Heyhey In Rockers and Welcome to The Lobby, a Springtime version of the monthly column here in the pages of The Mighty In Rock, but here as i sit in Buffalo, NY, it’s been freezing (and I hear it was also cold on the first day off Spring in Tokyo) and just a short distance from here in NYC they were hit with a huge storm on the very first day of Spring. So, let’s think some warm thoughts as we make our way through our journey this month, let’s generate some heat here and look ahead to the warm and sunny days of Cherry Blossom time.

Goo Goo Dolls headlined The Java Jazz Festival in Jakarta, Indonesia this month! A 31 hour total flight from Buffalo to NYC to Jakarta through, you guessed it, Narita Airport. This was surely my shortest trip ever to Japan, but I did manage to get a nice Curry lunch during my layover. I felt like I wanted to run out of the airport just to scream KONNICHIWA and kiss the ground before I got onto the plane for another 8 hours, but once I had some rice and Curry i felt a little better about things and made my way to the gate my 3rd plane.

Having never been to Indonesia I spent most of my short time there wandering around Jakarta visiting the National monument and just walking around the city taking it all in. This year was the first time we had ever been to Southeast Asia having visited Manila ands Thailand late last year, Jakarta was very reminiscent of these places, lots of motor bikes, tuk tuks and people rushing around in a chaotic blend of different kinds of folks making their way through their every day lives. Wish we could have stayed longer to see more of Indonesia, but most of our short time there was filled with press conferences, sound checks and just trying to keep our jet lag at bay long enough to have a great show.

The Java Jazz festival was a eclectic mix of bands from every genre imaginable quite honestly, tons of regional acts as well as Jazz legends like famed guitarist Lee Rittenauer and living legend Dionne Warwick as well as Vanessa Williams, Relish, Incognito, pop newcomer Lauve from San Francisco and many others to make up one of the most diverse mixtures of musical acts i believe we’ve ever been involved with. The audience was amazing, the people we met around the city were so friendly and happy to have us visit for the first time, but as quickly as we made it over to Indonesia it seemed like were just as quickly back on an airplane to the US. A crazily busy few day, although the saving grace was it did mean another one of those ultra short visit to Japan and another awesome bowl of Curry (but this time beef)!

After returning home my wife Miyoko and I began preparing for a string of releases from some of the bands on our Good Charamel Records label over the next few months including the single Sakura Sakura by Tokyo’s DJ Sashimi, she will be performing along with Tokyo’s The Molice at Brooklyn’s Sakura Matsuri celebration. The Molice has a new DVD maxi single being released next month to accompany their US tour which will begin in April and run through August including a string of Cherry Blossom Festival dates across the Northeastern US. And lastly, but certainly not least, the legendary Shonen Knife from Osaka will be doing a tour of Europe in April supporting a new live DVD/CD set called “ALIVE! In Osaka” which will be released in May worldwide! So as I said, busy, busy, busy; but still making it happen

Goo Goo Dolls will be releasing a live album “The Audience is This Way”” later this year, we are putting the finishing touches on it now and we’ll be touring all over Europe / The UK this summer, and some pretty special stuff coming up in the fall too, stay tuned, promise thatI’ll frill you in! Have a great Spring and I hope to see you all next month here at The Lobby. ...

Peace,
Robby