The Story Behind the Story.....Cool Story........

There are packrats out there everywhere, but maybe this story gives us all a reason to not throw away everything that seems to have lost its usefulness in our lives. Anyway, a cool story emailed to John Berger of the Honolulu Star Bulletin who has been a friend of ours since the early 70's till today. Cool story. Guess I'm gonna be extra careful now when throwing out things.-----Original Message-----
From: Robin Kimura
To: 'John Berger'
Sent: Wed, Jan 6, 2010 12:01 am
Subject: FW: 45-rpm

Happy New Year John,

Thought this might be of interest to you so here’s the history behind this email chain. As you recall (since you have such a great memory), when we released our 45-rpm record “Cheerleader Strut” and “Sparkle” in 1985, it went nowhere locally. Well, lo and behold, here we are almost 35 years later and the record has found “new life” in Japan!

In 2008, we received an email inquiry unexpectedly from a vintage record store company in Japan (East Records). Somehow, they got a hold of our record from a “second hand” Jelly’s like store somewhere in Japan. They purchased whatever we had of our original pressing (about 80 pieces). What I didn’t realize at the time was that a vinyl resurgence was happening in Japan. Our record was suddenly selling for an exorbitant price (hundreds of dollars per copy) as a vintage recording in mint condition! To add fuel to the fire, prominent DJ in Japan named DJ Muro started spinning our record in clubs and its popularity grew exponentially.

Then, last year in ’09, another inquiry came from Art Union who I presume is a distributor that sells to record stores in and around the Tokyo area. They wanted to purchase copies but since we didn’t have anymore of the original pressings, they requested that we look into repressing more copies. We found a record company in LA that has been pressing records since 1939 and started the process (which was long and grueling) in June. They initially ordered 100 pieces but in a few months, it grew to 400 copies. We finally sent it off before Christmas. It was received and sold to Jet Set records, which is one of the larger record companies in Tokyo (is what I’m told). The status of the record sales since it’s introduction were reported to us today (below) as the #1 selling record on the Jet Set Records R&B Charts and #2 seller in the Dance Music category. Now they want an additional 250 copies!

In hindsight, we could have made a better product initially. The mix wasn’t all it was supposed to be and overall, we were disappointed when the record was first released. But, with what has happened with the resurgence of our 45-rpm, we are planning to revive the LP project that we never finished and will remaster these two songs as part of the offering. We will more than likely start on this project next year as we are building the foundation for the mix of songs we want to include. I am currently working on a concept. To set things straight, we are in no means blinded by the recent modest success of our 45-rpm record. Rather it has inspired us to finish what we started before time passes us by! Just like the 70’s NCR has done for bands of the era, it has given new life to what was once forgotten!

I’ll keep you posted as things progress! Sorry, for this long email but I just had to share this with you! Take care and hope to connect with you soon!

A Hui Ho!

Rob

-posted by Cool Tropical Jazz LLC @