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I have a new favorite Okinawan band
So I went to Japan Nite. MY GOD DID THAT KICK ASS. I think it totally makes up for having missed Ellegarden last year. Well, almost.
I wore my Lotte Marines #22 Satozaki black t-shirt with a red longsleeve underneath it, and baggy jeans, and my black Converse hi-tops, and put my hair back in a ton of little bright barrettes. I figured I'd look vaguely appropriate. I guess I was about half right.
I IMed DJ (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mightyflorist) to see if he was going and he decided to go, so that was good, since I had someone to hang out with, as I didn't run into anyone I knew, and of course over half the people in the place were Japanese anyway.
Let's see. First band on was called 50 Kaitenz (50回転ズ). They're... hmmm, I guess the best way I could describe them would be that they're three guys from Osaka who dress in suits and play rock/rockabilly, although to some extent they sort of reminded me of what you might get if the Young Fresh Fellows had been from Osaka instead of Seattle. The lead singer/guitarist, "Danny", is practically a dead ringer for Namase Katsuhisa, which I guess isn't too surprising since he's also insane and from Osaka. So, they were decent enough. I did find it pretty funny during one song when they led in with him going "It's you! It's you! It's yoooou" in English, and then during the song that actually was "omae no sei da zo". Teehee.
So the second band was Asakusa Jinta (浅草ジンタ). They're the ones thatproz had said "YOU MUST GO SEE THEM", and they definitely delivered on that. While the note in their liner notes says "Asianican Hard Marching Band", what that basically means is that they are a "kickass Japanese ska band". No, seriously, they're fucking awesome. I'm direly impressed, and while I'm a ska person off and on, I'm more off than on, and I loved every second of their performance. I mean, there's nothing like a guy wearing a t-shirt designed like a yakuza tattoo playing a euphonium. Well, there is, but still.
Their band consisted of a vocalist playing a double bass, a guitarist, a drummer, an accordian girl, a... clarinet? sax? I forget what the instrument is girl, a trumpet player, and a euphonium player. I guess if anything they sort of reminded me of what a Japanese version of Flogging Molly would be like, since it was sort of like they had modern ska-punk stuff, but the songs were very, very, very fundamentally Japanese musically. Just amazing, seriously, lots of energy, very funny (one of the video clips I took has the euphonium player leading everyone in a dance which was really just like a simplified para para move, and the singer's like "dumbass, we're in america, they don't want to do this dorky crap" and smacks him). Unlike the other two bands, these guys didn't make much of an effort to speak in English and just did most of their speaking in Japanese (including calling Seattle a 馬鹿な街), which I was pretty much fine with. At one point there was an exchange something like the clarinet girl going "SEATTLE, GENKI???" and the lead singer saying "Konya, ichigo ichie", and then they look at the guitarist, and he's like "Uhh... ICHIRO!" The guitarist was also wearing an LED belt with little cartoon characters going across it. It kicked ass.
Okay, so after that awesomeness, the third band up was HY, which I hadn't thought I'd heard before, but sure enough, I was actually familiar with about half the stuff they played, go figure. Infact I even remember when "AM 11:00" was a big hit a few years ago, I just hadn't realized it was by them! And they played an English version of it that I think they just wrote recently, maybe even for this tour, which was really pretty crazy awesome.
The best part was probably when Miyazato got out the shamisen to play the song Street Story -- and Hide led the crowd in a call-and-response folk-song chant ("いやささ", "はいや", somewhat along the lines of the song backgrounded in orion.78, to give an aural image to the DDR folks) -- and I was just like "DUDE. SHAMISEN. I LOVE OKINAWA."
Seriously, HY is sort of like what happens if you take the same Okinawa rock sound of Orange Range, but take out the useless noise segments and instead add in Izumi's beautiful vocals and keyboards. And their set was just fantastic. Infact, the only thing that was sort of sad was that the way the stage was set up, Izumi was almost always in the darkness over on the left playing her keyboards, so you couldn't really see her -- but she has about 2/5 of the main vocals in the group. I mean, even when the drummer was rapping (and drumming at the same time!) you could see him. The same thing had sort of happened with Asakusa Jinta's accordion girl, she was off to the side too.
Anyway, after the show was over, I decided to check out what CDs and stuff were for sale, and the Asakusa Jinta band was back there taking turns yelling into a megaphone, "浅草ジンタのCDを売って！サインしても！" ("We're selling Asakusa Jinta CDs! And signing them!") So I bought one, since I was planning to anyway, and then I took the CD insert out and asked Oshou, the singer, very politely, "これをサインお願いします？" ("Will you sign this, please?") and he signed it and then passed it around to the rest of the band to sign! That was pretty awesome, he handed it back to me and shook my hand and I said thanks in Japanese, and he said "thanks for coming!" in English.
Well, I wanted to buy an HY CD as well, so I ended up getting Confidence, their latest CD -- and it was only $12! As it turns out, I should have gotten Street Story, but oh well, I can make that up sometime at Kinokuniya or on amazon.co.jp, I'm sure. So I saw that Shun and Shinsuke from HY were signing things, so I figured, what the hell. And by the time I managed to politely get through the crowd to the table, the entire band was back there, mostly posing for cellphone pictures with fans, and also signing stuff. I got Shun and Shinsuke quickly, then I saw Hide wandering in from the hallway and said "迷惑すみませんだけど、これをサインお願いします" ("I'm really sorry to bother you, but please sign?") and he smiled at me and signed too, and then I finally tracked down Miyazato and Izumi who were sort of hiding but not really. I wanted to tell them how AWESOME I thought they were, the shamisen and Izumi's voice, but decided I didn't want to be a pain in the ass, so I didn't. I was extraordinarily polite asking and thanking for signatures in Japanese, though.
So yeah. Pretty exciting stuff.
That's Yuhei Miyazato, guitarist for HY. And unfortunately that's the only picture that came out remotely well from tonight, though I did take several decent short videos of Asakusa Jinta and HY. Not sure if I should try to put them up on Youtube or not. Someone already has a better quality version of the English version of AM11:00, though I don't see much of Asakusa Jinta up there, so it might be worth putting my clips up. We'll see. I didn't think I would get away with bringing my nice camera in, so I only brought the little bitsy Powershot, but apparently I was wrong, as camera flashes were going off all night. Anyway.
To be nice, I'm LJ-cutting this -- I also scanned in the CD inserts that I got signed, mostly to show DJ and Proz :)
I wore my Lotte Marines #22 Satozaki black t-shirt with a red longsleeve underneath it, and baggy jeans, and my black Converse hi-tops, and put my hair back in a ton of little bright barrettes. I figured I'd look vaguely appropriate. I guess I was about half right.
I IMed DJ (
mightyflorist) to see if he was going and he decided to go, so that was good, since I had someone to hang out with, as I didn't run into anyone I knew, and of course over half the people in the place were Japanese anyway.Let's see. First band on was called 50 Kaitenz (50回転ズ). They're... hmmm, I guess the best way I could describe them would be that they're three guys from Osaka who dress in suits and play rock/rockabilly, although to some extent they sort of reminded me of what you might get if the Young Fresh Fellows had been from Osaka instead of Seattle. The lead singer/guitarist, "Danny", is practically a dead ringer for Namase Katsuhisa, which I guess isn't too surprising since he's also insane and from Osaka. So, they were decent enough. I did find it pretty funny during one song when they led in with him going "It's you! It's you! It's yoooou" in English, and then during the song that actually was "omae no sei da zo". Teehee.
So the second band was Asakusa Jinta (浅草ジンタ). They're the ones that
proz had said "YOU MUST GO SEE THEM", and they definitely delivered on that. While the note in their liner notes says "Asianican Hard Marching Band", what that basically means is that they are a "kickass Japanese ska band". No, seriously, they're fucking awesome. I'm direly impressed, and while I'm a ska person off and on, I'm more off than on, and I loved every second of their performance. I mean, there's nothing like a guy wearing a t-shirt designed like a yakuza tattoo playing a euphonium. Well, there is, but still. Their band consisted of a vocalist playing a double bass, a guitarist, a drummer, an accordian girl, a... clarinet? sax? I forget what the instrument is girl, a trumpet player, and a euphonium player. I guess if anything they sort of reminded me of what a Japanese version of Flogging Molly would be like, since it was sort of like they had modern ska-punk stuff, but the songs were very, very, very fundamentally Japanese musically. Just amazing, seriously, lots of energy, very funny (one of the video clips I took has the euphonium player leading everyone in a dance which was really just like a simplified para para move, and the singer's like "dumbass, we're in america, they don't want to do this dorky crap" and smacks him). Unlike the other two bands, these guys didn't make much of an effort to speak in English and just did most of their speaking in Japanese (including calling Seattle a 馬鹿な街), which I was pretty much fine with. At one point there was an exchange something like the clarinet girl going "SEATTLE, GENKI???" and the lead singer saying "Konya, ichigo ichie", and then they look at the guitarist, and he's like "Uhh... ICHIRO!" The guitarist was also wearing an LED belt with little cartoon characters going across it. It kicked ass.
Okay, so after that awesomeness, the third band up was HY, which I hadn't thought I'd heard before, but sure enough, I was actually familiar with about half the stuff they played, go figure. Infact I even remember when "AM 11:00" was a big hit a few years ago, I just hadn't realized it was by them! And they played an English version of it that I think they just wrote recently, maybe even for this tour, which was really pretty crazy awesome.
The best part was probably when Miyazato got out the shamisen to play the song Street Story -- and Hide led the crowd in a call-and-response folk-song chant ("いやささ", "はいや", somewhat along the lines of the song backgrounded in orion.78, to give an aural image to the DDR folks) -- and I was just like "DUDE. SHAMISEN. I LOVE OKINAWA."
Seriously, HY is sort of like what happens if you take the same Okinawa rock sound of Orange Range, but take out the useless noise segments and instead add in Izumi's beautiful vocals and keyboards. And their set was just fantastic. Infact, the only thing that was sort of sad was that the way the stage was set up, Izumi was almost always in the darkness over on the left playing her keyboards, so you couldn't really see her -- but she has about 2/5 of the main vocals in the group. I mean, even when the drummer was rapping (and drumming at the same time!) you could see him. The same thing had sort of happened with Asakusa Jinta's accordion girl, she was off to the side too.
Anyway, after the show was over, I decided to check out what CDs and stuff were for sale, and the Asakusa Jinta band was back there taking turns yelling into a megaphone, "浅草ジンタのCDを売って！サインしても！" ("We're selling Asakusa Jinta CDs! And signing them!") So I bought one, since I was planning to anyway, and then I took the CD insert out and asked Oshou, the singer, very politely, "これをサインお願いします？" ("Will you sign this, please?") and he signed it and then passed it around to the rest of the band to sign! That was pretty awesome, he handed it back to me and shook my hand and I said thanks in Japanese, and he said "thanks for coming!" in English.
Well, I wanted to buy an HY CD as well, so I ended up getting Confidence, their latest CD -- and it was only $12! As it turns out, I should have gotten Street Story, but oh well, I can make that up sometime at Kinokuniya or on amazon.co.jp, I'm sure. So I saw that Shun and Shinsuke from HY were signing things, so I figured, what the hell. And by the time I managed to politely get through the crowd to the table, the entire band was back there, mostly posing for cellphone pictures with fans, and also signing stuff. I got Shun and Shinsuke quickly, then I saw Hide wandering in from the hallway and said "迷惑すみませんだけど、これをサインお願いします" ("I'm really sorry to bother you, but please sign?") and he smiled at me and signed too, and then I finally tracked down Miyazato and Izumi who were sort of hiding but not really. I wanted to tell them how AWESOME I thought they were, the shamisen and Izumi's voice, but decided I didn't want to be a pain in the ass, so I didn't. I was extraordinarily polite asking and thanking for signatures in Japanese, though.
So yeah. Pretty exciting stuff.
That's Yuhei Miyazato, guitarist for HY. And unfortunately that's the only picture that came out remotely well from tonight, though I did take several decent short videos of Asakusa Jinta and HY. Not sure if I should try to put them up on Youtube or not. Someone already has a better quality version of the English version of AM11:00, though I don't see much of Asakusa Jinta up there, so it might be worth putting my clips up. We'll see. I didn't think I would get away with bringing my nice camera in, so I only brought the little bitsy Powershot, but apparently I was wrong, as camera flashes were going off all night. Anyway.
To be nice, I'm LJ-cutting this -- I also scanned in the CD inserts that I got signed, mostly to show DJ and Proz :)
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