[concert report] NAP Utatane 2011 @ Slim's in SF
Concert was awesome!!!
The crowd was definitely much more tame than at last year's show. Still very crowded with some slight shoving, but at least it wasn't all-out moshing like last time. That was terrible. I was able to get a pretty close spot to the stage, unfortunately not in the center, but off to the left side by the bassist area. Oh well, at least I was close enough to know that I really did make eye-to-eye contact with Sawao and it wasn't just him making a general glance around the crowd ^____________^
[RANT]
My only big complaint is that I was stuck standing by a DISGUSTING couple. I repeat, DISGUSTING. I'm fairly tolerant of PDA, but these 2 were making out every chance they could get, sucking each other's necks or chest, reaching up each other's clothes, glomping each other repeatedly (you've been standing next to each other for hours!! WTF would you act like you just saw each other over and over?!)...
But the most disgusting of all was when they would just stick their tongues out and smoosh it against each other. That was freaking GROSS. Who the hell does that?! UGHH I wanted to punch them so badly.
And to top it all off, they were ANNOYING AS FUCK. They were the loud ass, rabid, otaku type...throwing random Japanese around...and the girl would do things like that "NYAAAA" shit or make dog whimpering sounds to the boyfriend and he would just eat that up. It was a nightmare. I was so happy when a couple of guys managed to wander in between me and this couple so I didn't have to endure that anymore.
[/RANT]
The first band to play was All Ages at ~8pm. It was my first time seeing them and I ended up really enjoying, especially because of their awesome bassist. He was hilarious and definitely the life of the show:
He ran circles on the ground while still playing the bass and just lay there for a while XD
He even let the crowd strum his guitar during an instrumental portion. How awesome is that?
Around the middle of the performance, he was sweating like crazy and took off his shirt...and then:
He eventually took off his pants too, LOL. He went nuts! Sooo entertaining. He was always making crazy faces at the crowd, encouraging people to sing/clap (even pointing the mic at us), and just bringing up the energy so much. The other guy, the singer, was pretty cool too and tried throwing in some jokes here and there. Props for trying! At the last song, though, not only did the singer let us touch his guitar (yes I was able to strum it a bit XD ), but he let it go and people started nearly fighting over it like retards. Of course it wasn't for keeps and they had to hand it back to a crew member.
All Ages is a pretty cool band. Super friendly! They even gave out water bottles to the crowd during an intermission (cuz it was SO damn hot). Nice guys :)
After that very enjoyable performance came the noodles ~9PM! Definitely a much calmer performance, but still good of course! I'm still not familiar with too many of their songs, but I was happy to hear "Love My Life" and "Ingrid Said" !! Those songs are awesome <3
The noodles finished up around 10PM and after a painful 20-30 minute intermission, the pillows finally came out!! I was sad that Jun (the bassist) wasn't there again, but instead it was that Monokuro bassist who substituted for him last year. I think he does a great job , but it'd be great to have all 4 pillows members.
SAWAOOOO thank you for posing for the cameras!!!
Here's the setlist that they played:
1. Dance With God
2. I Think I Can
3. Mr. Droopy
4. Carnival
5. Crazy Sunshine
6. Rookie Jet
7. Instant Music
8. Comic Sonic
9. Funny Bunny
10. One Life
11. Little Busters
12. Hybrid Rainbow
13. Advice
Encore:
14. Ride on Shooting Star
15. Last Dinosaur
A fairly similar setlist as last year's and previous U.S. shows, but always enjoyable! I was happy they played "Comic Sonic" since it's pretty new and one of my favorites from their recent releases!! I was kinda hoping for "Tabasco Disco" too since Manabe was even wearing the shirt for it, but oh well ^^;;
They're always fun to watch perform because Sawao's always doing his dances and jumps while Manabe makes love to his guitar. Yes, makes love to it.
Damn this pole for blocking my view of Shin!!
Sawao in all his awesomeness :)
Before playing "Carnival" Sawao said, "It has been 6 years since our first tour in America. You are not bored with the pillows yet, are you? [the crowd screams and goes "noooo"] Let's rock! Hey, hey!!" At another point, he said something like "It's...very...hot. But... I don't mind being hot this way" and everyone cheered ^_^
In the middle of the show, Sawao introduced the band members and they said short messages in English.
Manabe: "Thank you guys. It's good to see you again, San Francisco. And thank you for all the support to the pillows and Japan. I want to thank you with rock and roll!!"
[Didn't catch most of what Shin said except for "I like San Francisco tooooo!"]
Sawao: "In March, we have big earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. And we have a lot of support from the Americans, thank you. Thank you very much."
And then they started playing "One Life." I thought that was really nice and I sang my heart out with them.
When they left the stage, the crowd immediately started chanting "one more song!" for a minute or two and they returned to the stage. Sawao walked around touching people's hands (arghh I wasn't close enough! ;_; ) and then he said, "I hate...I hate flying in airplanes. I hate the long flight between Japan and America. But!! When I see you, I always want to come back!! The next one is your favorite." They then started playing "Ride on Shooting Star" which got everyone pumped up again. I was afraid of this song because last year during this song, the moshing hit its worst point and I would've fallen over if I wasn't pressed so hard against other people. Luckily this year was civil and I was able to simply enjoy. :)
At the very end, before leaving the stage, Sawao quickly lifted his shirt sleeve and showed everyone his rarely-seen tattoos. I was so pissed I didn't have my camera ready!!
I hung around Slim's for a while after the show because in the past, the members would come hang out and fans could take pictures with them and stuff. Unfortunately, the Slim's staff put up the little gates aronud the backstage area and only Manabe appeared for a moment to sign a few things and hug. Ughh I wasn't able to get close enough to do anything. Oh well, the All Ages guys were hanging around so I ended up getting a picture with the wacky bassist outside. He was sooo friendly!!
Good thing I requested today off from work because I got home at 2:30AM pretty tired and slept in until noon ^^;;;
Whew, that ends my concert report. So much fun! I hope the pillows returns again soon!!
The crowd was definitely much more tame than at last year's show. Still very crowded with some slight shoving, but at least it wasn't all-out moshing like last time. That was terrible. I was able to get a pretty close spot to the stage, unfortunately not in the center, but off to the left side by the bassist area. Oh well, at least I was close enough to know that I really did make eye-to-eye contact with Sawao and it wasn't just him making a general glance around the crowd ^____________^
[RANT]
My only big complaint is that I was stuck standing by a DISGUSTING couple. I repeat, DISGUSTING. I'm fairly tolerant of PDA, but these 2 were making out every chance they could get, sucking each other's necks or chest, reaching up each other's clothes, glomping each other repeatedly (you've been standing next to each other for hours!! WTF would you act like you just saw each other over and over?!)...
But the most disgusting of all was when they would just stick their tongues out and smoosh it against each other. That was freaking GROSS. Who the hell does that?! UGHH I wanted to punch them so badly.
And to top it all off, they were ANNOYING AS FUCK. They were the loud ass, rabid, otaku type...throwing random Japanese around...and the girl would do things like that "NYAAAA" shit or make dog whimpering sounds to the boyfriend and he would just eat that up. It was a nightmare. I was so happy when a couple of guys managed to wander in between me and this couple so I didn't have to endure that anymore.
[/RANT]
The first band to play was All Ages at ~8pm. It was my first time seeing them and I ended up really enjoying, especially because of their awesome bassist. He was hilarious and definitely the life of the show:
He ran circles on the ground while still playing the bass and just lay there for a while XD
He even let the crowd strum his guitar during an instrumental portion. How awesome is that?
Around the middle of the performance, he was sweating like crazy and took off his shirt...and then:
He eventually took off his pants too, LOL. He went nuts! Sooo entertaining. He was always making crazy faces at the crowd, encouraging people to sing/clap (even pointing the mic at us), and just bringing up the energy so much. The other guy, the singer, was pretty cool too and tried throwing in some jokes here and there. Props for trying! At the last song, though, not only did the singer let us touch his guitar (yes I was able to strum it a bit XD ), but he let it go and people started nearly fighting over it like retards. Of course it wasn't for keeps and they had to hand it back to a crew member.
All Ages is a pretty cool band. Super friendly! They even gave out water bottles to the crowd during an intermission (cuz it was SO damn hot). Nice guys :)
After that very enjoyable performance came the noodles ~9PM! Definitely a much calmer performance, but still good of course! I'm still not familiar with too many of their songs, but I was happy to hear "Love My Life" and "Ingrid Said" !! Those songs are awesome <3
The noodles finished up around 10PM and after a painful 20-30 minute intermission, the pillows finally came out!! I was sad that Jun (the bassist) wasn't there again, but instead it was that Monokuro bassist who substituted for him last year. I think he does a great job , but it'd be great to have all 4 pillows members.
SAWAOOOO thank you for posing for the cameras!!!
Here's the setlist that they played:
1. Dance With God
2. I Think I Can
3. Mr. Droopy
4. Carnival
5. Crazy Sunshine
6. Rookie Jet
7. Instant Music
8. Comic Sonic
9. Funny Bunny
10. One Life
11. Little Busters
12. Hybrid Rainbow
13. Advice
Encore:
14. Ride on Shooting Star
15. Last Dinosaur
A fairly similar setlist as last year's and previous U.S. shows, but always enjoyable! I was happy they played "Comic Sonic" since it's pretty new and one of my favorites from their recent releases!! I was kinda hoping for "Tabasco Disco" too since Manabe was even wearing the shirt for it, but oh well ^^;;
They're always fun to watch perform because Sawao's always doing his dances and jumps while Manabe makes love to his guitar. Yes, makes love to it.
Damn this pole for blocking my view of Shin!!
Sawao in all his awesomeness :)
Before playing "Carnival" Sawao said, "It has been 6 years since our first tour in America. You are not bored with the pillows yet, are you? [the crowd screams and goes "noooo"] Let's rock! Hey, hey!!" At another point, he said something like "It's...very...hot. But... I don't mind being hot this way" and everyone cheered ^_^
In the middle of the show, Sawao introduced the band members and they said short messages in English.
Manabe: "Thank you guys. It's good to see you again, San Francisco. And thank you for all the support to the pillows and Japan. I want to thank you with rock and roll!!"
[Didn't catch most of what Shin said except for "I like San Francisco tooooo!"]
Sawao: "In March, we have big earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. And we have a lot of support from the Americans, thank you. Thank you very much."
And then they started playing "One Life." I thought that was really nice and I sang my heart out with them.
When they left the stage, the crowd immediately started chanting "one more song!" for a minute or two and they returned to the stage. Sawao walked around touching people's hands (arghh I wasn't close enough! ;_; ) and then he said, "I hate...I hate flying in airplanes. I hate the long flight between Japan and America. But!! When I see you, I always want to come back!! The next one is your favorite." They then started playing "Ride on Shooting Star" which got everyone pumped up again. I was afraid of this song because last year during this song, the moshing hit its worst point and I would've fallen over if I wasn't pressed so hard against other people. Luckily this year was civil and I was able to simply enjoy. :)
At the very end, before leaving the stage, Sawao quickly lifted his shirt sleeve and showed everyone his rarely-seen tattoos. I was so pissed I didn't have my camera ready!!
I hung around Slim's for a while after the show because in the past, the members would come hang out and fans could take pictures with them and stuff. Unfortunately, the Slim's staff put up the little gates aronud the backstage area and only Manabe appeared for a moment to sign a few things and hug. Ughh I wasn't able to get close enough to do anything. Oh well, the All Ages guys were hanging around so I ended up getting a picture with the wacky bassist outside. He was sooo friendly!!
Good thing I requested today off from work because I got home at 2:30AM pretty tired and slept in until noon ^^;;;
Whew, that ends my concert report. So much fun! I hope the pillows returns again soon!!