Thee Michelle Gun Elephant Tour Dates and Upcoming Concerts

Thee Michelle Gun Elephant (also known as TMGE or in Japanese: ミッシェル・ガン・エレファント) was a Japanese garage band popular in Japan. Its music is known for the loud guitars of Abe Futoshi and lead singer Chiba Yusuke's loud, gravelly yet melodious vocals. Other members of the band include Kuhara Kazuyuki (drums) and Ueno Koji (bass). The band was formed while the band members were students at Tokyo's Meiji Gakuin University, and their name came from a combination of the name of Billy Childish's offbeat band Thee Headcoats and a former bassist's mispronunciation of the name of The Damned's album, Machine Gun Etiquette. Their first major label release, Wonder Style, was released in 1995, and produced in London, United Kingdom, by Chris Brown, who previously engineered albums and tracks for Radiohead and Pink Floyd. Their breakthrough album, however, was 1998's Gear Blues which sold more than 500,000 copies, a huge number in the Japanese recording industry. Gear Blues was released in the United States in 2000 by Alive Records, but the band's success in that country never reached the level that they had in Japan, although they had moderate success in Europe. The band announced that they would break up on October 11, 2003, after their Last Heaven tour of Japan.