A Rare and Irregular Ruby Suns track

There was a time about three years ago when I had a sudden inclination to write a song in Japanese for my girlfriend (her being part-Japanese). I stole some lines from a phrase book and pieced them together into a half-arsed song. Then my girlfriend got a letter saying that she'd been accepted to teach english - she left a month later and spent the next two years in Japan. The song remained just the ghost of an idea and faded into the ether...

Time passed...

I went from playing in the Tokey Tones to playing in the Ruby Suns. My friend Kiku heard me noodling about with a song one afternoon and was surprised to find that it was written in terribly-pronounced Japanese. Funnily enough, this was about the time that my girlfriend got back from Japan and I thought that maybe I would record a rough version of the song after all. I twisted Ryan (main Ruby Sun) to lend me his assistance for an afternoon. We recorded the drums and guitar together, then he sprinkled some of his indie-pop fairy dust over the rest of the track and we ended up with something halfway decent.

Hayden from bFM heard it and liked it enough to get it on their playlist, though the song was so short that DJs often weren't ready for it to end and it would result in a patch of dead-air while they figured out that it was time for them to start talking or put on another song. I listed the track as being by The Investigations (myspace page is here). But when the Ruby Suns needed a digital bonus track for the UK release of their first album and a bonus track for the Australian pressing, the track magically became a Ruby Suns track as well (though if you don't like it, then I'm happy for you to blame me rather than Ryan). It was enough to win the girlfriend back, but not enough to keep me in the Ruby Suns for much longer (though I did tour a bit with them and wrote about here). Pretty soon, I'd drifted into the Brunettes instead (yet another link, here! or you can read about it in the next issue of No Magazine).

Ryan then took the Ruby Suns on a search for the 'new sound' (excuse the Mighty Boosh reference, but do check out the Ruby Suns Myspace Page for more idea of where the band are at these days, e.g., touring the US at the mo). I offer up this little nugget from the past merely as a nice piece of nostalgia ... (please don't use the pronounciation as any sort of guide to Japanese - it'd be like learning English from a Guitar Wolf track) ... here ya go:

The Ruby Suns - Michi Ni Mayoimashita