Tag Archives: Larry Carlton
Tak Matsumoto Solo Album Strings Of My Soul 6/20 Out!
Tak Matsumoto News 
Tak Matsumoto’s very own label, House Of Strings, has announced that Tak Matsumoto’s latest album Strings Of My Soul is going to be released on June 20th, 2012. Tak’s new album gives off a feeling that it is a best-of compilation as quite a few tracks have already been released on Tak’s previous works.
A huge part of the album is made up of tracks from Tak’s self-described solo magnum opus, Hana (2002). Tracks such as “Koi-Uta”, “#1090 Sen Mu Ichiya”, “Hana”, “BLUE” (“Misudouji BLUE”) and “Romeo & Juliet” are all from Hana, leaving it to account for five of the thirteen tracks from Strings Of My Soul.
While this may the vibe of a best-of compilation, all of the tracks on the album have been remixed and remastered. In addition, Grammy Award winner Paul Brown has been involved as producer, engineer, and mixer on a couple of tracks such as Tak’s new song “Live Life”. Tak’s old friend Larry Carlton also makes an appearance on the track “SUKIYAKI” where the two play a cover together.
The album comes in two flavors: a CD-only edition and a limited CD+DVD version. The CD version will set you back 3,059 Yen while the CD+DVD version will cost you 3,780 Yen.
Pre-order:
CDJapan: [Regular Version] [CD+DVD Version]
Amazon(JP): [Regular Version] [CD+DVD Version]
HMV: [Regular Version] [CD+DVD Version]
See the track listing as well as the CD+DVD version content after the break.
Matsumoto Congratulates Carlton For Lifetime Achievement Award
Tak Matsumoto News Larry Carlton, who won a Grammy Award together with Tak Matsumoto in February this year, has received the George Benson Lifetime Achievement Award at The Canadian Smoothies 2011 on April 29th. A video has been put on vimeo in which various musicians congratulate Mr. Carlton for this outstanding award. Among them is Tak Matsumoto. For the impatient: watch from 3:43!
“Hi, Larry-san! Congratulations to you. You are an amazing guitar player and so inspiring to me. I learned so much by working with you on the Take Your Pick album. So winning a Grammy with you is one of my greatest achievements in my life. I’ll treasure it forever. I owe you one.”
Larry Carlton: Benson Lifetime Achievement Award from TrueFire on Vimeo.
Congratulations to Mr. Carlton! And may he come to the States or Europe (or both!) and perform with Tak someday! 😉
Charts: ~en II~, TAKE YOUR PICK
News Last week, as we know, Koshi Inaba LIVE 2010 -enII- was released.
With not-so-much-surprise, it reached #1 on Oricon on dvd and blu ray charts, with 27.000 and 21.000 copies sold respectively.
Oricon also notes he’s the first male solo artist to reach #1 on both charts, just like B’z were the first group to achieve this last August.
Due to the Grammy effect, Take your pick re-entered the Oricon chart, reaching #18. The album even made it up to #4 on the daily album chart for a short period of time. Last week this album was off the top 300, so it’s definitely a good result for them.
Source: Oricon
Tak Matsumoto’s Grammy Story
Tak Matsumoto News I was so excited that I was not able to write up a proper article and ended up posting the videos instead. However, this is a huge success for Tak Matsumoto and I think it deserves a good, and thorough article. Also, it is a great opportunity to look back how it all started, and how Tak Matsumoto finally came to receive this outstanding award.
It is a rather lengthy article, so be sure to bring some time with you! 😛 Click read more to see the article!
Take Your Pick DVD Release Worldwide
Tak Matsumoto News 
I don’t know why they didn’t release it before… I mean it has been out in Japan since October 27th, 2010, but oh well…
On Larry Carlton’s official website, they announced that because of winning the Grammy and all the excitement, they decided to set the release date of the DVD to tomorrow(February 18th)!
What’s funny, however, is that they say “See the GRAMMY WINNING album “Take Your Pick” performed live in Tokyo with a 12-camera high definition shoot!”. What is this all about?
I bought the DVD and it’s only in standard definition. Why did they not release a Blu-ray version although they shot it in high definition? A budget problem?
Well… I guess they want to jump on the bandwagon and expect great sales since Take Your Pick jumped to #1 in the iTunes charts in Japan after word got out that Carlton and Matsumoto had won the Grammy.
But that’s not all:
“According to the Shibuya store of Japan’s largest music and video rental chain store operation Tsutaya, all copies of Mr. Matsumoto’s newest album were sold or rented out by Tuesday morning. “Take Your Pick” also soared to fourth place on Amazon Japan’s best selling CD ranking, just behind – inevitably –all-conquering girl group AKB48’s latest album.”
(Taken from: http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/02/15/after-gdp-blow-japan-still-rocksat-grammys/)
Anyway… if you haven’t bought the DVD yet… here’s your chance! And it’s cheaper, too. It’s only $25.99 opposed to 5250 Yen (roughly $50) in Japan.
You can order it via Larry Carlton’s web store: http://www.larrycarlton.com/store.html
Larry and Tak Winning Grammy – Filmed From a Different Perspective
Tak Matsumoto News I’m not sure everyone has noticed, but when Carlton and Matsumoto make their way to the stage, there’s a person behind them holding a camera in his hand. He is probably recording the whole thing. Just take a look at this picture here:
Now… the video filmed by this guy has surfaced on YouTube. It’s now even on Larry Carlton’s official channel, so I guess it is not a problem to post it here. What you can see is, well, Tak Matsumoto’s wife in the kimono Kahori Yamagata designed (see my other post). Just see for yourself:
