to be honest, i was very, very surprised about all this. i'll start from the beginning though. saturday night, i decided to write an e-mail to the music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim DeRogratis. the e-mail i sent to him is as follows:

Hello, my name is Nick. I've read many of your articles and I
enjoy reading the reviews that you write. I was hoping that maybe
you could take notice of a fairly unknown, but spectacular band that will
be playing Chicago soon. They are from Japan and are called the
pillows (sic). They have been around since 1989 and have met with
some success in Japan due mostly to the band doing the soundtrack for
a popular Japanese anime series, FLCL, which in turn is what gave the
pillows a worldwide fan base.
the pillows' style of music can be classified as alternative rock.
Think The Beatles meets Weezer with a little bit of The Pixies thrown
in as well. They vary fom heart-pounding beats to slow and easy
ballads. In their very early days, they even experimented a bit with
reggae and jazz tones. Nowadays, their music style has evolved into
more of a pop/rock sense.
This year marks their second US Tour. They did stop in Chicago last
year, but it was a private show for Anime Central at the Hyatt
Regency in Rosemont. This year they will be playing at the Logan Square
Auditorium on June 20th. Information can be found at the following
URL: http://www.logansquareauditorium.com/
The reason I am writing this letter is becuase I know that if the word
was spread out about how great this band is, people would come to the
show and sell it out. It doesn't matter that they are Japanese. The
lead singer, Sawao Yamanaka said at last year's show, "Good music
knows no borders and no race..." I would love to share their music with everyone, and I hope that you can take the time to listen to some
of their music and maybe even help to get them noticed by the city of
Chicago. the pillows MySpace has a few songs from their latest album, which can be found at the following URL:
http://www.myspace.com/thepillowsfromjapan
Thank you so much for your time. I assure you that the pillows are
deifntiely a band worth getting to know.

Sincerely,

Nick


and his reply:

Hey Nick --

Thanks for the tip -- I will check these guys out and see if I can get
something into the paper before the Logan Square show.

All the best --

JIM


so i'm hoping that the pillows might get some recognition, and who knows, they might even get an interview done. any exposure is good for the pillows, especially for this US tour

Well done!

Win, win, win!!!! Now someone do this for the New York Times!

awesomeness

if, no when it get in the paper be sure to scan/link us to it

Thank you, I-I Love you!

omg that's awesome. Ill be watching the trib for the article. I hope they make it!

Eh.

Good idea in theory, but I'm sure it'll end up focusing heavily on their music being used in an anime. Again.

[quote="Joyeuse"]Eh.

Good idea in theory, but I'm sure it'll end up focusing heavily on their music being used in an anime. Again.[/quote]

Yeah...in the future if any of us do something like this again, we should make sure to tell them everyone's already done the whole FLCL angle. ><

well we all know it's hard to mention the pillows without referring to FLCL. i mean, it is what really put them on the map and the way most people on here got to know the pillows. but derogratis is a music critic, he crtiques the style of the music, how its played, etc. i'm pretty confident that this realy won't be an expose on FLCL at all and he'll probably mention it only once. i gave him the link to their myspace which has all My Foot songs, so that's going to be his first impression anyways and might focus on that a bit more. but we'll just have to wait and see what he decides to put in his article i guess

good job, more exposure to the band can only help it.

[quote="Son Goshin"]i gave him the link to their myspace which has all My Foot songs, so that's going to be his first impression[/quote]
Ugh... that's not exactly starting out on the right foot ([i]My[/i] Foot lololol).

[quote="Ureshii"][quote="Son Goshin"]i gave him the link to their myspace which has all My Foot songs, so that's going to be his first impression[/quote]
Ugh... that's not exactly starting out on the right foot ([i]My[/i] Foot lololol).[/quote]

i wouldnt start someone off with myfoot (obviously a better list would be that thread about half a page down)

but still, not enough time..and the fastest, legal, free way to get someoen to hear the pillows is to get them to hear some of their myspace songs or such

exactly, i mean what am i going to do, send him one of my mp3s? their myspace is pretty much the only legal palce where you can listen to a full song. who knows, he'll probably do some snooping around and find more songs by them. besides, the first song you hear on the myspace is The Third Eye. that's not such a bad song to listen to for first-timers