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June 29, 2009

Maezono Naoki Group live at Atelier Fontaine: report

On Friday, June 19th, I went to Atelier Fontaine, a theater located near Roppongi, to see a "one-man" show of Maezono Naoki Group who were about to release their first album a few days later, on vinyl only. Tickets for the event were reserved by email, as it's often done, but I was surprised to actually receive a specially designed actual ticket by mail. The ticket was paid for on the event day at the entrance, and there was no shipping fee at all. Also upon arriving, everyone received a special edition of the Group's self-produced 'zine. All those unusual practices are part of the Group's great attention for detail.

Located three floors underground, we arrived in the modest sized room of 10 rows by 12 seats. The very high ceiling made it about cubic in size. Sitting at the 9th row, the stage felt at the same time far and close. Waiting for the start, I looked at the yet unreleased record that I had just bought at the entrance, noticing more fascinating details, like the 7-inch like design of the center label.

The show featured most songs from the album, some other regulars that they often play live, but a lot of the set actually consisted of newly rehearsed songs that they played live for the first time.

Maezono Group 1st set: hoshi ga itta yo / Tokyo no machi ni yuki ga furu hi, futari no koi wa owatta. / koibitotachi no jikan / asa / aozora o dakishimeyou / kuroi hanabira / Alicante/yoru no Paris

The show also featured two special guests, the first one was Smooth Ace, a chorus group whose lead members include a guy of the Gospellers. Smooth Ace were produced by Konishi-san recently on the "uta to Guitar. Piano. kotoba." compilation, with a Nomoto Karia cover, but also on a single in 2004. They sang both of these songs accompanied by the group. They were amazing!

With Smooth Ace: dōshite konnani anata ga suki nano darō. / korekara ai ni iku yo.

The 2nd guest was Lemon (blog and photo), an indies female singer with a great voice who also appeared on "uta to Guitar." She showed up in a sexy décolté black dress and her signature big hair. She recounted the recording where she kept stepping too close to the mic, and Konishi-san ended up putting a pencil on the floor and telling her not to step further. Now when she listens to the song she remembers how she was worried about the pencil on the floor as she sang. :) That was her first work with Konishi-san, but she couldn't leave after just one song. She started the next with a monologue about how there aren't any kind and cute and rich men lately. The next song was of course a cover of P5, the first track from "Playboy Playgirl"! (see lyrics)

With Lemon: utahime / fukeiki (La dépression)

Then things became a little bit quiet again, continuing with the group alone. Konishi pointed out that at this show the band gets eaten by the guests. :) The highlight here was again a P5 cover, "kodomotachi no kodomotachi no kodomotachi e", that had everyone clapping along.

Maezono Group 2nd set: kanashii sake / kyō wa sora ga ame de dekiteru / kodomotachi no kodomotachi no kodomotachi e / suki nandakara / yoake no uta

The band went off-stage, but came back quickly for an encore. I was glad that they hadn't forgotten to play my favorite, Sugar Babe's "Show"! I find it too bad that it didn't make it to the album.

Encore: Show / mado ni akari ga tomoru toki

The show contained a total of 18 songs, and lasted a whole 2 hours. To make it all perfect, when heading out everyone was handed a set list sheet.

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on June 29, 2009 at 23:35 | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (0)

June 21, 2009

frenesi in-store live report

Today I went to HMV Shinjuku South to see a free in-store live show by frenesi. I've been really enjoying her new album "Cupra" and couldn't wait to see her live. She was accompanied by 4 musicians, on piano, bass, steel drum and cajón. Frenesi played some leads on her keyboards once in a while, but most of the time just sang with her cute and quiet voice.

All her musicians funnily wore HMV outfits, and after a few songs Frenesi said "thanks to all from HMV" and her band gave a small bow, haha. :)

She played several songs from the new album, but also some non-album ones. The 30-minute set was mostly upbeat bossa-ish pop songs, as goes her repertory. I really liked how the steel pan gave the sound a special touch. The set opened with Lowits Arc, one of my current favorites from the album. There was also chōrinkairyūtai I think, a song about a very tall boyfriend, and closing the set was nero.

Frenesi can be seen live again on July 18 (Saturday) at the FP*L event at Shibuya O-nest, together with The Lady Spade, marino, EeL, Sexy-Synthesizer and Consumers. Check the details at Tokyo Gig Guide.

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on June 21, 2009 at 21:20 | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (0)

Gwa Gwa exhibition, and more El mas Santo

Today I went to see an exhibition of works by Gwa Gwa, an animation and design unit formed of good friend Shimada Kozué and her husband. Displayed were forests with lots of mushroom characters, lit plastic bottle installations, and a demonstration of real-time animation using a video camera and a turntable.

The mushroom forests were a perfect environment for our El mas Santo wrestlers.

The mushrooms can be seen in action in the short stop-animation film "DoReMi", also shown on a big screen at the exhibition along with other video works.

Lots of great ideas and talent! The exhibition ends tomorrow on June 21 (Sunday), so if you have time go have a look!

Gwa Gwa 展
Gallery okarina B
2-16-10 Nezu, Bunkyō-ku, Tokyo
June 21 (Sunday) from 13:00 to 18:00

Information flyer with map
GwaGwa official site
GwaGwa official site

And here are photos of a legal wall in Ochanomizu by street artists ESOW and KAMI. Some wrestlers hidden here too. :)

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on June 21, 2009 at 00:38 | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (0)

June 16, 2009

El mas Santo in Tokyo pt.2

My El mas Santo luchadores continue their journey in Tokyo!

There are lots of other great contributions on the project's site. I love the recent ones with the zebras.

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on June 16, 2009 at 23:55 | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (0)

June 7, 2009

El mas Santo in Tokyo

Recently I was contacted on Flickr out of the blue by an artist from Poland asking me if I would participate in her art project. This would consist of me being sent a lucha libre wrestling figure and then I would take photos of it in the city where I live. It sounded great, and the web site looked like a lot of fun, so of course I accepted!

Just a week later a box arrived at my door, and I was really happy to see that it contained not one but two luchadores! It's a very nice small handmade sculpture and they look great!

Today the weather was great and we were out for a bicycle ride, so we took the two and went to take some photos. Here's the result:

El mas Santo project web site

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on June 7, 2009 at 21:49 | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

les 5-4-3-2-1, Budō÷Grape: live report

On Saturday I went to Shinjuku Motion where was held an event titled "TOKYO MOR 2nd Stage" organized by Budō÷Grape (ぶどう÷グレープ). They had invited Les 5-4-3-2-1 to do one more show, after their supposed one-time reunion show in Yokohama last March.

Playing first was a new band called THE2, formed of drummer Shirane Kenichi from GREAT3 (the band of Chocolat's husband Katayose Akito) and a French guy named Davy Bergier who played guitar and sang. While their set-up was minimalist, their sound was quite full, using guitar loops to make it sound like 2 or 3 guitars, and with powerful drumming and quite loud energetic singing. Very rock sound as you can guess. They gave a good show!

Next up was Budō÷Grape. I had seen cute singer Quminco just once before at the Sally Soul Stew show, but it was my first time seeing the full band. I was quite looking forward to see them after getting recommendations from several people. They came up on stage all wearing masks, as often seen on the streets here lately because of the swine flu, saying that they're from Nagoya where they have no cases yet and they don't want to catch it here. But since no one in the audience was wearing a mask, they soon got rid of theirs too.

Their sound was quite new wave, a bit pico-pico, and with a rock'n'roll touch. Singer Quminco's performance was really cute and funny, but I was most surprised by keyboardist Midori-chan who proved to be a great musician.

Next up was a surprise short set by The Shockers, a band that Budō÷Grape's guitarist and 2nd vocalist Nagai Hidehiko used to be part of, together with drummer Nakamura Tatsuya of Blankey Jet City. They played two of their old hits, rock'n'roll-ish songs that were quite catchy.

Last on stage was of course Les 5-4-3-2-1! This time they perforrmed as a full 5-piece band. In addition to Nakayama Tsutomu on Hammond and Kaoss Pad, singer Hitomi and bassist Sally Kubota were also accompanied by guitarist Kikuchi Akira (New Rock Syndicate) and girl drummer Ono-rong (from The Pebbles).

They were very tight and gave a fantastic show filled mostly with upbeat tracks!

Set list: Opening 1 / Dance sanka (les 5-4-3-2-1 et leur style de danse) / Non Non Non / Jazz-ru kokoro (le coeur qui jazze) / Bond Street / uchū de Rendez-vous (rendez-vous à l'univers) / Golden Picnic (new song) / Cutey Honey

Encore: Radical Samba / Dance sanka

As you might have noticed, this time they played the theme song to anime series Cutey Honey! This is the first song I heard by Les 5, as I recounted in my previous report. Needless to say I was more than happy to hear this live!

At the end of the show Quminco came back on stage for a reprise of "Dance sanka", as she also sang on the Sally Soul Stew album.

There was also the great news that Les 5 can be seen again live on July 17 at Shibuya's Aoi Heya. Details at Tokyo Gig Guide. You bet I'll be there again. :)

Larger sizes and more photos at Flickr

Posted on May 26, 2009 at 00:18 | Permalink | Trackback (0) | Comments (4)

Continue reading in the May 2009 Archives.
Next entry: "Softly! 5th Anniversary: live report" (May 10, 2009 at 02:16)

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