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Rick Rack Digest Part I: Hiatus

Although some time has passed, Rick Rack has returned from their hiatus and have returned to their live activities.
In order to clear the lack of information on their activities, this post will be the first of a two part series of Rick Rack digests. The first covering the hiatus and the next covering their activities since their comeback at the beginning of the year. The hiatus was quite eventful and necessitates a closer look in order to fully understand (or appreciate) their return and subsequent activity. The following seeks to accomplish just that and give some context for Rick Rack’s future activities.

Rick Rack began their hiatus after releasing their first mini-album “Ima wo Ikinuku Otometachi” which ranked number 10 on the Oricon Indies chart. The reasons for the hiatus are addressed on the following post from Rick Rack’s blog made on June 13th.

【I wanna do a live… 】

Today I have something I would like to express to everyone supporting Rick Rack so I’m updating the blog for the first time in a while
I think there are plenty of people who know this but there are 3rd year high school student members in the Rick Rack.
We will now be heading into entrance exam season, and having to go to the studio and have meetings, it’s become hard to make time for band activates.
After the May 29th record release live the 3 of us talked and agreed that we don’t want to go up on stage without being able to properly prepare.
Although it will be really lonely, we decided to take a break from lives for a while.
We’ll definitely start back up again!!
But, at the moment we don’t even know when that will be.
But if we ever feel like “Ahh! I want to do a live!” we may suddenly make a live announcement (Lol)
That is Rick Rack’s situation right now but if people continue to support us as they have, then I’m happy.
If you will wait for us to restart our activities with warm feelings then I will be grateful.
But since Rick Rack will be lonely, we still want to be connected to everyone.
That’s why we will still mutter on about worthless things on Twitter but when that happens, please tease us about it(*´∀`*)

Everyone from Rick Rack

Following this blog post the members of Rick Rack remained active online with a few sporadic Twitter posts now and then. Their official Twitter page remained active, retweeting any mentions of Rick Rack and the members’ occasional posts. Social media was the best (and only) way of keeping up with Rick Rack’s activities during their hiatus. Serina continued to upload videos of her playing guitar on Twitter and Natsuki was fairly active on her Twitter and Instagram as well.
On June 28th they posted a notification that their newest song “Soldier Girls” was available for karaoke and on July 8th they posted an update notice on their Twitter account, having added photos from several months of lives to their website.

rick rack
serina

Rick Rack also played a secret live around September 4th at a school festival and posted about it afterwards through their Twitter page, including a few pictures and videos.
The next major piece of Rick Rack news would come on November 6th.
The band notified fans through Twitter that their bassist YOU was leaving the band


The Rick Rack members wrote in more detail about the decision in a post on their official blog.

【An important notification from Rack Rack 】

To everyone who is always supporting Rick Rack, truly thank you very much.
We have something we have to let everyone know.
At this time, the bassist YOU will be withdrawing from the group.
We would like to apologize for the sudden announcement.

YOU (Ba)

As was expressed in the Amebo Blog on June of this year, Rick Rack’s members were going on hiatus due to college entrance exams.
During this period of time I began to see college life more concretely and began to think about what I should aim for in the future and how I would like to learn from now on, and my interests were moved to a new dream that was separate from music.
With those thoughts I began to think whether my presence would become a brake on Rick Rack’s musical activities.
I love music as well but, there are also a lot of things I want to learn in college.
The result of me talking with the members many, many times, was that I made the decision to leave Rick Rack.
To everyone who has been supporting me until now, I am truly sorry…
Sharing things that moved us, shedding tears during frustrating times, the days that I spent with Rick Rack have become a very big part.
The years we were active didn’t amount to 2 years but, there were plenty of great memories.
I’ll be happy if everyone continues to support my beloved Rick Rack as always.
It was a short period of time but, truly thank you very much.

SERINA(Vo/Gt) NATSUKI (Dr)

When YOU expressed how she felt, it was truly a shock, we spoke many times and there where even times the 3 of us fell to pieces crying.
But YOU’s decision was due to her thoughts for Rick Rack as something precious.
We still have all of the warm connections we built up from our musical activities until now.
I believe that within those connections there may have been a meeting with a new member we can move forward with!
Rick Rack won’t stop here!
There is still music we want to communicate with everyone!
In order to acknowledge YOU’s feelings we will continue to move forward
I’ll be happy if everyone continues to watch over us now as well.
This might worry everyone for a while but I’ll be counting on everyone’s passionate support when the new Rick Rack has its start!
For now, we’ll do our best!
So, thank you for everything until now.

And little more than a month later the following post was made on the Rick Rack Official Twitter (Dec 17)

【Notification!!】 SERINA has safely been accepted into college!!(((o(*゚▽゚*)o))) Now we have begun looking to a support bassist and have begun to go to the studio for the resumption of our activities. We plan to give you the details of the resumption of our activities soon on Twitter. Please look forward to it!!

This information marked the return of Rick Rack from their nearly year long hiatus. Their subsequent activities in 2016 and forecasts for the future will be covered in Part 2 of the digest.

 

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One comment

  1. I have recently discovered Rick Rack. What an amazing band. Please tell me that they are making music again. I am eager to read Part 2 of this article.