Here's the lengthy report, if anyone was curious.
We got to the live house and there was NOBODY there. I started thinking it was the wrong day, lol. Everyone started showing up around 7 o'clock. Doors were at 7:30.
The four piece Osaka girlband SCANDAL was on first. No one really knew how they looked like, since there were no pictures of them to be found. Surprisingly, they were all pretty damn hot. They all wore high school uniforms and were really energetic off the bat. They weren't afraid to go up to the edge of the stage and greet the crowd. They did their Osaka language lesson ala Oreskaband which got the crowd together. At times they would go up and put their foot on the monitors, I had to move back a little so I wouldn't look like a perv trying to look up their skirts. The music was still unrefined but quite fun.
The ukulele duo Petty Booka was on next. Petty Booka was actually around for a while as two different people, the two that came on stage replaced them as they left to take care of their families. Anyway, with them they had awesome mandolin and guitar players. In the beginning of their set, it seemed like no one was getting into them. But when their support members left the stage for just the duo to play, everyone was kind of awestruck by how cute they are, playing covers of "Ukulele Lady" and the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your
BoyfriendGirlfriend".
Third on stage was the pop/punk ketchup mania. They were really wild and got the crowd moving a lot. Their vox HIRO moved up to the crowd a lot and caused a lot of pushing towards the back. She did a lot of audience participation like chants and fist pumping and whatnot. Her mic volume was too low though. It was pretty much muffled under the rest of the band, who played really well, by the way. They were thrashing around the stage almost hitting each other with the necks of their guitars.
detroit7 stormed the stage next. Nabana came out with devil horns on and her usual barefoot.. ness. They started rockin' and it seemed like her lefty Jazzmaster was starting to fall apart. The whammy bar fell of leaving her going 'wtf' during the solos. She went up to the crowd a lot and let people touch her guitar. Damn, that bitch is fuckin sexy. Not to leave out the other two, Miyoko was drumming for her life! She was killing those drums. Kotajima basically took the whole stage for himself. He was everywhere. The live "Beautiful Song" was simply just great, and after "IN THE SUNSHINE", Nabana played Star Spangled Banner Hendrix style. People went nuts. detroit7 rocked it hard. Stole all my energy and ran with it.
THE EMERALDS was up next. I kinda had no energy to try and support them, which I think was the same for everyone else. They were good though, and really funny. They had "perfect English" and did a lot of audience participation. I was kind of out of it for most of their set. At the end of their set, they brought back out Nabana and Miyoko, and Petty Booka for a collaborative effort for "Train Kept A Rollin." It was cool, and got people energized again. A lot of people left after that, which got me thinking if THE BEACHES weren't gonna play. But tenkei asked the sound dude and he was like "oh hell yeah man."
I felt bad for THE BEACHES, because there was very little people in the crowd. But I was totally wrong. They tore it up. It was exactly what I was expecting from them. Singing and doing stupid dances and stuff, so fun. Their keyboard player was fuckin' awesome with the hooks. The crowd was kind of baffled on how she made those sounds on the keys. At one point, their front man jumped off the stage and danced with the crowd. We were basically running around the hall.
To commemorate the end of the tour, all the bands and their members returned on stage and did some performance of some song. SCANDAL was in front of us and they'd be doing whatever dance tenkei and I would do. Nabana was drunk off her ass in the back doing some freaky dance, and tried her hand at the keyboard. The ketchup mania guys weren't even on stage, they were with us in the crowd. It was crazy and fun.
We stuck around after to get some pics and autographs. ketchup mania had a banner that everyone signed. detroit7 was wandering around giving everyone free stickers. I offered Nabana some of my beef jerkey, but she wasn't having none of it. Most of the merch was gone, but I still managed to pick up a BEACHES album.
For a show at the Knitting Factory, there wasn't that many people. Easter probably had something to do with it, but the show was still fuckin awesome.
pics,
I blinked when the flash went off.
the rest,
see it hereNot too many pics. Only SCANDAL and Petty Booka pretty much, lol.
I uploaded the sampler if anyone wants it,
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4afeccTwo songs from each band that did Japan Nite 2008(tour and SXSW).
Topic: JAPAN NITE US TOUR 2008 (Read 6487 times)