babamania

Looking at babamania's history, it takes us back quite a few years to the time when the members were still in junior high school.

The idea to create a band originated from Yujin. In search of a vocalist for his band, he decided to hold an audition at school, in which the participants had to send demo-tapes to him. Genki, a fellow student from a different class, sent a tape to Yujin. A little later they started an LA metal cover band and they continued with it until they graduated.

Mari entered the picture a few years later during senior year in high school. Just like Genki and Yujin, she participated in the 'graduation live', in which school bands from various schools competed with each other.

Genki and Yujin were still in need of a drummer when a friend of Yujin's told him that her little brother was a drummer and so they arranged a meeting together. The said drummer was Daigo, of course and he decided to join them. They officially started in 1992, this time being a cover band of groups like Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Their bassist Takeo joined them in 1994, but the band activities were minimal in the following years. Several members decided to spend a year studying abroad, so they put babamania on a break.

However, in 1996 they got back together again and continued with band activities. They decided, that it would be a nice idea to have a female vocalist and they contacted Mari again. She officially joined in 1997 and together with her they managed to gain more attention, especially at their concerts. Around this time they also changed the spelling of their name; "babamania" is written in romaji now instead of katakana (so, Roman characters instead of Japanese).

In August 1998, they had their first independent tour called Say baba tour. Mari purchased a short wig in New York, which she started to wear from there on out. The wig and a short dress became her trademark pretty fast and she continued wearing it for the next few years. Genki picked his own style as well and he was mostly seen shirtless with a long skirt and a pair of sneakers.

They started to work on their first independent release and they released their first mini-album EP in 2000. A little later they signed with the label Imperial Records and released their first major single: Pau Hana. In the same year they released another single and their very first album Discord.

A lot of releases followed and they participated in the FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL, which is one of the biggest festivals in Japan. Unfortunately, Takeo left the band. Instead of finding a new bassist, they played with a support bassist at lives from there on.

Things only got better for the band and in 2002 they participated in several events like the RISING SUN ROCK FESTIVAL and JAPAN CIRCUIT vol. 7. Apart from that, they also made some appearances on radio stations and even had their own show for a while! They released their third album I.D in the same year. In 2003, they released the single Wanna rock, which was used for the multi-platform video game FIFA 2004 and helped babamania to gain some international fame.

Quite naturally, a long list of performances and releases followed throughout the next few years.

In 2005, after the release of their sixth album Great Grand Bag Of Magic Tricks, they released the best-of album Bababest which contained a large collection of songs.

After he had been the drummer for more then ten years, Daigo announced he would be leaving the band in May 2006. He mentioned that he was definitely going to pursue his music career. The remaining three members continued, and released the album Zero Gravity Disco to the joy of their fans, which hadn't been treated with any new releases for over a year.

In May 2007 the band announced to be taking a break from their live activities for about one year. However, currently they are still on a break, not having performed together or put out any releases since then. Occasionally, they are organizing their own events called DISCONTINENTAL on which Mari DJs.

We can only hope that this break will give babamania the opportunity to work on new material and we hope to hear from them again soon!