 In the summer
of 1999, Mari Iijima produced her first independent album, a collection
of songs called "No Limit." In the spring of 2001, Iijima started working
on a new album. In the days before Fanime Con, she went to a recording
studio to lay down the first tracks for that album. Then at her saturday
convention concert, Iijima performed some of those tracks for the first
time in public. "I just wanted to play brand new stuff," she had during
her performance. |
 The new album
will have songs in Japanese and English, sometimes with both languages
in the same song. Iijima noted that convention fans always wanted her to
sing in Japanese, so she made a switch from the all-English "No Limit."
"My English is right. It's not like `What does it mean,' " Iijima said
about language. The tracks that Iijima used as accompaniment at her concert
were unfinished rhythm section tracks, but they showed that her style of
sweet, sentimental love songs has not changed. |
 If all goes
well, the new album will be finished in July of 2001, just in time for
that month's Anime Expo. Iijima hopes to be invited back as a guest of
honor, noting that she won a fan poll on the convention's web site as the
guest from 1999 that people most wanted to have back at the event. Iijima
probably made a statement of her hopes for the future by wearing a blouse
that said "Rockstar" on the front. And the concert provided an example
of how people feel about Iijima. While she was speaking to the audience,
a cell phone loudly trilled, and the audience booed. "Is it an important
phone call?" she asked. |
