Line-Up - Tonight (PV) (1988)

"VOS No. 9", 1988.


Line-Up formed in 1985. After touring numerous underground venues all across Japan throughout 1986 and 1987, the group finally got their break in the summer of 1988 when they went major and signed to Victor/Invitation. In September of 1988, Line-Up released their first single "Tonight", and later released their first full length album, which was self-titled, that October. Although the single had rough sales, the album managed to have moderately decent sales, and Line-Up went on to tour throughout the remainder of 1988. In May of 1989, Line-Up released their second single "Cry for the Moon", and later released their second full length album, "Man", a month afterwards. It repeated the sales of the self-titled album and "Tonight" single almost perfectly, and although their singles weren't really selling that well, their albums were selling decently enough to help give Line-Up a small buzz in the Japanese new wave circuit. In May of 1990, the group released their third full length album "Escape", which proved to be the true break Line-Up was working towards, as it had very strong sales and pushed the group towards mainstream recognition. In December of 1990, Line-Up released their third single "Shiwase wo Yobu Melody (しあわせを呼ぶメロディー)", which became their best-selling single, and perhaps sold greater than all of their previously released singles combined. It seemed that Line-Up had finally reached their moment of stardom, although this would prove not to be the case as the group's success quickly died down. This was shown when the group released their fourth single "Kiseki no ji (奇跡の地)" in November of 1991, which had terrible sales. To make things worse, when Line-Up eventually released their fourth full length album "Theater" in February of 1992, the sales of the album had even poorer sales, and presumably due to rough sales, Line-Up then disbanded by the fall of 1992. The bassist of Line-Up, Satoshi (サトシ), disappeared from the music scene for a few years after Line-Up folded, but returned in 1999 as a solo musician. He is currently still active as a solo musician, for which he notably plays guitar most of the time. The guitarist of Line-Up, Kenji (賢司), went on to become a support guitarist for legendary group Justy-Nasty, until its disbandment in 1995. He then went on to form Fake Splash in 1997 with Justy-Nasty frontman Kenichi, until that group also folded in 2000. He then went on to form the underground supergroup G.A.N.G. in 2002, which also split in 2006. In 2007, when Justy-Nasty was revived, Kenji became an official member of the group, and was active in Justy-Nasty until it folded once again in 2009. He then reformed G.A.N.G. which was active until its mysterious disappearance in 2015. Kenji has not been active in another group since then.