Julien enjoying some Hoji-Cha at a Tengooz practice

Emotional Times for The TenGooz

Hello all you Tengoophiles out there.
Its been a while that I have written for our blog.
as you can gather from Michael's recent post, we have suffered a terrible loss- that of our friend and one-time Tengooz guitarist
Kin-Chan. The sudden loss of this until so recently dynamic presence has left me shaken.
Amazingly, as thing always seem to be with Michael Frei, just a few days before Kin-chan's passing Michael just happened to be in Japan for business.
They were able to meet one last time. Unfortunately for me, I REALLY believed that I would be able to see a healthy Kin-chan again and I DIDNT go to the hospital.
I had to say my last goodbyes at the funeral hall.

Having Michael with us was, it goes without saying, an elixir, and he happened to be here for a small gig that we did ( he came to the venue almost straight from the airport) and for a great party that we had at Thomas's place which had a truly international jam session.

Any plans for a big reunion gig at Nalu's were put on hold however because of the funeral.

At the same time, and not comparable of course to the loss of Kin-Chan, my dog of many, many years, Tickles, suddenly collapsed and has been unable to move for several weeks. We have been giving her the best possible care but....... things dont look good.

Then, as I had long been feeling UNDER THE WEATHER, and everyone had been urging me to go to the doctor, I finally went to get things checked out. As it was my throat that had been bothering me I went to an ENT.

When he put a scope down my throat to have a look he exclaimed ( in Japanese)- This is not good. Youve got to go to a bigger hospital as soon as possible!
He asked if I had family that I could consult with, etc, all with an expression and air that spelled my doom.

Since that was a Friday I would have to wait until Monday to get further testing and I had the whole weekend to contemplate my fate.

Hypochondriac that I am, I was convinced of the worst and resigned myself to the fact that I would not be around in this world much longer.

It was an dizzyingly emotional couple of days, full of reflections and memories flashing back.

I realized that so many of the lyrics that I had written perfectly expressed what I was feeling. I am talking specifically about The Chills, Almost Out Of Time, Autophobia, etc.....

Anyway, to make a long story short- when I finally did get to the hospital for tests, the doctor gave me a thorough looking over and declared that I was fine!

That means I might be around, making a racket for little while longer.

Listen to The Chills here:

http://www.jamendo.com/en/track/12850

Gotta go now

will write more later

Avi Landau

Goodbye Kin-Chan