more pictures of tom

tom, or tomu sumisu as he is known to the japanese, generally lurks in the background, hiding behind a guitar or bass... sometimes he appears in front of the microphone for a moment before receding from view once more. he has a tendency to wear shiny, skintight, or translucent clothing, and occasionally makeup, and wants to make a t-shirt with the slogan "i am probably afraid of you" on it. tom is not partial to capital letters or gomez. in fact he sees himself as one of the world's leading haters of the aforementioned band. from a certain angle, he looks quite like a buzzard.

tom's history of trying to be in a band is long and peppered with awful band names. from the age of 12 he played guitar in his bedroom with a guy named al who now plays bass in bamboo dragon. they called themselves "banned practice" (as in "band practise", get it? ugh.) and spent four or five fruitless years searching for anyone else to join the band, always a search destined to fail because they were both shit. eventually though, they managed to wangle their way into a blues band for a one-off gig in 1996. this band, which never had a name, featured a bass player called paul, with whom tom formed the first beginnings of what was to become J-2, under the bad, bad name "orpheus". as well as a drummer who drummed too quietly and a singer who sung too loud, dave was recruited as a second guitarist and jim made some guest appearances as a keyboardist in the summer of '97. Then everybody buggered off to university apart from tom and dave, who had to set about learning the bass and recruiting other people to join the band. by august '98 this task was complete, and bob's your uncle, J-2 was complete.

by and large tom writes his songs by the tried and trusted method of playing the guitar randomly until something sounds ok and then doing it some more, and then writing down the first sentences that come into his head thereafter and using them as lyrics. this is, of course, a far inferior technique to dave's skilfull craftsmanship, but tom's a lazy bastard at heart so it suits him really.

tom was a student of japanese and a lover of all things japanese. it would be fair to say that he very much looks up to the japanese, even though they are generally shorter than him. it has to be added that, owing to the lazy bastard factor mentioned above, he is not a very diligent student of japanese and is thus unable to speak the language to any great extent, indeed he failed the exam, but the intention is there at least.

click here to enter tomu's world of calm.