4/15 JIRO-PRODUCED LIVE OSAKA Live Report
JIRO Produce Live 2009
THE GREAT VACATION -extra-
OSAKA CRASH NIGHT
2009/04/15
SET LIST:
01.TWO BELL SILENCE
02.JUNK ART
-MC-
03.TROUBLE ON MONDAY
04.a boy〜ずっと忘れない
05.HIT THE WORLD CHART！
06.COME ON!!〜Power Never Mind
-MC-
07.FATSOUNDS
08.mister popcorn
09.Father & Son
10.またここであいましょう
-MC-
11.HIGHCOMMUNICATIONS
12.BLAST
13.MIRROR
14.つづれ織り〜so far and yet so close〜
-MC-
15.VERB
16.SAY YOUR DREAM
アンコール
01.I am xxx
02.彼女の“Modern…”
03.SHUTTER SPEEDSのテーマ
04.ACID HEAD
What can I say? I know that the past live reports I’ve done have all said, “This was the best GLAY live I’ve ever been to (besides the US tour)!” but really, besides the US tour this was the most intimate and surprising GLAY concert yet for me.
My friend and I took the night bus from Shinjuku to Osaka. We got dropped off at Osaka Station around 7:30am. We wanted a place to get ready, and I was going to just suck it up and suggest we go to an internet café or McDonalds or something, when my friend said that her Japanese friend had suggested we look for this place near the station where you can get ready. After asking someone at the station info desk, we went to this place where you only pay 300 yen and you get an hour to get cleaned up. Personal vanities, toilets, sinks, dressing rooms, plug outlets for your cell, etc, and best of off you can use their styling tools and they make coffee or tea! It was so refreshing after the hectic night we’d had getting there. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that in Tokyo there was a torrential downpour Tuesday night that we had to walk through and wait for the bus, so not only were we soaked, but everything in our bags got wet too. And throughout the whole 8 hour bus ride we never really completely dried.
So anyway, after cleaning up I suggested we go to a café of some sort to make our banner for the band and eat/kill time until we headed over to the venue. Near the station there’s a Vie La France that sells yummy bread and coffee so we went there and spent 8-11 making our sign. It turned out really well!
At 12 I called my friend who lives in Osaka but she’d worked the night before and crashed, so plans to hang out and have lunch before hand didn’t happen, but since we got to the venue early, we went and waited around back with a small group of fans for the band to arrive. Jiro’s van arrived first, then Hisashi’s about 15 minutes later. We actually didn’t stay to see Taku or Teru get there because we wanted to get into the goods line as early as possible since the goods at shows sell out fast and the lines can get horrible. We bought our stuff. I got the Jiro-designed t-shirt and pamphlet. Anna got the shirt and the Teru Otoko Night tote bag. I was pretty sad that Hisashi goods weren’t available (the next day we got HS emails showing them and they are just really expensive, unexciting t-shirts >.<) because I wanted to get something for my best friend, but such is life.
So with another 4 hours or so to kill, we just hung out. The weather was beautiful so waiting outside was really nice. We started talking to other fans, which was really fun. A lot of them wanted to take pictures of us with the banner. Sometimes it really pays to be the only foreigner at their shows. I’ve noticed a lot of things about Japanese GLAY fans since I’ve been to more of their Japanese shows now. There is a big handful of their Japanese fans that are really awesome and nice. They get excited when they meet international fans and they like sharing things about GLAY. They also love hearing about the US tour and everything. But then there are sooooo many of their fans that feel like they have to compete. They give off this vibe, and sometimes even say things like, “GLAY is a Japanese band, we don’t want to share them with you,” or something like that and it makes me really sad. It seems to make the band really sad too. Taku seemed really disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm when they mentioned a possible world tour in the near future. Anyway, we hung out with some really cool girls. Anna is still into cosplay so she took pics with some of the cosplayers.
When they let us in they had photographers taking pics so hopefully there will be some pictures of us in a future HS or something. When we got to our places we were really happy! We were on the third level, which sounds bad, but the venue is really small. Anyway, our seats were front and center on the balcony, so not only did we have a great stage view but the band could easily see our sign! The music playing before the show was very obviously Jiro’s playlist because it was almost exactly the same songs that were playing before the PREDATORS concerts haha. When the band came out THE GREAT VACATION was playing and we held our banner up really high! Teru pointed up at us, Jiro made a little bow of appreciation, and Takuro did his little hands-together-in-prayer-postion-plus- bow thing that he always does!
As you can see, the set list was really nostalgic! Jiro said that he wanted to choose songs that they haven’t played in a long time. Everyone went crazy when they started TWO BELL SILENCE. I freaked. I made myself so dizzy rocking out to it. All of the songs were one surprise after the next. During Jiro’s MC he said that he had a hard time planning his live so he asked for a lot of help from the other members in picking songs. It was really cute. During MSTER POPCORN they did the ONE LOVE TOUR thing! They stopped at the bridge just like in that concert and Jiro and Toshi started doing their little drum-bass competition. Toshi wasn’t doing very good at first and Jiro said, “You’ve gotten kind bad at this over the years, ne?” But then Toshi stepped it up and put him in his place :P. The second half of the concert I pretty much spent in tears because they played so many emotional songs, as you can see. I’m really happy MIRROR is becoming a standard on their set lists.
During the last MC before VERB, Teru was trying to speak Osaka-ben and when Jiro got the mic he said something that sounded an awful lot like, “It’s really creepy when you try and use Osaka-ben.” I heard “Osaka-ben de hanasu toki” and “kimoi” in the same sentence X). Last but not least, right before we did the holding of the hands and jumping with the band, Jiro said, “Tsukutta sain (sign) ha, ARIGATOU!” So pretty much that completed my night.
After the show was over and we were all going down the steps to the lobby, we ran into two girls that happened to use the same set of lockers at Shinsaibashi station that we had earlier, and they recognized us and told us we should put the sign in the gift box. When we couldn’t’ find the gift box anymore we actually went and gave it to their manager! GLAY’s MANAGER!!! WTF???? I wanted to ask him for a job of some sort doing translating but I was too busy just being sort of in awe over it. He said he saw us with the sign during the show though, and that he’d give it to the band that night. He was just as cool and good-looking at the rest of them too lol.
After that we went with the two girls to Saizeriya. I wanted to go meet up with my friend while she was at work but Anna was really tired and wanting to not go anywhere more than necessary, so we just talked til we had to go meet the bus to go back to Tokyo.
It really was an awesome concert and I can’t wait to see them again! I'll add in pictures on my LJ later but I'm too busy and have to get ready to go clubbing in Shibuya!