Biography

Merry Go Round

09/02/2010 2010-02-09 04:28:04 KoME Author: YURA-sama

Merry Go Round

Merry Go Round

The story of the band starts sometime in 1991, when the vocalist Harii, guitarist KEN, bassist Shin and drummer Tohru came together in Nagoya. However, KEN and Shin left the band and were replaced by ex- ANTIC DOLL guitarist DEAD and bassist yasuhisa. The concrete date, as well as information about possible three other short time members, isn’t given because the band was completely unknown then. Around 1993 their first demotape, which contained two songs, was released. However, again the information is anything but concrete, because there are sources that state the demotape was released in 1991.

In 1994, the band decided to break up and so DEAD returned to his former band ANTIC DOLL. Tohru joined the band short after, but left them very soon again to join the quite famous Nagoya band OF-J in the second half of the 90's.

In January of 1995, Harii returned to the music scene with ex- Laputa guitarist Hideno, ex- Ar-page bassist Sakyou and ex- Silver Rose drummer KYO as the new Merry Go Round. This date is also the one that is acknowledged as the birth of the band. In June, the band first gave a concert in front of a bigger audience when playing at an event in Nagoya. This is also the month, when Harii renamed himself into Kazuma and Sakyou was replaced by Junna. In this line-up they became very productive for the first time and released their second demotape in 1996. It was limited to only 5000 copies, which is quite an enormous number for a newcomer band.

In May of the same year, their first tour began and included 13 concerts in all of Japan. Their first album -S-, was a short collaboration with BANDAI Music, and was followed by a second tour that found its final in their first oneman. Back at YENBANYA the band released their first singles and videotapes in 1997, that all had rising limitation numbers. In January of 1998, the second album was released and had a total limitation of 15.000 copies. This album was also the introduction for the band to their semi-major status, because it was published by Kitty MME (Mercury Music Entertainment) which was a sublabel of Universal.

On the top of the success in summer of 1998 the first signs for the near end appeared, when KYO went to help his friends at KneuKlid Romance with their tour as support drummer. In November he joined them as full member shortly after the release of #69. However Junna also wanted to leave the band and so they decided to break up a second time. In December their label released a live-video that contained their most famous songs.

In 1999, the band returned as a two-man project of Kazuma and Hideno with several support members and signed under their former label YENBANYA. Most of the time MAXX (Orphee) was their supporting bassist. On drums the fans found a well known member: Tohru, but in comparison to MAXX he didn’t stay a very long time and was only involved in two singles and the fourth album that was released in end of 1999. After Tohru left to join JILS, the band had a number of different members who are mostly unknown. The band didn’t stay together long after this and decided to cease activities again in end of 2000.

In November of 2001, the band came together with the same constellation, including the changing of drummers, and participated at the Anarchist VS marder suit case event, where they played together with d.p.s.. The bands fame started to grow again and so MAXX became a full member in 2003. The other new member and former supporting drummer was Shoji (ex- Lucide). But before the band became famous again the four musicians decided to end the project for a last time. The last live took place at the Takadanobaba AREA on May 15th of 2004. Two weeks later, their label Marder suit case released a 'best of' that was limited to only 1500 copies.

Kazuma, MAXX and Shoji returned quite fast as Smells on the indies stages and are still active. KYO and Junna were members of DIET COKE HEAD BARBIE DREAMS for some time, before they disappeared from music scene like almost all former MGR members.

Only Tohru was active for quite a long time and played in a lot of bands including the solo project of ex- Laputa’s Aki and Moi dix Mois. Since he left both bands it became relatively silent about him.
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