INDEX
Engaging Concepts and Entertaining Occurrences Frequently Arise from Realms Independent of Financial Considerations
-I think Sunny Day Service is entering a new phase after 2020. On the other hand, what kind of place would you say that solo output is for you now?
Sokabe： I don’t really distinguish between solo and Sunny Day, but Sunny Day is a brand with a sign, and solo is music that can be anything or is born every day, so I feel like I write a lot. I want to organize Sunny Day and create music within the image of Sunny Day, so there are people who have been listening to Sunny Day for about 30 years and are still fans, and there are young people who have recently started coming to my live shows. I would choose a song that I wanted them to hear next, and I would play it. I can just play a single note, and that’s my music, so that’s what I play. I was going to release only one of them at first, but then I had another one in mind, so I decided to release them together.
I don’t really like to let things accumulate and brew, or rather, I don’t really like to express them after they have been laid to rest. My music is proof that I am alive.
How would you describe the balance between yourself as an artist and yourself as a label manager?
Sokabe： I wish I could “run a business,” but I don’t really feel like I’m “running a business. It’s like, “Oh, you don’t have any more money? I’m like, “Oh, no more money? I think a manager is someone who has it all figured out and is doing it all on his own, but I’m not like that.
I do my own thing. I earn my own money for the food I eat today. If it were that kind of primitive way of running a business, I might be doing it. But I never think about how I want the company to be in 10 years’ time. I think somewhere, “It’s good to not know what will happen next year. It is not a capitalistic management activity.
-It’s not about making money every day.
Sokabe： I’m aware that interesting ideas and events are born out of things that have nothing to do with money. There will always be people who will put them together and turn them into money, but interesting things can only come from the street. Interesting things are created by people without money, without thinking about money at all, and they are definitely not created by agency people meeting together. It is the most interesting things are done by people we don’t know, somewhere we don’t know. So maybe that was the case at the very beginning of ROSE. We didn’t have any goals or anything in mind at all. I just said, “I don’t want to be under the care of those guys,” and left the big company. I think it’s like that with everything at first.
-That’s why it’s important to try things out on your own first.
Sokabe: There are many people whose motivation in life is to work hard at whatever they are told to do, and I don’t know which is better. Well, I think everyone should try everything. After all, there is no one right way.
