♠ #54 - USA VAMPS TRIP ♠
Actually I arrived home in Australia late yesterday afternoon, but I was pretty tired so I couldn’t bring myself to type all this out. A lot of this was written on my flight home and I just added bits as I remembered them. All under the cut because it’s an absolute novel. ^^
☆ SAN FRANCISCO ☆
I left Sydney at 10:30am on Wednesday and arrived in SF at 10:30am on Wednesday (haha) ^^ Totally tired but super excited! I only had 1 ½ days for generally exploring, but I took a few pictures around the city
The view from my hotel room:
My hotel room:
Hyde Street:
Lombard Street (the crooked street):
Pier 39:
Chinatown gateway:
The peace pagoda in Japantown:
☆ THE AUTOGRAPH SESSION ☆
I arrived in front to Kino at about 10am. There were a few girls out the front already so I sat down and prepared myself for a long wait. Pretty soon after this amazingly gorgeous girl sat down on the seat opposite me and it took me a moment before recognising her as killingsound !!! And soon after that we met Jazmin and Bebe who at first I didn’t know and only later realised I knew them from Hydeist! Also in our group was Emily, Dalia, Amber, Mirna (and forgive me because there were a few others whose names I can’t remember ;_;) And we were the FIRST GROUP IN LINE! I believe I was #6 or 7!! :)
So we all waited nervous in line together and at about 4:30 they opened up the merch table to let us buy stuff in groups so be didn’t get out of line order.
Then at 6pm they called us inside to meet HYDE and KAZ! KAZ was first and I was in a total OMGTHEYARE RIGHTTHERE daze, so I didn’t say much to KAZ, just ‘thank you’ after he signed my CD and shook my hand. Then next was Hyde and the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing sunglasses ;__; but that was forgotten when he looked up at me and was smiling that gorgeous perfect smile of his. I managed to stutter out something like ‘thankyousomuchforcoming’ while blushing like crazy. I think he said thank you back but most of it is a blur, including his handshake, which I’m kicking myself for not remembering.
After we all had our turn we waited around to get more glimpses of the gorgeousness that is Hyde. All I can say is, he is like the sweetest person ever, even for the people at the back of the line, the smile never left his face, and I can only imagine how tired he must have been, but he was smiling for everyone ♥ Gawd, I never thought it could be possible, but my love for him doubled just seeing the way he treated all us crazy fans. The staff repeatedly told us to ‘please move along’ which of course, we did NOT do! We attempted to sneakily take pictures, but only killingsound managed to get a decent shot. At 6:45, they had finished signing, and we were rewarded for waiting around as they walked directly past us as they were leaving.
Once they were gone we made our way over to the table they were at and proceeded to sit in Hyde’s seat and take pictures. We also took the 4 posters that were behind them during the session!! ^^
After all that, we still couldn’t bring ourselves to leave that place, so we went and made purikura pictures with VAMPS background :) (Which by the way guys, in the first issue of VAMPS times, we see Vamps’ purikura pictures!!)
I then made my way back to my hotel to cry. (so not joking unfortunately)
Pictures from the autograph session:
Our purikura shots:
And VAMPS doing the exact same thing!
☆ THE CONCERT☆
I arrived in the concert line at 8am. Most of my group was already there in the line when I got there. Our group was right on the corner quite close to the front.
At about 9-10am everyone in the line got a number to keep us in order and I was number 37. It was freezing cold in the line, lucky I had my stolen blanket from the flight over! Despite that I actually had a lot of fun in the line talking with other fans. I think we all agreed it was nice to fangirl in person rather that over the internet ^^ And I’m so happy to have met all you girls, you are all awesome and I really hope to have the opportunity to see you all again ♥
Jazmin and I walked down the line throughout the day to let people sign Tracy’s awesome banner which took some time up and we got to meet lots more people that way, some other fans even asked for a photo with us (lol) Also, some of the staff were filming the line and they gave us the thumbs up when we showed them the banner. I have hope that we may make a brief appearance in the DVD!
At about 7pm we all started standing up and forming a proper line and at that point J came and spoke to us! ^O^ He was really sweet and funny and told us that the boys are very ~easy~ because they’ve been on the road so long so we should treat them well, and gave us Hyde’s traditional sexy-tongue-lick-thingy!!! He also gave us a little gift each! (the VAMPS bottle opener!)
At a little after 8pm they let us in finally and we made a run for the stage. At first I was standing in the second line next to Bebe and lucky for me the girls in front were so wonderful and were fanning everyone and passing around the bottles of water! But by about halfway through the concert I’d been pushed into the first row and only about 3 people to the left on centre! Hyde was so close! Unfortunately I didn’t get to see much of KAZ, but he did come over to our side and do his insanely cool guitar swinging thing in front of us! I saw a lot more of Ju-ken, who was totally awesome and looking absolutely sexy. But of course, I was looking at Hyde the majority of the time. He looked gorgeous (of course) he was wearing ripped jeans and black boots and a long sleeve top so we couldn’t see his new tattoo. He didn’t take his shirt off at all, probably because it was really really cold! But his top was nicely low cut, so we got a nice view at least! He really does have the most amazing skin! XD
VAMPS are absolutely amazing live. I know it’s been said (by everyone) But songs like Hunting and Sex Blood Rock n’ Roll which I admittedly skipped over when listening to the album were crazy live and the crowd went wild. I think a lot of Vamps songs can only be truly appreciated for how good they are after hearing them live. Even songs like Evanescent, which I already love like crazy, are just soooo much better after hearing them live. And they played SWEET DREAMS which was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard and I would totally have flown all the way to the US just for that one song ♥ Second favourite was Vampire Depression, because the crowd got so into it, especially the “Just blind me, set me free” part. Redrum was pretty fantastic too (hell, they all were) the only song I was really hoping to hear but didn’t was Deep Red. After the concert everyone was understandably very emotional and very close to having a heart attack, but we raced around to the back door to see them leave, and get some of the crappiest video footage ever, and then they drove of. Someone was all “FOLLOW THAT VAN” and everyone else laughed.
I then went back to my hotel room and cried into my pillow (again, not joking) once I was finished crying it was almost 1am, I didn’t realise I cried so long. Then I tried to sleep, but ended up looking at my autographed CD and a picture of Hyde almost all night. (lol, I’m almost ashamed of my pathetic fangirliness.)
The setlist as I remember it: Pretty sure I managed to get all the songs, but I have no doubt they are not in the correct order except for the encore.
SETLIST
Love Addict
It's Sad
Redrum
Jesus Christ
Secret In My Heart
Life On Mars?
Countdown
Evanescent
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
Dolly
Sweet Dreams ♥
Trouble
Hunting
Hideaway
Sex Blood Rock N' Roll
----------------
I Gotta Kick Start Now
Vampire Depression
Midnight Celebration
Hyde’s MC’s:
His english is soso cute! But totally understandable, which I was very impressed by. He told us he thinks San Francisco is ~so beautifuuul~ (like in Sweet dreams) And that he loves the steep streets. Steep streets? Making gestures, and the crowd screams YES!! Also he loves the clam chowder (so yummy) The crowd kept screaming ‘HYDE STREET’ Hyde was all ‘Do you know Hyde street?’ The crowd screams YES again! Hyde says that he guesses that this is his city. He also ‘bought many, many clothes. Do you know why? Because San Francisco is so cold!’ The crowd screams because YES HYDE, it’s very cold here, we were sitting out in it the last 12 hours! Then he introduced the next song which I don’t remember sorry!
In the next one, he said something like: “I am here, because of all of you.” And my heart practically melted. Also “I want to see you get crazzzzy” Then he started to introduce the next song and open his mouth to speak but said nothing and just laughed (cutie!) Then he told us the next song is I Gotta Kick Start Now!
Highlights of my night:
Hyde looking directly at me during sweet dreams! I was so embarrassed because I was totally bawling during that song and clinging to the girl next to me for dear life and staring right up at Hyde and he just looked right at me ^^
Also, during one of the songs (and I don’t remember which one, that’s how affected I was) he sat down in front of us really close and blew kisses ♥ I was all O__O HYDEISRIGHTTHEREOMG and creepily staring at him and he blew a kiss to my direction!!
Some pictures from the line and after the concert:
I feel like a LOT of my time on this trip was spent ~waiting~ so I made a quick calculation of my time spent:
Waiting at airports - 17 hours
On planes - 30 hours
Autograph session line - 8 hours
Concert line - 12 hours
TOTAL - 67 hours
Time spent looking at Hyde - 2 hours
So was it worth it..?
HELL YES! And I’d do it again. I want to do it again. 2011 can’t come fast enough for me!
And a big THANK YOU if you read all the way to the end of this. I'm sorry it got so long, I just started typing and it all came rushing back to me. ^^
And I'm so sorry for missing so many of your posts guys! I've been away from my computer for 1 week and I've missed so much, but I'm trying to catch up with as many as I can! :)