Welcome INROCKERS to Robby's Lobby, a place that has allowed me to put my feelings, life adventures and love for Japanese culture into words to share with the readers here every month for over 5 years now ! At the moment John and I are getting songs together to go into the Studio to start our next Goo Goo Dolls album in July, we'll be doing the record between NY and LA over the next few months. I'll keep you up to date with the progress as we make our way through the project to its completion.

We also had a great outdoor show with Goo Goo Dolls this month as we played at the RiverBend Festival in Chattanooga, Tennessee last weekend. Pretty crazy event, the stage was 4 building stories high floating on a barge on a river. There were over 100,000 people lined up in front of the stage and along the river watching the show on large video screens scattered throughout the Festival grounds. Really a pretty amazing event, I've included a picture from earlier in the afternoon from behind the stage where there were dozens of boats anchored in the water watching the show on screens mounted behind the stage for them !

When the show was over we went across the street from the hotel to get something to eat and overheard someone telling the host that they were in a band and needed a table for a large group. We looked over and it was an all star lineup of classic metal royalty Bill Ward of Black Sabbath, Carmine AND Vinnie Appice (of countless famous / infamous metal bands), shredder guitarist Mark Anthony and some other older gentleman who looked like they have been rocking pretty hard for many years were all ordering late night dinner. After some discussion about classic British metal and some discussion of guitar distortion pedals (that part I wasn't so interested in) we said goodnight to the elder statesmen of METAL, dodged a few drunk folks on the way out and laughed about the finale to a pretty huge evening for the band.

My Good Charamel Record label just released a new album by legendary Osaka band Shonen Knife this month called Pop Tune celebrating the band's 30th Anniversary of releasing music, (available on Good Charamel Records in N. America and P-Vine Records in Japan) we're also readying things here for a North American tour they will be doing in July / August along with the band White Mystery opening the show. It should be a great tour as 2011's Osaka Ramones tour was a great success for the band and the fans are ready for more !

Oh... and I forgot to mention, I celebrated my first Fathers day since the birth of our daughter at my home by inviting some family over to enjoy a homemade dinner of yakitori, tsukune, gomaae and cold soba noodle, and now I must admit I have a new level of respect for the people who make it look so easy serving large groups of people at the restaurants in Japan (and all of the Mom's of course !) . . . .It really was a lot of work to prepare. But, we had a great meal and we felt happy that we had introduced some of my family here in the US to some new Japanese foods

...OISHII !!!!!

I hope everyone had a great Golden Week and I hope you come back and visit next month, until then; check out RobbysLobby.com to get links to all of my social network sites and drop me a note if you like!

Peace,

Robby