| Gibson rocking as pricey American icon in guitar-loving Japan
A visitor to the Tokyo Guitar Show tries out a classic Gibson as staff help tune an amplifier at a local Gibson shop's booth in Tokyo on Saturday, June 24, 2006. Gibson makes a range of guitars solely for the Japanese market, including rocker Tak Matsumoto's signature Les Paul in special guitar shades like canary yellow and sunburst. Although Gibson is making marketing pushes elsewhere where demand is expected to grow, such as China, Japan is still Gibson's biggest market outside the United States and twice as large as its biggest European market, Great Britain. (AP) .
Weezer Scrap Fifth LP, Start Again from Scratch
After an uncharacteristically productive period in 2001 and 2002, during which they released their first albums in five years, Weezer have been taking things relatively slow, perhaps taking extra care to ensure that their long-gestating (and still forthcoming) fifth full-length exceeds the expectations of their notoriously hardass fanbase. Since December of 2003, Weezer had been in and out of the studio with producer Rick Rubin working on new material, to varying degrees of success. However, the band has now scrapped the results of those sessions, in favor of new material they began work on three weeks ago. According to a post on Weezer.com, the group has been in the studio for much of August laying down songs from scratch. The website explained the band's decision to shelve their work with Rubin, stating that it was a "response to [frontman] Rivers [Cuomo] regaining his sense of momentum with his songwriting, and not feeling right about continuing with the incomplete recordings from December." It goes on to reveal: "In effect, the band is now producing itself, as it did on [the prior albums] Pinkerton and Maladroit, but this time they have a wise shoulder to lean on if and when need be.
Colin Meloy's Early Work to Be Released
These days, Colin Meloy fronts the Decemberists. But that wasn't always the case. During his college days, at the University of Montana in Missoula, Meloy was in a band called Tarkio. The band, which took its name from a small town in Western Montana, was comprised of Meloy, Gibson Hartwell (guitar), Louis Stein (bass), and Brian Collins (drums). There was a self-titled debut, followed by an LP, I Guess I Was Hoping For Something More (1998), and an EP, Sea Songs for Landlocked Sailors (1999). In an interview with Amplifier, Meloy said: "We [Tarkio] had aspirations of being able to base ourselves as a band out of Missoula, Montana, like Low is from Duluth and Modest Mouse is from Issaquah [Washington], but I think we pretty quickly discovered that the reason why those bands succeeded was that were within an hour's drive from a major metropolitan area." All of the band members weren't able to leave Missoula, and Meloy relocated to Portland, Oregon with hopes of starting another band.
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