2012/02/19 EMI Rocks - Saitama Super Arena; Saitama, JP
Nearly 2 months late- woohoo! Off to such a great start this year. :P" Anyway.
I don't normally go to giant all-day festivals for 1 band (aka J), but when that 1 "band" is someone I've never seen live (by themselves), and hardly ever to begin with, and they happen to be a former Pumpkin with a solo album I can't not smile at whenever I listen to, I make an exception. Yup, it's James Iha time!
Other than James, I'd only heard/heard of 2 other acts- The Telephones, whom we'd seen open for J during the last 5 Days, and Miyavi, whom I'd heard of because of S.K.I.N. (which featured slightly *cough* more famous co-members Gackt, Sugizo, & Yoshiki), but never actually heard. Not really feeling terribly like hanging around in Saitama all day watching bands we're not all that interested in, we hung back until the schedule was posted (it wasn't available until the doors opened at 9:30am -_-;). James was set to come on a bit before 3, preceded by Miyavi & the telephones, so we got there around 1-ish. Caught Miyavi, who was a lot different thatn I'd expected, playing a sort of slap-style guitar & using a lot of loops (the only other people on stage were a drummer & a couple 1-song guest artists).
After that was the telephones, who were pretty much exactly as I remembered from J. Namely, 1 really spazzy guy who jumps around all over the place, & a few other members that just aren't nearly as memorable by comparison. This time spazzy guy had a gold sequined shirt, which he pulled off & pretended to toss into the crowd, only to have it land behind him (he'd done the same thing at J). Amusingly enough, I later came across an interview between them & James Iha where spazzy guy says he wants to dance on stage next to James, who replies "if you give me that shirt you wore at EMI Rocks, then ok" LMAO.
Next up was James- who faked us out by having "Be Strong Now" play over the PA while a screen displayed "Messages to James Iha" from some of the other artists, which were also printed in the bag o' flyers we all got upon entry. After a couple minutes, James & another guy (Adam Schlesinger?) strolled out, each grabbed an acoustic guitar, & launched right into- you guessed it- "Be Strong Now". lol. After that, however, were all new songs, from the then-upcoming 2nd solo album (that we'd been waiting 14 years for!). Given the pure acoustic performance, it was a bit hard to gauge how the album would sound, but the (very -_-;) few songs he played displayed a bit of range, & at least 1 sounded quite different than anything from Let It Come Down.
Sadly, James' set was short. Really short. Even for a festival like this- he was on stage for barely over 15 minutes, playing only 5 songs. Weeeeak.
After that was 東京事変, whom I'd never heard of, but knew from the twitterverse that a) they were fronted by Shiina Ringo, whom I'd also never heard, but had seen a couple videos of while people sang her at karaoke, and b) they were breaking up, so this was one of their last shows evar. So we stuck around for that. I don't remember all that much- the crowd was noticably more excited, but then again you don't all jump up & scream for a duo-acoustic set. Following them was a DJ- we stuck around for a couple songs before deciding to head home, skipping the rest of the day.
Probably the coolest thing about the festival, at least from a data-whore/technology geek standpoint, was that the setlists were available on a special mobile site almost immediately after each set. They had displays set up w/ QR codes & a touch-pad to take you straight to the URL. Anyway. I grabbed some James schwag (pictured above, w/ the aforementioned "Messages to James Iha" flyer, program booklet, etc.), after which Maya spotted some festival shirts that said "ROCK" using donuts, which of course made her (make me -_-;) buy them.
Overall not a terrible show, I suppose, although I prefer to see the bands I'm interested in by themselves, where they can actually play a decent set. Here's hoping James does a proper tour later this year, and comes back to Japan for it (and not just for Fuji Rock).