EastWest '77

Long and interesting text explaining EastWest '77.

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Background

After making it to the finals of EastWest'76, but not winning, Issei Noro received the best guitarist award and the newly released Yamaha SG-2000 guitar model. After this, Noro soon quit university, and moved out to live on his own with support from his mother and grandfather. While living on his own, Noro didn't have a phone, and decided to sell his Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Red Sunburst. He started writing most of the songs that would later appear in the first two Casiopea albums, and other songs that were lost and forgotten.

A little while later, Sakurai applied for Yamaha EastWest '77, and Noro agreed. Toru "Rika" Suzuki decided to leave Casiopea and join the band Prism, right around the time of their debut. Hidehiko Koike never formally left the band, but was too busy with studio work at Victor to participate. In need of a new drummer and keyboard player, Noro and Sakurai began thinking about who they could recruit. At a prior party, Noro had met a talkative keyboard player, who stuck out in his memory as the keyboard player had a very one sided conversation and then left abruptly.

"When I visited Yamabe’s house to catch up with each other as university students, another friend of his came over. As soon as he arrived, he started talking, “Well, I’ve been up to this and that...” and went on and on, then left with a “See ya!” When I asked Yamabe, “I might have caught his name earlier, but who was that friend of yours who just kept talking and then left?”, he replied, “Oh, that’s Minoru Mukaiya. He’s really good at reading music and seems to be a Yamaha school student. I think you must have seen him play with the Makoto Takahashi group at the Group 69 concert”. Recalling this event, I said to Sakurai, “Oh, I know a keyboardist”, and I contacted Mukaiya from Sakurai’s house phone." (50)

"The pitch at the time was, “I got a guitar at last year’s contest, so if things go well, you might get a keyboard too”. And he said, “Sure, I’ll give it a try”, so we got the OK." (50)

The first drummer they approached was "Yotchin", a roadie (later drummer) for Carmen Maki & Oz and the drummer of Rabi Nakayama & The Crazy Adventure, but he turned them down as it "wasn't his type". After trying several more drummers, they decided on one named "Mr. Nishimaki". Mr. Nishimaki had a "thick drumming style" and participated in the qualifying round, but because he struggled with the syncopated accents on the 16th notes, a new drummer was needed. Afterwards, Issei Noro met Takashi Sasaki who had great technique.

77.07.22

The lineup participated in the semi-finals at Yamaha's Epicurus venue in Shibuya under the category of Saitama Block Tournament. At the semin0finals they played Swallow and Midnight Rendezvous. The head of the judges was Yoshihiro Naruse, who unexpectedly called for an encore, which was quite unexpected for a qualifying event. They didn't have any songs prepared and just played the same song again. This later become a common anecdote about the formation of the band. Casiopea won alongside BAST, JIBO & DYAN, and HARD MAPLE.

Worried that Swallow, a song that was quite difficult to play and had a unison that they rarely played perfectly, it was decided that they would play Flying instead.

The finals were the top 20 out of 1000 bands. Judges included Jun Fukamachi, Yoshihiro Naruse, and Kenji Omura.

they went to EastWest '77 duh.

Track List

Live Performance

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Flying"	5:53
2.	"Midnight Rendezvous"	5:21
Total length:		11:14