Shino, a drummer who worked with me in ‘British Steele’ & ‘Heavy Metal Noise’, was working at Kawagoe in Saitama. After the live event, I went to Kawagoe alone without talking with the other members, and I was talking with him about a plan to move to Tokyo and do a band there.
Around this time, Shino was sending me housing listings magazines for Tokyo properties to my house in Nara as often as he could. So my potential withdrawal from DEALER depended entirely on my own whimsical mood.
At the time, I thought it would be worthwhile to experience a full-scale recording process in order to prepare for the new band in Tokyo, so I eventually decided to delay my withdrawal until the record was completed.
This was the first recording in which I tried Studer's 24-channel multi-recording, after which I wouldn't want to go back. In terms of the results, the record production was nothing more than a waste of time ... but the recording equipment was gorgeous and a it was a great recording by a talented professional engineer ... so it was natural that we could record much more precisely than before. It was just that, the "problems" that the band had were highlighted even more beautifully than with the demo tapes.
After the recording is finished, I had no choice but to go on a "Commemorative Record Tour". So I had to play live venues all over the country and when things are bad, it’s sometimes true that more bad things pile up - the ever-important record itself was delayed in production, and finally came out only after the Osaka show on the last day of the tour.
> I don't still have a copy so I got this on the internet
After the show, at the hurriedly-prepared merchandise section, I took the records out of the cardboard boxes to sell, told the manager and other members I was quitting, and left the place.
The last tour for the record release was mentally tough, like punishment really, so it was "work without profit".
So what was I trying to do? It really wasn’t a great ending…
>It actually goes on for ever after this, so I’ll cut it here!
Looking back now, it's thanks to DEALER that I started playing the guitar again after a long barren period, and I learned a lot of useful things in making and playing the guitar, recording techniques, etc.
I think of it as the most important stage of my musical development.
Before DEALER, I took a “it’s just one of my many hobbies" approach like it was really someone else's affair, but I became genuinely absorbed in the guitar in earnest through this band.
Therefore what was different from the end of ‘Heavy Metal Noise’ was that it was an attempt to seriously work on a band. As I gained experience and increased my knowledge, the biggest difference is that I had got clear ideas of "Let's do these things in my next band" and “I won’t make the same mistakes again!" in my mind back then.
However, I think that the reason why I felt it was such a defeat at the end was that I tried really hard to make something that just didn't work.
After I left DEALER I didn't move to Tokyo immediately, but for about two months I was exploring the option of activities in Osaka using all of my personal connections. However, in Osaka at that time, many famous long-established live houses and halls were closing in quick succession due to the troubled circumstances. And many local bands were suspended or disbanded because of that, so my temporary retirement continued, somehow ... it was an odd situation.
The last rehearsal I went to in my band activities in Osaka was at a studio near Kanzakigawa station in Hyogo prefecture.
The other guitarist at that time was my former DEALER band mate Tanaka.
I linked up with Tanaka again and we played Arc-en-Ciel style type hard prog rock. I was trying to form a musical band that fused power metal with that like DEALER, but unfortunately I couldn't find any members. Only four months later, the idea would eventually be realized by forming a new band called Marge Litch in Tokyo.
>The early Marge Litch trio era was a reproduction of what DEALER couldn't be.
A few years later... Tanaka formed a new band... Marge Litch's tour came to Osaka, where his band played on the same bill.
After the show, there was a lively end-of-tour party at a pub in Dotonbori...I'd been to hundreds of these, but I'll never forget the fun of that day, everyone who was there was rolling about with laughter and I was in complete hysterics.
Dragging the other members of Marge Litch, who’d got drunk and become as floppy as jellyfish, we wobbled over to the parking lot of Nagahoridori where the equipment car was parked. I drove the West Meihan Expressway back to my parents' house in Nara at that time, but... I had no memory of driving it!
... I personally think that the band DEALER, which I had formed at the end of my activities in Osaka, was the band I needed at that time.
At the beginning, I practiced a lot and every day I made a series of new discoveries ...the first half of my time at DEALER was a treasure trove of fun and laughter, the second half was a waste of time and energy. The difference was so unbelievably intense.
DEALER ... it really was a strange nightmare of a band.
Feel free to request a translation here. And check out my previous work in this section.
Please bear it mind I'm always busy though and it may take a while!
Please bear it mind I'm always busy though and it may take a while!
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