午夜剧场

As a composer and producer, I have lived a life flying around Paris, London, New York, and Los Angeles (LA) since 1969.

In the late 1980s, I established a music publishing company in LA that handled songs by artists such as B.B. King and Fleetwood Mac, and in 1992, I moved to LA with my family. I have lived in LA for 26 years since then.

When we moved, my eldest son was nine and my eldest daughter was seven. The children were able to transfer into a famous elementary school called the Center for Early Education, which I call the "Hollywood Yochisha." It was a very Hollywood-like elementary school where Jack Nicholson, looking sour-faced, would drop his kids off at the school gate every morning, and Rob Friedman, then vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, would volunteer to open the car doors.

At the golf club I joined, there was the famous bandleader Les Brown, and we had many lively conversations about jazz. Composer John Williams became a member around the same time, and when rock star Stephen Stills wanted to join, I acted as his proposer for him to enter the club.

For someone like me who makes music, LA is an enjoyable place. Since movies became talkies in the 1920s, music was needed, and musicians gathered from all over the world. It also became the center of the world's rock and pop music in the 1960s and 70s. It is a city like Vienna, the music capital of the 18th and 19th centuries.

However, LA has many other facets, and I am always thinking about what kind of city LA actually is. LA is a mysterious city where destroyed traditions, newly created traditions, different races, and different cultures coexist. No one can truly fathom its depths.

Therefore, I wrote about everything I knew every month from 2011 to 2018 in the fanzine "Gekkan Territory." This book is a compilation of those writings. I would be very happy if you enjoy reading it.

Kunihiko Murai (Author)

Rittor Music

344 pages, 2,200 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.