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この声が聞こえるかい？
I used that same subject header for the B'z concert in Oct 2003. The difference is that this time they actually PLAYED Calling.
Yeah, so, concert at the Fillmore. I'd bought a ticket off Stubhub and printed it out so I was vaguely nervous it wouldn't work but... it turned out to be no problem. The problem was the line to get in! Doors were at 8pm and concert at 9pm supposedly but what really happened is, when I arrived at 8:30, there was still like 1000 people in line outside, snaking around the block! Yikes. I guess I got in around 8:55, and then immediately got in the "goods" line to get a t-shirt. They had two America tour t-shirts with all 3 dates on them, and then one special San Francisco shirt, and there were only two L size shirts left when I got there, so I bought one. Hooray.
Getting in late meant standing towards the back of the crowd, but whatever. This was a B'z concert and I was still close enough to rock out with people. Unlike last time I saw them in Japan where I was at the Tokyo Dome and a bazillion miles away, I think I was still only maybe 20-25 feet from the stage here? I could clearly see all the guys, especially Inaba, who is still so amazing. I don't tend to have crushes on rock stars but how can you not love him? He's not only incredibly gorgeous, but he has an amazing vocal range, and he's really smart (he's certified to be a math teacher, which is what he would have done had the rock star thing not worked out). His English has gotten super-good since the last tour too, the B'z have come out with a lot more English songs but also he just spoke to the audience a lot more than last time, and he sounded really good.
(I said 8 years ago that he's the sexiest 39-year-old alive, and now at the age of 47, I think he's still the sexiest 39-year-old alive. It's gotta be some of that Japanese magic.)
Anyway, they started the show around 9:10pm I think. The first song was さまよえる蒼い弾丸 which immediately made me think of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
starkodama. Then they played a few songs, including one or two of their English ones -- I know I heard "Friction" at least. And around then they also played Ichibu to Zenbu, which was great.
Then Inaba-sensei asks us if we want to sing, which makes me think it's gonna be "Easy Come Easy Go" or "Wake Up Right Now", but... he does the "Whoa oh oh oh" from "Calling", and I realize, shit, they're going to play Calling. You have to understand, it was the very first B'z song I ever heard, on a compilation of the best hits of Japan 1997. So that's like 13 years ago. I love that song, it's a beautiful ballad and rock song all at once. So half the place, we're singing along to the entire thing, half the place is just doing the "whoa" thing. I actually cried during the ballad part -- seriously, I never thought I'd get to hear that song live. It was awesome.
Right after that they went straight into "Love me I love you", which was also AWESOME.
Inaba addressed the crowd to talk in English for a while, like "It's been 8 years since we played in the US, were any of you at our last show?" and a whole bunch of us yell "YEAH" and he's like "Hontou?!?!" and I yelled back "HONTOU DA YO!" but yeah. They also asked whose first B'z concert it was and there were a lot of people. Then he told some stories about the B'z coming to SF just for a vacation trip back in 2000ish and going "This is a nice city. It'd be great to play a concert here someday," and now they've done like 2 or 3.
They did the requisite "Have Tak talk to the crowd" thing for all of about one minute... he was like "LONG TIME NO SEE!" which is the name of this tour, actually. He was basically like "I like San Francisco! Let's rock out together everyone!" and then gave up on speaking English, or speaking at all. (He does that in Japanese too though. I sometimes gotta wonder how those two have gotten along off-stage for 23 years given that Inaba's a total crowd-pleaser who loves talking.)
Let's see, a few songs in there like Hadashi no Megami (which was of course also awesome), a huge drum solo during Ai no Bakudan, they also did Splash, and had the bass solos and guitar solos and whatnot during, of all things... Giri Giri Chop, which I knoworen will be glad to hear they played.
I didn't take a lot of notes, and to be fair I don't know a lot of the titles of their newer songs anyway... I'm sure I'll be hearing some on my iPod like "HEY! They played that!" over the next few weeks.
Oh yeah, for those who know the band, Shane and Barry are still playing with them. They didn't talk at all during band intros though.
The concert was only like 2 hours long really. I spent it all jumping and clapping and waving my arms, so my legs were killing me afterwards... it should be mentioned that they only did one encore. BUT they finished with Ultra Soul, which was the perfect ending song, really. And quite frankly I had to admit that I was thinking "If I don't hear either Ultra Soul or Komachi Angel I'm going to be sad."
So, awesome.
Walking home afterwards was kinda painful though :)
Yeah, so, concert at the Fillmore. I'd bought a ticket off Stubhub and printed it out so I was vaguely nervous it wouldn't work but... it turned out to be no problem. The problem was the line to get in! Doors were at 8pm and concert at 9pm supposedly but what really happened is, when I arrived at 8:30, there was still like 1000 people in line outside, snaking around the block! Yikes. I guess I got in around 8:55, and then immediately got in the "goods" line to get a t-shirt. They had two America tour t-shirts with all 3 dates on them, and then one special San Francisco shirt, and there were only two L size shirts left when I got there, so I bought one. Hooray.
Getting in late meant standing towards the back of the crowd, but whatever. This was a B'z concert and I was still close enough to rock out with people. Unlike last time I saw them in Japan where I was at the Tokyo Dome and a bazillion miles away, I think I was still only maybe 20-25 feet from the stage here? I could clearly see all the guys, especially Inaba, who is still so amazing. I don't tend to have crushes on rock stars but how can you not love him? He's not only incredibly gorgeous, but he has an amazing vocal range, and he's really smart (he's certified to be a math teacher, which is what he would have done had the rock star thing not worked out). His English has gotten super-good since the last tour too, the B'z have come out with a lot more English songs but also he just spoke to the audience a lot more than last time, and he sounded really good.
(I said 8 years ago that he's the sexiest 39-year-old alive, and now at the age of 47, I think he's still the sexiest 39-year-old alive. It's gotta be some of that Japanese magic.)
Anyway, they started the show around 9:10pm I think. The first song was さまよえる蒼い弾丸 which immediately made me think of
starkodama. Then they played a few songs, including one or two of their English ones -- I know I heard "Friction" at least. And around then they also played Ichibu to Zenbu, which was great. Then Inaba-sensei asks us if we want to sing, which makes me think it's gonna be "Easy Come Easy Go" or "Wake Up Right Now", but... he does the "Whoa oh oh oh" from "Calling", and I realize, shit, they're going to play Calling. You have to understand, it was the very first B'z song I ever heard, on a compilation of the best hits of Japan 1997. So that's like 13 years ago. I love that song, it's a beautiful ballad and rock song all at once. So half the place, we're singing along to the entire thing, half the place is just doing the "whoa" thing. I actually cried during the ballad part -- seriously, I never thought I'd get to hear that song live. It was awesome.
Right after that they went straight into "Love me I love you", which was also AWESOME.
Inaba addressed the crowd to talk in English for a while, like "It's been 8 years since we played in the US, were any of you at our last show?" and a whole bunch of us yell "YEAH" and he's like "Hontou?!?!" and I yelled back "HONTOU DA YO!" but yeah. They also asked whose first B'z concert it was and there were a lot of people. Then he told some stories about the B'z coming to SF just for a vacation trip back in 2000ish and going "This is a nice city. It'd be great to play a concert here someday," and now they've done like 2 or 3.
They did the requisite "Have Tak talk to the crowd" thing for all of about one minute... he was like "LONG TIME NO SEE!" which is the name of this tour, actually. He was basically like "I like San Francisco! Let's rock out together everyone!" and then gave up on speaking English, or speaking at all. (He does that in Japanese too though. I sometimes gotta wonder how those two have gotten along off-stage for 23 years given that Inaba's a total crowd-pleaser who loves talking.)
Let's see, a few songs in there like Hadashi no Megami (which was of course also awesome), a huge drum solo during Ai no Bakudan, they also did Splash, and had the bass solos and guitar solos and whatnot during, of all things... Giri Giri Chop, which I know
oren will be glad to hear they played. I didn't take a lot of notes, and to be fair I don't know a lot of the titles of their newer songs anyway... I'm sure I'll be hearing some on my iPod like "HEY! They played that!" over the next few weeks.
Oh yeah, for those who know the band, Shane and Barry are still playing with them. They didn't talk at all during band intros though.
The concert was only like 2 hours long really. I spent it all jumping and clapping and waving my arms, so my legs were killing me afterwards... it should be mentioned that they only did one encore. BUT they finished with Ultra Soul, which was the perfect ending song, really. And quite frankly I had to admit that I was thinking "If I don't hear either Ultra Soul or Komachi Angel I'm going to be sad."
So, awesome.
Walking home afterwards was kinda painful though :)
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It's funny, I've seen them twice in the US and once in Japan and the US shows are definitely nicer in that you're so much closer to the band. In those dome tours in Japan, even if you were in the front row there you'd still be further from the band than I was at this concert!
Oh wow -- looks like Dreams Come True will be coming to Seattle on Oct 5th... but I was planning to be in Japan then. Whoops :(
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Friction's their only English song I know, since it was on the Burnout Paradise soundtrack.
Inaba Koshi rocks. Tak Matsumoto rocks. Out of curiosity, did they play Arigato or Ocean?