The Pillows (Japanese: ザピロウズ, Hepburn: Za Pirōzu, stylized as the pillows) are a Japanese alternative rock band formed in 1989. The group has released 22 studio albums, several EPs and compilations, and over 40 singles. Outside Japan, they are best known as the group responsible for the soundtrack to the FLCL anime series.[3]
The Pillows Japanese Band
In 1989 Kenji Ueda, bassist for Kenzi & The Trips, left the band with former Kenzi's drummer Shinichiro Sato and invited The Coin Locker Babies vocalist Sawao Yamanaka to form a new band. Yoshiaki Manabe, the guitarist of the hair metal band Persia, joined them. The Pillows were formed on 16 September 1989. The story as to where the band's name came about is that allegedly Sawao Yamanaka was hanging out at Yoshiaki Manabe's place and an English post-punk compilation record entitled Pillows & Prayers hanging on Manabe's wall inspired him.
After a year with no activity or leadership, Sawao Yamanaka took over Ueda's leadership role and recruited Tatsuya Kashima as a replacement on bass, restarting the band. Out of respect for Ueda, Kashima was labeled as a guest musician on releases on which he performed and Ueda's bassist post has never been officially replaced.[3] The extremely rare The Pillows Presents Special CD, released only to The Pillows fanclub, contained their first recordings with Kashima.
In 1994 The Pillows changed to King Records and the band wildly experimented between varying genres. In July The Pillows released their first album as a trio, Kool Spice, and one month later the single "Daydream Wonder" was released.
In 2002, the FLCL anime became available in the United States, giving the band more notoriety outside of their native country. In October of the same year Thank You, My Twilight, The Pillows' tenth studio album, was released alongside a double-CD collection of B-sides entitled Another Morning, Another Pillows, following the promotional single "White Summer and Green Bicycle, Red Hair with Black Guitar".
To commemorate the band's 15th anniversary, The Pillows re-released their 90's My Life EP with additional tracks and released a string of new material, including a new EP with re-recorded tracks previously published between 1990 and 1996, Turn Back, one document DVD, Walkin' on The Spiral, one new studio album, Good Dreams, a new single, "Sono Mirai wa Ima" and finally a tribute album, Synchronized Rockers, including covers of The Pillows played by artists such as Mr. Children, Straightener and Noodles.
In March 2005, The Pillows played their first show in the United States at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas,[4] followed by concerts in New York City and San Francisco.[5] In September, the band released a live DVD entitled Delicious Bump Tour in USA, featuring footage of their first tour in America with fellow band Noodles and also a new single, "Non Fiction". In November they released their second single of the year,"The Third Eye". Both singles were used on their subsequent 2006 album, My Foot.
In November, the band released a five-disc singles collection, Lostman Go to Yesterday, featuring all the band's singles released under the King Records label and 21 music videos on a DVD in the same collection. On the same day they also released their fifth live DVD, Lostman Go to America featuring footage of their 2006 American tour in support for the album My Foot.
In January 2008, the band released a live DVD, Wake up! Stand up! and Go!, featuring footage of their Wake Up! Tour of 2007 and a single, "Tokyo Bambi".On May a new single came out, "New Animal", and along with their previous two singles, it is featured on their fifteenth studio album, Pied Piper.
The band returned to the US starting with Los Angeles, followed by other appearances at SXSW, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, and Anime Boston,[7] where the band played for a crowd of more than 5,000 people.
Still in 2008, legendary English rock band Oasis extended an offer for The Pillows to play as the opening act at their concert in Japan, but frontman Sawao Yamanaka refused their offer. In a January interview for Japanzine, Yamanaka joked that he "turned down the offer in order to have a fun story to tell".[2]
On 16 September, The Pillows gave their first concert in the legendary Nippon Budokan arena commemorating their 20th anniversary. The footage of the concert was later released in 2010 as their ninth live DVD, Lostman Go to Budokan, which came out in both regular and limited edition formats. The limited edition included the concert, a documentary DVD and a special 60-page photo album of the band.
On 18 January 2012 The Pillows released their album, Trial and, on the same day, a live DVD entitled We Are Friends, which included footage of their 2011 NAP Tour in America with Noodles. In June, following their Trial tour, the band released the DVD Real Trial containing the last live performance of the tour at Zepp Tokyo.
Following the end of the "Never Ending Story" campaign, The Pillows began the Moondust Light for You tour at the beginning of 2015 in support of the Moondust album. In May 2015, the band announced that longtime bassist Jun Suzuki had been fired from the band due to "bad conduct" that had been going on for some time. In this announcement, Yamanaka also discussed the possibility of continuing on without a "fixed" bass player.[9] In place of Suzuki, who went on to form the band SABAH,[10] The Pillows played with various different bassists for their remaining 2015 live shows. These included several appearances with original Pillows member Kenji Ueda and former "support member" Tatsuya Kashima,[11] as well as Tomoyuki Miyakawa (of HiGE), and Yoshinori Arie (of Vola and the Oriental Machine). By 2016, the band had named Arie as their official replacement for Suzuki.[12]
On 3 July 2016, it was announced that The Pillows would be providing the soundtrack for the anime series FLCL over two new seasons that eventually aired in 2018.[17] At the band's final date of the Stroll and Roll tour on 22 July at Zepp Tokyo, Yamanaka announced that he had eight new Pillows songs written at the time, including one that had already been recorded, and the band would be contributing new music to the upcoming FLCL series. Casablanca, a new band featuring Yamanaka alongside Yoko of Noodles and Kusube Shinya of Radio Caroline made their debut at the 13th anniversary show of the Red Cloth venue in Shinjuku on 29 August,[18] the same day that their first album entitled Another Story was released. The album was only available for purchase at live shows, via online mail-order, or at the Tower Records Sapporo store.[19]
Following the release of the second season, FLCL Progressive, Adult Swim sponsored and presented a seven city tour across the USA alongside a band on the same label called Noodles, as well as Cullen Omori formerly of the Smith Westerns.[23][24]
On 5 September 2018, Toho released the fourth soundtrack from the anime series FLCL entitled "Fool on Cool Generation". The collection features 14 tracks composed by The pillows, including music found in the FLCL Progressive and FLCL Alternative anime seasons, released together as part of the dual-theatrical showings of both series in Japan.
The pillows released their 22nd studio album, Rebroadcast, under King Records and Delicious label on 19 September 2018. The limited edition includes a DVD with footage from the "Mono Me You Sun Tour" in USA.
To celebrate the band's 30th anniversary, a feature film entitled Ousama ni Nare ("Become the King") with music and original story by Sawao Yamanaka was released in Japan in the Fall season of 2019. Shûji Okui is responsible for the script and direction. The film stars actor Amane Okayama as Yuusuke, a young man who works in a ramen shop frequented by numerous Japanese rock bands. Yuusuke dreams of being a photographer, and he decides to follow his dreams by becoming a cameraman for live concert events. Ousama ni Nare also features appearances by numerous musicians, including: Teru and Jiro of GLAY; Atsushi Horie, Hidekazu Hinata and Shinpei Nakayama of Straightener; Hirotaka Takahashi of The Predators; Ryosuke Sasaki, Tomoya Tabuchi, Hiroaki Arai and Hiroyuki Suzuki of THE KEBABS; Yoko and Shinya Kusube of Casablanca; Hirata Panda, Beat Ryo, Hoshikawa Don't Let Me Down, Honma Domino and Chiba O'Reilly of THE BOHEMIANS; Eiichi Miyamoto of syurispeiloff; Ena Fujita, Asako Miyazaki, Aya Matsuoka and Misaki Yoshikawa of SHISHAMO.[25]
To celebrate 30 years of the pillows' existence, the band also held their own temporary museum. Titled "the pillows museum: Buster's Diner" the event took the form of a vintage American diner filled with memorabilia related to the band. The shop also sold FLCL themed collaboration goods. The museum ran from 30 August 2019, to 8 September 2019, at Shibuya Tower Records, followed by a run from 13 to 22 September 2019 in Osaka.[26]
Buster-kun has been The Pillows' mascot since about 1998, when on a visit to London, the band saw a doll of a "grotesque and creepy-looking teddy bear" in a shop window. Since then it has been constantly used in promotional videos, album artwork and goods such as T-shirts and bracelets. Buster-kun was named after the Little Busters album and the group also uses the term "little busters" for its fans.The original doll can be seen in the promotional video for the song "Hybrid Rainbow" and on the DVD video and artwork cover of the Hello, Welcome to Bubbletown's Happy Zoo (Instant Show) DVD.
In an interview, Sawao commented on the reason why they adopted Buster-kun and what it represents to the band's music: "The original doll was made out of really dirty old leather and had a real-looking eye and tongue, but one of the eyes was a button and it was displayed in a window, shaking like it was being electrocuted.We still don't know what it was and why it was there, because it wasn't in a store display window and it didn't look like it was for commercial purposes, but it just seemed like someone's idea of a prank or some artist's work that we thought was interesting. So we used it in our jacket booklet and while we were on tour, we thought of placing that bear image on T-shirts, so we sent the picture to a designer to arrange it. At first it looks cute, but once you get up close, it has sharp teeth like it's ready to bite any minute. So that kind-of-cute but kind-of-scary look fits right in with The Pillows music perfectly.".[27] 2ff7e9595c
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