阿部一族 「阿部一族」FLR-003

Excerpt from new liner notes

“I think the person who would be most pleased with the reissuing of Abeichizoku is the now deceased Akiba, who was the bandmaster. He was the first classmate I talked to in my first class when I entered college in 1970. Thirty years later, in the summer of 2002, he collapsed in a bar late at night and went to heaven. He had been brought in by a major advertising agency and joined them as a copywriter, becoming a creator of many adverts. His TV commercials for an American cigarette company and a Japanese automobile manufacturer, with the music of his favorite musicians playing in the background, were typical of his love of music. In remembrance of Akiba, here are some episodes from Abeichizoku.⁣
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On a hot summer day in August 2022, I received a call on my cell phone from an unknown number. Thinking the call might be suspicious, I put my ear to it out of curiosity and heard a voice asking, “Is this Mr. Kazuhiro Muneta? The person from the band Abeichizoku?” On that day, the plan to reissue a record that had been recorded and produced 50 years earlier, in December 1972, began. It was May 1972 when we formed Abeichizoku. Akiba, Fujimaki and I were in our third year of college, and the word “job” was growing louder and louder in the corner of our minds. Akiba was muttering that he did not want to work for a company and wanted to continue playing in a band and become a professional musician. Fujimaki and I, however, were not willing to take the idea of a dream without any real ability, and we came to the conclusion that we would break up the band after the December concert, cut off our shoulder-length hair, and start looking for a job. Akiba suggested that if we were going to break up, we should produce a commemorative record, and all five of us, including Goto and Kodama, agreed on this idea. It was quite an expense for a college student, so it was very difficult to make the funds.”