A Brief History of Susquehanna Record

 For (currently) 23 years, Masayuki Yamamoto has been associated with Bella Beaux Entertainment, although that record label is not founded by Yamamoto, but rather his artist manager Akira Kawase. Kawase created Bella Beaux a few years after he left Pioneer LDC. Bella Beaux's first release was from seiyuu and singer Hiroko Kasahara entitled Neo Decadence in January 2000, and would only take six months for Yamamoto to get his first album from the then-new label. However, there was a time when Yamamoto had his own record label....

Yamamoto's last release under the Pioneer LDC label was Enka no Teiou in August 1996, then moved to Teichiku for three more releases. After being in numerous major record labels, he wanted to give himself a record label of his own. With his artist manager at the time, Sachio Tanaka, he founded his own record label Susquehanna Record (and this name might sound familiar to Masayukists) around the mid-nineties.

His first release for Susquehanna Record? A private release of New York Whisper, an album consisting of recordings of Yamamoto-sensei street performing across New York City. The album would only be purchased through mail DMs. This would later be followed by a series of VHS releases of video digests involving concerts and experiences, which are also purchased through mail.

While released through Tanaka's System Fine, this was Susquehanna Record's first release

By around March 1998, shortly after the release of Momo no Hana, System Fine was moved to Alpha Eihan, where I'm surprised that, after doing some research, is actually a commercial business partnering with numerous Japanese companies. The company still does exist.

With Yamamoto's office moved to Alpha Eihan, Susquehanna Record a year later still has to bring in more releases, considering it didn't get open releases yet. 

There, he came with an idea to create an album focusing on short intermission-like tracks as he had made numerous of those ever since he was five years old. Recording unreleased songs from long time ago sounds like a nice move if you've been a recording artist and songwriter long enough. Compiling all the short songs throughout his entire career, even dating as far back as his childhood years, The Tanpen was publicly released on September 22. Susquehanna's first commercial release was distributed by SME Intermedia (now Sony Music Solutions Inc.), and would be one of the early instances of an anison singer producing content from his/her own record label, at least according to my knowledge.

Three months later came the only original album from that record label, Megami no Jiyuu, on December 18. With a cover art of Yamamoto's simplistic doodle with pictures of the sensei himself (alongside his mother and daughter), Masayukists can enjoy more of his versatility through each track he's created.

On February 13, 2000, Susquehanna Record's website was created. This was the prototype of his current website that provided details of his works he made so far, live concert data and its latest updates at that time. In fact, this was actually Yamamoto-sensei's first official website ever created. It even got its viridian theme color!

Not much to say about that website since, as it was the early 2000s at that time, not much of the site has been archived. Not even a single icon or image saved. And because it is no longer accessible, we likely never will see what it actually looks like.

It's likely that Susquehanna Record was closed after Yamamoto-sensei joined Bella Beaux Entertainment. His Yamamoto Choutei VHS tapes and DVDs were still privately sold during live events, with a drawing of the Susquehanna calling back to his now defunct record label.

Acquiring a record label of your own can be challenging, especially if you're a highly recognizable music artist with a very busy schedule of events and production going on. Yamamoto's own label may only last a few years, but that didn't tire him from being in a different record label that he's been associated with for two decades. Susquehanna Record may no longer exist, but it unfolded another chapter into his career.