2011/05/04 - COMIN'KOBE'11 | 神戸ポートアイランド
This is going to be mainly point form/short sentences because I can't remember much, and don't want to end up writing a thesis like what happened when I tried to write a report for last year's COUNTDOWN JAPAN 10/11. Also, most of the bands were new to me, and it was fun just hopping around trying out new bands. Discovered two new bands which I thought sounded good, so I'd say it was a great outing in general :D
First time in Kobe for me, but apart from going to the festival, I didn't get to explore the place at all. Then again, it's not like I go to Chiba for anything other than Makuhari Messe either. Oh well.
So anyway, the COMIN' KOBE organisation committee did send us an email warning us that it would be very crowded at Sannomiya station, and that they were starting round-trip portliner ticket sales from 8am. Considering that you could only start exchanging the event ticket for your wristband at 10am, I figured it should be fine if I reached Sannomiya at 9.30am anyway. But of course, I was terribly wrong.
The line just got longer and longer. It was like someone was on a roll at a game of Snake. But I guess that's what happens when the festival doesn't have an upper limit on capacity, and is free to attend. The line moved decently fast though, so I was able to get my round-trip tickets and get onto the portliner towards the event venue. But of course, it was another round of queueing at Shiminhiroba station to exchange for the wristband. The scary thing was that the queue stretched from the exchange booth at the World Kinen Hall all the way to the station, possibly covering between 1 to 2 kilometers. And what was worse was that during the 30 minutes I was standing in queue for before the exchange even started, there was a continuous stream of people going past me to join the back of the queue D: My first time at a festival, so I'm kinda worried that it might be the same at SUMMER SONIC as well.
There were two venues for this festival, World Kinen Hall and the Kobe Shikugawa Gakuin University, and each venue had various stages. This being a festival and all, planning in advance was required, so my initial schedule had looked like this:
UNCHAIN (ESP RED)
CROSSFAITH (KSGU RAINBOW)
EGG BRAIN (Kit Kat STAGE)
LAST ALLIANCE (Aero STAGE)
LOCAL SOUND STYLE (KSGU RAINBOW)
chaqq (Kitchen STAGE)
MEANING (KSGU RAINBOW)
Fear,and Loathing in Las Vegas (Aero STAGE)
Smash Up (ESP BLACK)
ROTTENGRAFFTY (Aero STAGE)
But then I realised that it was a LONG walk between the two venues, made worse due to human traffic jam, so I did damage control and ended up with this schedule instead:
UNCHAIN (ESP RED)
EGG BRAIN (Kit Kat STAGE)
LOCAL SOUND STYLE (KSGU RAINBOW)
太陽族 (Kitchen STAGE)
chaqq (Kitchen STAGE)
MEANING (KSGU RAINBOW)
HEY-SMITH (KSGU GREEN)
GRAND COLOR STONE (KSGU RAINBOW)
Smash Up (ESP BLACK)
おかん (たいようのうた広場)
It was pretty much a play-by-ear situation (pun fully intended :D It's been a long time since I made bad jokes hurhur). Also figured that it was wiser for me to stay at the university's side because there were more stages there I could hop around, in case I didn't like any of the music. Most of the bands were picked initially based only on the fact that they were friends of bands I follow, so they would hopefully have a similar music style. This wasn't usually the case, as I soon found out.
UNCHAIN
Haven't heard any of their stuff, and they were one of those "friends of bands I follow" I decided to try out. Unfortunately, they were on the "friends but different music style" side. Not that that was a bad thing - it just meant a little readjustment of expectations. UNCHAIN's music was more groovy, had a slightly blues-y feel to it, and I kinda liked the guitar's tone. The audience in front was jumping (though I really doubt there'd be a mosh), but I hung around the back with the chillax crowd.
After UNCHAIN, I decided that I would hunt for food before EGG BRAIN, because I hadn't eaten breakfast and this was the longest break I would have the whole day. Queued for about 30 minutes at the yakinikudon stall before I got my food. There were two boys conversing in Kansai-ben behind me and that made me really happy ahahahaha.
I'm not a spicy food/kimchi-lover, but that was the only proper food being sold at World Kinen Hall, so I had to suck it and buy. It wasn't as spicy as expected, and the seasoning (whatever it's called... sauce? たれ, basically) was really delicious. But yes, no time to waste if I were to make it in time for EGG BRAIN, so I wolfed down the yakinikudon and made a beeline for the Kit Kat STAGE. The previous band, サクラメリーメン were performing their last song, and I think the band on the Aero STAGE called I-RabBits performed as well? But honestly, all I remember from watching them on the screen was that I was thankful that the vocalist's voice (female) wasn't the piercing annoying kind I hate. In fact, they gave off a similar feel to HEAD SPEAKER, except that the female vocals here plays the keyboards as well.
EGG BRAIN
Setlist:
1) SEVENTEEN
2) STARING AT THE SAME OLD STAR
3) METEOR
4) PLAN X
5) YEAH! YEAH! (I never knew the name of this song, but looking at their discography and going by the chorus, I'm inferring that this is the title)
EGG BRAIN was one of the two bands I came to see. They didn't even bother to go off stage, and just started the show immediately after finishing soundcheck. I was within 10 rows from the front, and when Joy went "COMING KOBE, ARE YOU READY??? ARE YOU FUCKING READY???", I seriously thought that I was going to die from the sudden surge of people. I don't know how people can stand.. it's like a rush hour train hurtling down a windy track at full speed. The good thing is that people don't fall, because there's always someone else there for you to throw your whole weight on even though you're teetering at a 45 degree angle. I guess I wouldn't mind it that much if I didn't have baggage with me, but fuck if I'm ever going to go in with my green bag again. It's the worst mosh I've ever been into. At any rate, I could feel that my shoelaces had come undone, so that was the deciding factor in making me get out of the moshpit. Even though I had started to leave in the middle of the first song, it took me all the way until the end of the second song to actually get out of the moshpit D: Much WTF.
Joy did a short MC after the second song, and I took the opportunity to tie my shoelaces. I love it when they play songs 4 and 5 during lives because they're really fun to dance to. Also, the sing-a-long during song 5, when everyone in the audience holds up the peace sign and goes "YEAH! YEAH!". I think it's probably their default ending song or something, because I seem to be seeing a pattern of it being used as a last song every time I go to their shows. Good choice, though. I think the members threw picks and sticks at the end, and Uchi's drumsticks flew pretty far. Unfortunately, they were directed towards the center. I guess it's a reward for those who braved the mosh for the entire show.
There wasn't much talking, and it was a really tight set considering that they had to squeeze 5 songs into 20 minutes. Everyone filed out of the arena, and I had the misfortune of being pushed by rude boys. Seriously, I have a show to catch too. Would it kill to file out of the area in an orderly manner? Also, a smelly boy walked right into me while I was on the way to the university side, even though I had tried to move up the curb to avoid him. It was a pretty hard hit, and I stumbled a little. FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE. Nothing else describes how I felt better than "SIBEI DULAN LA. KNNCCB" (sorry for Singlish). People have been telling me that Japanese men are rude. I'm sorry to say that while I'm sure there are loads of great dudes out there (some of whom I've had the great opportunity to have met in person), these black sheep totally spoil the good image.
LOCAL SOUND STYLE
Setlist:
1) Starting Over
2) Take Me to the Place
3) Life Goes On
4) Get Out
5) Carry On
The second band I really wanted to see. Learning from the earlier EGG BRAIN show, I decided to join the chillax-ers at the back. Was surprised that there was crowdsurfers already. At any rate, I was out of the danger zone, so what do I care anyway if people want to break their necks. I think song 3 is a great track to play live, because it gets the crowd dancing. As usual, Kurotaki does the MC, and is full of LOL while doing it: "On this sunny day... oh wait, the sky isn't blue" (it was cloudy and somewhat chilly). He mentioned something about the charity live they did in Sendai (on May 1), and said that he was here in Kobe to tell us that the people in Aomori and Sendai were doing awesome.
Second picture above is of people (possibly other bandmen?) watching the show from the second floor. My hypothesis is that you can use the number of people standing on that balcony as a gauge as to how popular a band is among their own fellow bandmen. There were a couple of other people, but they had left by the time I snapped the photo. Anyway, for a moment I thought that Kurotaki was going to smash his bass during the last song, but he thankfully didn't.
The show ended, and it was basically free-time for me because I didn't have a particular band which I loved. So I headed in to the Kitchen STAGE to see what 太陽族 was all about.
太陽族
Their songs were all pretty upbeat and high-energy. The entire standing area was PACKED. The atmosphere and style felt vaguely 氣志團-ish. Also, the songs were very karaoke-friendly so the crowd was singing along for the most part, even when not encouraged to. It probably helped that the songs were all in Japanese as well. Which means that I will have trouble during sing-a-longs, but ahwell. I can, er, hum XD This band was Good Find 1. Also during the MC, the vocals was like "I know you guys aren't allowed to crowdsurf here, but you can do so to your heart's content when you come to our live show!" (LOL guailan hahaha).
chaqq
Had heard about this band from Tako-sensei before, so I decided to give them a go. They weren't bad. They didn't leave as strong an impression as 太陽族 or the other band I consider to be Good Find 2, but their songs were pleasant to listen to, nevertheless.
MEANING
On the left, you can see 3 members of MEANING, Takada (Gu), green-haired dude who is their drummer, and magenta-haired dude who is their vocalist. I visited the Osaka Kaiyukan (an aquarium) a couple of days later, and came across this fish. I don't mind people having crazy hair colours, but the similarity is striking. Just saying, you know. Hurhur.
I mentioned earlier about bands which are popular among their fellow bandmen. I guess there are simply more hardcore/screamo lovers than LSS-style music. There were more people on that balcony, but as usual I'm too late. There was a point during the performance in which the vocals climbed up the amplifiers and everyone around me started whipping out their cameras. I was too slow (because I was a humji :( ).
At any rate, I've been meaning to catch MEANING since the previous event, and while I was watching them, the only things running through my head were "FACEPALM", "Ohh Takada what did you get yourself into??", and "No wonder the people on the ELLEGARDEN LJ comm were all "Ubukata's in this band, Hosomi's in that band, Takahashi's in this band. No idea on what MEANING is up to" and "nobody cares what Meaning's doing which is why nobody reposts any info =P"". I kinda feel bad for agreeing, but well, everyone's got their own poison.
Okay mini-rant here.
At the beginning of the show, the staff came up and announced that because there have been injuries from crowdsurfers, they were going to refuse re-entry to the crowdsurfers after they had reached the front. Of course, we all know all fucking useless this is. There are signs up at every live I've been to saying "CROWDSURFING IS NOT ALLOWED", but has that ever stopped anyone? No, because the authorities are fucking useless bums. Do you seriously think that getting the surfer to say "I'm sorry, not going to do it again" and then letting them run along means anything? Apologies can be (and are usually) made at a drop of a hat. If watching stupid bimbos and entertainers on Japanese television shows (like Tousouchuu) stab their team members in the back and go "ごめんね～～～～" doesn't already tell you how worthless apology is to these people, I don't know what to say. Yes, it's television, things are played up, but it shows you how ugly people are. Don't just apologise using WORDS, show that you're remorseful using ACTIONS. Someone crowdsurfs? Well then, kick the motherfucker out. For every one surfer you kick out, you're saving ten people from getting kicked in the face. I wonder if they've even thought about that. But seriously, why impose a rule when you're not going to enforce it? And I can't even sue the organisers if I get injured, even though it's their fault for being fucking useless and not enforcing the rules that leads to this kind of situations.
But of course, I'm just a regular concert-goer. What say do I have anyway. Hur.
Okay, rage time over.
Oh, and I nearly forgot. The vocalist has a pretty deep and sexy speaking voice.
HEY-SMITH
Another one of those "friends of bands I follow", and of the "different music style" side. Their music was pretty funky and interesting. It's the flavour that only brass instruments can add to the mix. I'm not too sure what genre it falls under.. There are swing-jazzy parts, but then there are also the rock and punk parts. I don't know, really. At any rate, I liked that I heard. Also, you can't see from picture 2 properly, but the clouds of dust from people dancing was like bad haze days from Indonesia's forest fires.
GRAND COLOR STONE
This band was Good Find 2. I didn't even plan for their show.. Just wandered over after HEY-SMITH were done, and liked enough of what I first heard to stay on for the rest of their set. (Tako-sensei: I don't know if you'd like them much, because I think the vocalist falls under the category of nasal voices :S) I don't know the titles of their songs, but I know the second-last one I heard was 大嫌ライダ, which was a really fun song and got everyone in the audience dancing and shouting. They do piano rock, which is always fun (from my previous experience with FAT PROP anyway). Lots of improvisation along the way, and the vocalist ribs the keyboardist non-stop (hahaha). They have a show at Shibuya O-CREST in June, so I think I'm going to check them out :) Love the keyboardist's shirt ("ムダに元気"), and I think that's the band's catchphrase or something, which is awesumsauce.
Smash Up
Heard their name somewhere and decided to go try them out. I had gone in expecting punk/rock and yes, punk/rock was what I got. Thankfully, it was the type that I kinda liked, so yayy score.
Wow this is like the shortest (3-liner!). I mean, I quite like their stuff. Not at the level where I would go for their shows, but I would be happy to see their name in the 対バンド list.
おかん
Was heading back to the World Kinen Hall to catch the encore band (which I didn't in the end because the crowd was horrendous, and then I realised that it was for bands who were formed in Kobe and that none of the bands I liked were formed in Kobe so I gave up and left for home).
The vocalist talked about how they got relegated from the larger stages to this one this year, though they were still thankful for the opportunity to participate in the festival again. They hadn't been doing livehouses too much, but instead had been going out to a whole variety of venues, such as cinemas, wedding ceremonies and old folks' homes. They recently headed to Miyagi and did something there, based solely on the fact that they had gotten an email from a girl living there. While her family was safe, their CD which she had bought at the Tower Records in Shibuya was broken. So although they were all physically alright, she wasn't able to calm down mentally because of the absence of music. Because of that, the band members got into the car and headed up to Miyagi. I don't know about you, but I was really touched by that episode.
They also had guests, FUNKIST's vocals, percussionist and guitar.
I actually have a video of the entire collaboration song they did, and boy was it LONG because the vocalist was really red (i.e. drunk) and did lulzy stuffs like calling two members of the audience to come up and introduce themselves. When he went "One man, now we want one girl!" I was all "NO YOU DON'T SEE ME". Thankfully, one girl volunteered herself almost immediately and he didn't have to pick from the audience. But wahlau the girl was extremez. She looked younger than me and has a kid D:
Anyway the band was called Okan, which is Kansai-ben for "Mother", and the vocals was being lulzy as usual, asking the crowd to shout "Okaachan!", to which FUNKIST's vocals was LOL-ing hard and going "OMG that's SO uncool". The vocals also called GAGAGA's Maeda (?) up and yes you can see why the song veered off and went in all kinds of directions. But it was still good fun and it ended nicely without any accidents.
Headed back to the World Kinen Hall, but as I mentioned earlier, I gave up queuing, and decided to head back to Osaka instead. Queuing isn't fun when you're alone, but I guess that's part and parcel of a festival. It was fun trying out new bands. The satisfaction you get when you discover a gem is similar to how one feels when you strike lottery. I guess I didn't really end up doing the point-form bit after all, but I think that this is comparably shorter as compared to the length I usually write for one-mans.
Next show: 2011/05/22 - 黒帯カポエイラ “MIX JUICE” with Dread Nought / Midnight_Lazy / 8283 / ザ・花見スタイル / 他 | 横浜FAD
First time in Kobe for me, but apart from going to the festival, I didn't get to explore the place at all. Then again, it's not like I go to Chiba for anything other than Makuhari Messe either. Oh well.
So anyway, the COMIN' KOBE organisation committee did send us an email warning us that it would be very crowded at Sannomiya station, and that they were starting round-trip portliner ticket sales from 8am. Considering that you could only start exchanging the event ticket for your wristband at 10am, I figured it should be fine if I reached Sannomiya at 9.30am anyway. But of course, I was terribly wrong.
The line just got longer and longer. It was like someone was on a roll at a game of Snake. But I guess that's what happens when the festival doesn't have an upper limit on capacity, and is free to attend. The line moved decently fast though, so I was able to get my round-trip tickets and get onto the portliner towards the event venue. But of course, it was another round of queueing at Shiminhiroba station to exchange for the wristband. The scary thing was that the queue stretched from the exchange booth at the World Kinen Hall all the way to the station, possibly covering between 1 to 2 kilometers. And what was worse was that during the 30 minutes I was standing in queue for before the exchange even started, there was a continuous stream of people going past me to join the back of the queue D: My first time at a festival, so I'm kinda worried that it might be the same at SUMMER SONIC as well.
There were two venues for this festival, World Kinen Hall and the Kobe Shikugawa Gakuin University, and each venue had various stages. This being a festival and all, planning in advance was required, so my initial schedule had looked like this:
UNCHAIN (ESP RED)
CROSSFAITH (KSGU RAINBOW)
EGG BRAIN (Kit Kat STAGE)
LAST ALLIANCE (Aero STAGE)
LOCAL SOUND STYLE (KSGU RAINBOW)
chaqq (Kitchen STAGE)
MEANING (KSGU RAINBOW)
Fear,and Loathing in Las Vegas (Aero STAGE)
Smash Up (ESP BLACK)
ROTTENGRAFFTY (Aero STAGE)
But then I realised that it was a LONG walk between the two venues, made worse due to human traffic jam, so I did damage control and ended up with this schedule instead:
UNCHAIN (ESP RED)
EGG BRAIN (Kit Kat STAGE)
LOCAL SOUND STYLE (KSGU RAINBOW)
太陽族 (Kitchen STAGE)
chaqq (Kitchen STAGE)
MEANING (KSGU RAINBOW)
HEY-SMITH (KSGU GREEN)
GRAND COLOR STONE (KSGU RAINBOW)
Smash Up (ESP BLACK)
おかん (たいようのうた広場)
It was pretty much a play-by-ear situation (pun fully intended :D It's been a long time since I made bad jokes hurhur). Also figured that it was wiser for me to stay at the university's side because there were more stages there I could hop around, in case I didn't like any of the music. Most of the bands were picked initially based only on the fact that they were friends of bands I follow, so they would hopefully have a similar music style. This wasn't usually the case, as I soon found out.
UNCHAIN
Haven't heard any of their stuff, and they were one of those "friends of bands I follow" I decided to try out. Unfortunately, they were on the "friends but different music style" side. Not that that was a bad thing - it just meant a little readjustment of expectations. UNCHAIN's music was more groovy, had a slightly blues-y feel to it, and I kinda liked the guitar's tone. The audience in front was jumping (though I really doubt there'd be a mosh), but I hung around the back with the chillax crowd.
After UNCHAIN, I decided that I would hunt for food before EGG BRAIN, because I hadn't eaten breakfast and this was the longest break I would have the whole day. Queued for about 30 minutes at the yakinikudon stall before I got my food. There were two boys conversing in Kansai-ben behind me and that made me really happy ahahahaha.
I'm not a spicy food/kimchi-lover, but that was the only proper food being sold at World Kinen Hall, so I had to suck it and buy. It wasn't as spicy as expected, and the seasoning (whatever it's called... sauce? たれ, basically) was really delicious. But yes, no time to waste if I were to make it in time for EGG BRAIN, so I wolfed down the yakinikudon and made a beeline for the Kit Kat STAGE. The previous band, サクラメリーメン were performing their last song, and I think the band on the Aero STAGE called I-RabBits performed as well? But honestly, all I remember from watching them on the screen was that I was thankful that the vocalist's voice (female) wasn't the piercing annoying kind I hate. In fact, they gave off a similar feel to HEAD SPEAKER, except that the female vocals here plays the keyboards as well.
EGG BRAIN
Setlist:
1) SEVENTEEN
2) STARING AT THE SAME OLD STAR
3) METEOR
4) PLAN X
5) YEAH! YEAH! (I never knew the name of this song, but looking at their discography and going by the chorus, I'm inferring that this is the title)
EGG BRAIN was one of the two bands I came to see. They didn't even bother to go off stage, and just started the show immediately after finishing soundcheck. I was within 10 rows from the front, and when Joy went "COMING KOBE, ARE YOU READY??? ARE YOU FUCKING READY???", I seriously thought that I was going to die from the sudden surge of people. I don't know how people can stand.. it's like a rush hour train hurtling down a windy track at full speed. The good thing is that people don't fall, because there's always someone else there for you to throw your whole weight on even though you're teetering at a 45 degree angle. I guess I wouldn't mind it that much if I didn't have baggage with me, but fuck if I'm ever going to go in with my green bag again. It's the worst mosh I've ever been into. At any rate, I could feel that my shoelaces had come undone, so that was the deciding factor in making me get out of the moshpit. Even though I had started to leave in the middle of the first song, it took me all the way until the end of the second song to actually get out of the moshpit D: Much WTF.
Joy did a short MC after the second song, and I took the opportunity to tie my shoelaces. I love it when they play songs 4 and 5 during lives because they're really fun to dance to. Also, the sing-a-long during song 5, when everyone in the audience holds up the peace sign and goes "YEAH! YEAH!". I think it's probably their default ending song or something, because I seem to be seeing a pattern of it being used as a last song every time I go to their shows. Good choice, though. I think the members threw picks and sticks at the end, and Uchi's drumsticks flew pretty far. Unfortunately, they were directed towards the center. I guess it's a reward for those who braved the mosh for the entire show.
There wasn't much talking, and it was a really tight set considering that they had to squeeze 5 songs into 20 minutes. Everyone filed out of the arena, and I had the misfortune of being pushed by rude boys. Seriously, I have a show to catch too. Would it kill to file out of the area in an orderly manner? Also, a smelly boy walked right into me while I was on the way to the university side, even though I had tried to move up the curb to avoid him. It was a pretty hard hit, and I stumbled a little. FUCK YOU, ASSHOLE. Nothing else describes how I felt better than "SIBEI DULAN LA. KNNCCB" (sorry for Singlish). People have been telling me that Japanese men are rude. I'm sorry to say that while I'm sure there are loads of great dudes out there (some of whom I've had the great opportunity to have met in person), these black sheep totally spoil the good image.
LOCAL SOUND STYLE
Setlist:
1) Starting Over
2) Take Me to the Place
3) Life Goes On
4) Get Out
5) Carry On
The second band I really wanted to see. Learning from the earlier EGG BRAIN show, I decided to join the chillax-ers at the back. Was surprised that there was crowdsurfers already. At any rate, I was out of the danger zone, so what do I care anyway if people want to break their necks. I think song 3 is a great track to play live, because it gets the crowd dancing. As usual, Kurotaki does the MC, and is full of LOL while doing it: "On this sunny day... oh wait, the sky isn't blue" (it was cloudy and somewhat chilly). He mentioned something about the charity live they did in Sendai (on May 1), and said that he was here in Kobe to tell us that the people in Aomori and Sendai were doing awesome.
Second picture above is of people (possibly other bandmen?) watching the show from the second floor. My hypothesis is that you can use the number of people standing on that balcony as a gauge as to how popular a band is among their own fellow bandmen. There were a couple of other people, but they had left by the time I snapped the photo. Anyway, for a moment I thought that Kurotaki was going to smash his bass during the last song, but he thankfully didn't.
The show ended, and it was basically free-time for me because I didn't have a particular band which I loved. So I headed in to the Kitchen STAGE to see what 太陽族 was all about.
太陽族
Their songs were all pretty upbeat and high-energy. The entire standing area was PACKED. The atmosphere and style felt vaguely 氣志團-ish. Also, the songs were very karaoke-friendly so the crowd was singing along for the most part, even when not encouraged to. It probably helped that the songs were all in Japanese as well. Which means that I will have trouble during sing-a-longs, but ahwell. I can, er, hum XD This band was Good Find 1. Also during the MC, the vocals was like "I know you guys aren't allowed to crowdsurf here, but you can do so to your heart's content when you come to our live show!" (LOL guailan hahaha).
chaqq
Had heard about this band from Tako-sensei before, so I decided to give them a go. They weren't bad. They didn't leave as strong an impression as 太陽族 or the other band I consider to be Good Find 2, but their songs were pleasant to listen to, nevertheless.
MEANING
On the left, you can see 3 members of MEANING, Takada (Gu), green-haired dude who is their drummer, and magenta-haired dude who is their vocalist. I visited the Osaka Kaiyukan (an aquarium) a couple of days later, and came across this fish. I don't mind people having crazy hair colours, but the similarity is striking. Just saying, you know. Hurhur.
I mentioned earlier about bands which are popular among their fellow bandmen. I guess there are simply more hardcore/screamo lovers than LSS-style music. There were more people on that balcony, but as usual I'm too late. There was a point during the performance in which the vocals climbed up the amplifiers and everyone around me started whipping out their cameras. I was too slow (because I was a humji :( ).
At any rate, I've been meaning to catch MEANING since the previous event, and while I was watching them, the only things running through my head were "FACEPALM", "Ohh Takada what did you get yourself into??", and "No wonder the people on the ELLEGARDEN LJ comm were all "Ubukata's in this band, Hosomi's in that band, Takahashi's in this band. No idea on what MEANING is up to" and "nobody cares what Meaning's doing which is why nobody reposts any info =P"". I kinda feel bad for agreeing, but well, everyone's got their own poison.
Okay mini-rant here.
At the beginning of the show, the staff came up and announced that because there have been injuries from crowdsurfers, they were going to refuse re-entry to the crowdsurfers after they had reached the front. Of course, we all know all fucking useless this is. There are signs up at every live I've been to saying "CROWDSURFING IS NOT ALLOWED", but has that ever stopped anyone? No, because the authorities are fucking useless bums. Do you seriously think that getting the surfer to say "I'm sorry, not going to do it again" and then letting them run along means anything? Apologies can be (and are usually) made at a drop of a hat. If watching stupid bimbos and entertainers on Japanese television shows (like Tousouchuu) stab their team members in the back and go "ごめんね～～～～" doesn't already tell you how worthless apology is to these people, I don't know what to say. Yes, it's television, things are played up, but it shows you how ugly people are. Don't just apologise using WORDS, show that you're remorseful using ACTIONS. Someone crowdsurfs? Well then, kick the motherfucker out. For every one surfer you kick out, you're saving ten people from getting kicked in the face. I wonder if they've even thought about that. But seriously, why impose a rule when you're not going to enforce it? And I can't even sue the organisers if I get injured, even though it's their fault for being fucking useless and not enforcing the rules that leads to this kind of situations.
But of course, I'm just a regular concert-goer. What say do I have anyway. Hur.
Okay, rage time over.
Oh, and I nearly forgot. The vocalist has a pretty deep and sexy speaking voice.
HEY-SMITH
Another one of those "friends of bands I follow", and of the "different music style" side. Their music was pretty funky and interesting. It's the flavour that only brass instruments can add to the mix. I'm not too sure what genre it falls under.. There are swing-jazzy parts, but then there are also the rock and punk parts. I don't know, really. At any rate, I liked that I heard. Also, you can't see from picture 2 properly, but the clouds of dust from people dancing was like bad haze days from Indonesia's forest fires.
GRAND COLOR STONE
This band was Good Find 2. I didn't even plan for their show.. Just wandered over after HEY-SMITH were done, and liked enough of what I first heard to stay on for the rest of their set. (Tako-sensei: I don't know if you'd like them much, because I think the vocalist falls under the category of nasal voices :S) I don't know the titles of their songs, but I know the second-last one I heard was 大嫌ライダ, which was a really fun song and got everyone in the audience dancing and shouting. They do piano rock, which is always fun (from my previous experience with FAT PROP anyway). Lots of improvisation along the way, and the vocalist ribs the keyboardist non-stop (hahaha). They have a show at Shibuya O-CREST in June, so I think I'm going to check them out :) Love the keyboardist's shirt ("ムダに元気"), and I think that's the band's catchphrase or something, which is awesumsauce.
Smash Up
Heard their name somewhere and decided to go try them out. I had gone in expecting punk/rock and yes, punk/rock was what I got. Thankfully, it was the type that I kinda liked, so yayy score.
Wow this is like the shortest (3-liner!). I mean, I quite like their stuff. Not at the level where I would go for their shows, but I would be happy to see their name in the 対バンド list.
おかん
Was heading back to the World Kinen Hall to catch the encore band (which I didn't in the end because the crowd was horrendous, and then I realised that it was for bands who were formed in Kobe and that none of the bands I liked were formed in Kobe so I gave up and left for home).
The vocalist talked about how they got relegated from the larger stages to this one this year, though they were still thankful for the opportunity to participate in the festival again. They hadn't been doing livehouses too much, but instead had been going out to a whole variety of venues, such as cinemas, wedding ceremonies and old folks' homes. They recently headed to Miyagi and did something there, based solely on the fact that they had gotten an email from a girl living there. While her family was safe, their CD which she had bought at the Tower Records in Shibuya was broken. So although they were all physically alright, she wasn't able to calm down mentally because of the absence of music. Because of that, the band members got into the car and headed up to Miyagi. I don't know about you, but I was really touched by that episode.
They also had guests, FUNKIST's vocals, percussionist and guitar.
I actually have a video of the entire collaboration song they did, and boy was it LONG because the vocalist was really red (i.e. drunk) and did lulzy stuffs like calling two members of the audience to come up and introduce themselves. When he went "One man, now we want one girl!" I was all "NO YOU DON'T SEE ME". Thankfully, one girl volunteered herself almost immediately and he didn't have to pick from the audience. But wahlau the girl was extremez. She looked younger than me and has a kid D:
Anyway the band was called Okan, which is Kansai-ben for "Mother", and the vocals was being lulzy as usual, asking the crowd to shout "Okaachan!", to which FUNKIST's vocals was LOL-ing hard and going "OMG that's SO uncool". The vocals also called GAGAGA's Maeda (?) up and yes you can see why the song veered off and went in all kinds of directions. But it was still good fun and it ended nicely without any accidents.
Headed back to the World Kinen Hall, but as I mentioned earlier, I gave up queuing, and decided to head back to Osaka instead. Queuing isn't fun when you're alone, but I guess that's part and parcel of a festival. It was fun trying out new bands. The satisfaction you get when you discover a gem is similar to how one feels when you strike lottery. I guess I didn't really end up doing the point-form bit after all, but I think that this is comparably shorter as compared to the length I usually write for one-mans.
Next show: 2011/05/22 - 黒帯カポエイラ “MIX JUICE” with Dread Nought / Midnight_Lazy / 8283 / ザ・花見スタイル / 他 | 横浜FAD