新居昭乃 - 2009/02/19 赤坂 BLITZ; Tokyo, JP B-T Session
- Satellite Song
- きれいな感情
- 花のかたち
- バニラ
- * 印象
- * 鏡の国
- * Monday, Tuesday
- Flower
- 星の雨
- 昼の月
- 小鳥の巣
- * 水
- * The Tree of Life
- Rêve
- 願い事
- 砂の岸辺
- WANNA BE AN ANGEL
- Flower Crown
- at Eden
This was obviously WAY different than most of the rock shows... first off, it was seated, but unlike the Toshi event, everyone REMAINED seated the ENTIRE TIME, and there was pretty much NO talking during the entire evening- even before the show, it was damn near silent in there, and pretty much the only noise made at all was restrained applause. Thanks to Shazam actually working, I figured out the pre-show music was Émilie Simon, a French singer w/ a similar mellow electronic style to some of 新居昭乃's songs.
The stage setup was pretty simple- a couple chairs & a piano on the stage, & a white rectangular screen w/ the corners pulled way out for projections. There were also 2 big (3-4' diameter) balloons that also got projections, and a few silver spiky stars (small stellated dodecahedra w/ longer points :P") hanging from the ceiling. All drums & electronics were played over PA, & she was joined by a guitarist, bassist and/or violinist for most of the songs- a few were just her & the piano, & the last song was just her on acoustic guitar. During the band intro part, she was talking about how one guy (the violinist?), who's about 26 or something, doesn't have an iPod, but still uses a "CD walkman", but he's too embarrassed to change CDs on the train, so he does in inside his bag. lol.
edit: Oh yeah! I forgot the funniest part of the show! After Tree of Life & the band intro, she says (loosely translated) "OK, let's have fun on this next song, so everyone, please- well, maybe it's impossible to sing along, but please participate..." & then goes into Rêve, which is in FRENCH. ROFL! Sure, the lyrics were projected onto the screen (although they often went over the edge of the stretched screen & overlapped onto the big screen that just got lowered behind it for that song, so there was a big shadow between the 2 screens thus obscuring some of the words), but they're in FRENCH. The Japanese have a hard enough time reading English! I can't imagine any of them being able to follow along w/ it, unless they actually studied French for a while... >_<; So everyone just clapped along... lol. Ah, that cracked me up. ^^;
Friday was a Buck-Tick session thingy- met up first at a cheap Izakaya near Baba, & then headed to Studio NOAH for the 12-6am time block. There were a few people there that I sorta knew from the Luna Sea session thing, but once we were at the studio, I didn't really talk to anyone much- it was too loud in the main room, and everyone in the "sub-room" was smoking all the time, so I didn't feel like going in there. The setup was a bit different- they only had enough songs pre-selected to last until about 4am, at which point a bunch of people left, & the people who stayed just sorta jammed... mostly it was 2 guys who both had Imai-style guitars (one w/ the curly body tip thingies (do those have a name?) & the fake violin holes, & one w/ the extra arc connecting the body to the head, which is apparently an Imai original design w/ extra feedback "gimmick" buttons), who'd just start playing a song, & then other people would join in on it. I sang ROMANCE & チョコレート for the pre-decided part, & then requested PHYSICAL NEUROSE & joined in on a few others during the free-jam part.
After all that, a few people decided to go eat before leaving, & what I thought would be a quick breakfast ended up being a 4-hour karaoke session at a tiny-ass gothic bar (seriously- this place looked like something straight out of ×××HoLic), which one of the guys there co-owned. He decided to have a "contest", where he turned on the karaoke ranking system, & we'd take the last digit of the ranking, & whoever got the highest one won one of 3 うまい棒s... the first guy got an 89, so he won right away, & then I ended up getting a 91, which meant, since it ended in 1, that I lost, but since I was apparently the first person there to ever get above 90, I "won" a free drink. >_< Ended up there 'til nearly 11am... Of course, since the whole place was about twice the size of my tiny-ass bedroom, w/ no ventilation, and the 2 girls that came along were damn near continuously chain-smoking (until 1 of them fell asleep, & then it was just the 1), I came home completely saturated w/ smoke reek, & my nose is still suffering. -_-; Fun, yes, but holy FUCK Japanese people smoke too fucking much. T_T;
Anyway.. need to start editing some shows. Probably practice some more during the long-ass waits (takes ~10m each to normalize & save such huge freakin' files)... think I'll keep working my way through SPFC's tab section. ^^;