Yoji Shimizu
"No matter where you go...there you are"
Hometown:
Planet Ten
Favorite Foods:
Strawberry shortcake, Utz Potato Chips, Maryland crabcakes on club crackers
with blue-collar bright yellow mustard thank you very much
Favorite Movies:
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension, Back to the
Beach, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, That Thing You Do, Hairspray, Linda
Linda Linda
Songs I wish I could
convince the other Outliers we
should cover: You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate,
Dancing Queen by ABBA, anything by Bruce Springsteen
Famous celebrity I'd like
to invite to dinner: Emmylou Harris
If I wasn't an Outlier,
I'd like to be playing with: The E Street
Band, The Banana Splits, Marti Jones & Don Dixon, The Hoodoo Gurus, The
Wonders
Some really perfect
albums you should own:
The River/Bruce
Springsteen Born Under/Martin Zellar Flaming Red/Patty Griffin Hearts of
Stone/Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes Temple of Low Men/Crowded House
Wildest Dreams/Spooner Feeling Strangely Fine/Semisonic Music for All
Occasions/The Mavericks Scattered/Martin Zellar &
the Hardways Capricornia/Midnight Oil Magic/Bruce Springsteen
"We learned more from a 3 minute record than we ever
learned in school...":
"Born to Run"/Bruce Springsteen "Dream Vacation"/Gear Daddies
"Passionate Kisses"/Lucinda Williams "Becky's Hand"/Honeydogs
"Favorite Waste of Time"/Ronnie Spector "Renee Remains the Same"/Material Issue
"Bittersweet"/Hoodoo Gurus "I'll Carry the Torch for You"/Firetown
"Go West Young Man"/E*I*E*I*O "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend"/The Rubinoos
"She's Got A Way"/The Smithereens "Tell Me What You Want"/Kristen Mooney
"Walk On"/U2 "The Wheel"/Rosanne Cash
"Tonight"/Radney Foster "So Far Away"/Martin
Zellar & the Hardways
"Linda Linda"/The Blue Hearts
Well, there’s not much to say. I haven't been doing this rock and roll thing for
very long. On my birthday in 1998 (this is no lie), I received an E-mail
that I had won an online contest for a guitar, a black Epiphone Les Paul Junior
with one of those righteous P90 pickups. I promptly purchased the "Guitar Method
1" computer program, downloaded some tabs from OLGA, and started flailing away.
First two songs I learned to play were "Stupid Boy" by the Gear Daddies and "The
Price You Pay" by Bruce Springsteen. Now several (OK, OK, not several, but many)
guitars, amps and pedals later, here I am trying to keep up with the
rest of The Outliers. Rock and roll got me through high school without going
nuts. It’s amazing to me that I (finally) can play some of it, no matter how
crudely, and that I can do so with some really good friends (and they're not bad
scientists either).
Keiko Shimizu Walker
January 4, 1965 - January 11, 2003
