2015/03/14 LUNA SEA: 大阪城ホール; Tokyo, JP
Osaka-jo Hall
So those "final" Tokyo shows? Yeah, they weren't the final. This was, and was tacked on at the end of the tour, after all the other tickets had been sold, after we'd stressed out about missing a Tokyo show in the first place, and after much trauma involving my band... -_-; But whatever. We should be used to the never-ending added string of shows. And it turned out even this wouldn't be the last, either. >_<;;
Ended up going to Osaka a day early since Girl had a work party (aka karaoke) there the night before. Had breakfast w/ our local friend and got to the venue early-ish. Chilled w/ some friends, unloaded our extras, and waited around until doors. Our seats were J-side about halfway back in the arena, a couple rows behind the SLAVE seats, so, not too bad!
Setlist wise, it was fairly standard for the 25th Anniversary Tour- mostly new album stuff again, w/ the usual regulars. This time the violin+AG Jam had Ryuichi singing along, & not just ah/la/woa- I think I made out a "close your eyes" in there somewhere... Will have to check the broadcast when I ever get around to watching it. During LOVE SONG, the screen showed a bunch of old live footage & PVs. During the band intro, everyone took turns yelling "めっ ！…ちゃ好きだね。", micless. At some point RYUICHI said "Should we allow pictures?" And before I even knew what was going on, everyone in the crowd was reaching down into the bags & pulling out their phones. So yay, crappy phone pix from halfway back! :P"
"Should we let people take pictures?"
And then the show ended, and the lights went down, and the screen lit up. And announced- the 25th Anniversary Tour "Epilogue" - a 2-day FESTIVAL called LUNATIC FEST. Oh FFS just shut up & take my money, already! So of course we ordered our 2-day passes well before any of the bands were announced. Which they did really annoyingly, too. So the first announcement, done at the end of the Osaka show and in every single media outlet ever, was "next action: 3/20!" And then on the 20th, they announced.... the freaking stage layout, which is really bizarre- instead of the usual festival 3-across stages, the 3 stages are in separate corners of a rectangle around the audience, with diagonal catwalks jutting out. Which means it's gonna be difficult to try to figure out where to stand to maximize proximity to the bands of most interest. Which- let's just say there will be more than at the other festivals we've been to. Including hide summit. >_<; The next announcement (4/10) turned out to be an empty fucking timetable with a number of slots on each day, so all we really knew was the NUMBER of bands, the first set of actual names of which wouldn't be announced until 4/30.
So, the actual announcements. First set of bands announced on 4/30 pretty much fell into 2 categories: old, well-known bands, and newer bands, most of which have opened for J. This included [Alexandros] (J opener 2014), KA.F.KA (supergroup of old musicians, including Ken Morioka and Masami Tsuchiya, both of whom have played at BUCK-TICK On PARADE), 9mm Parabellum Bullet (J opener 2007 AND TSP opener 2010), GLAY (old, well-known band), coldrain (newer band, the outlier), SIAM SHADE (90s), Dir en Grey (ditto), Feat & Loathing in Las Vegas (J opener 2014), MUCC (90s, played hide summit, Summmer Sonic, and BT on Parade), and ROTTENGRAFFTY (J opener 2007). 4 days later they made a separate announcement just to say which of those 10 bands would be playing on which day. 9_9; The 2nd actual band announcement (5/8) listed a few more that we'd heard of, but not quite as much as the first batch: DEAD END (old band w/ Morrie, whom I've heard much about, but never actually heard), Tokyo Yankees (old band that played hide summit), LADIESROOM (ditto), AION (old band I haven't heard (of)), D'erlanger (old band I have heard/of), and minus(-) (Ken Morioka and Maki Fujii, another ex-Soft Ballet member, who was also part of Schaft w/ 今井 of B-T).
my crappy cell pic :P"
5/11 was a slightly disappointing announcement with only 2 bands: the telephones (a crazy hyperactive pop band that we saw at J and EMI Rocks) and 凛 として時雨, a band with the most horrible screamy falsetto vocals I've ever heard, who opened for TSP (even Girl hated them more than 女王蜂 :P"). Which left only 2 slots, which everyone knew would be the headliners, to be announced on 5/18. Everyone had been guessing X Japan, and hoping for BUCK-TICK. Well, it turns out Yoshiki accidentally tweeted a day early, prompting many to say "Hm, time difference?" thinking he was still in LA, although he'd recently twat a pic of Mt. Fuji from the plane, so whatever. So they made another pre-announcement announcement to say that the final lineup would be announced at 4am. FFS. So I was woken up groggily around 5 or 6 that morning by kitty jumping over us to look out the window, and Girl confirming that it was, in fact, X Japan and BT.
So yeah. LUNA SEA and BUCK-TICK together. A bit annoying that FAKE? didn't make the lineup, but damn. There's a reason I started a double cover band called LUNA-TICK. ;_;
- Anthem of Light
- Déjàvu
- JESUS
- Rouge
- 銀の月
- Glowing
- Violin + A.G. Jam
- Drum Solo (with Ocean (Dead Can Dance))
- BLUE TRANSPARENCY
- I for You
- Thoughts
- Bass Solo
- TIME IS DEAD
- ROSIER
- absorb
- LOVE SONG
- Metamorphosis
- TONIGHT
- WISH
- Grace
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