>>>E-MACHINE ~ 2nd ONE-MAN Live
My two good friends Bec and Monica had arrived in Japan only a day prior, and E-Machine was to be their first "DA Family"-esque live, ever (despite them not at all being DA Family... ;;; ) We stayed in Ouji the night prior, which is a town only a couple train stops from Uguisudani. Originally Haruka would stay with us, but she ended up having a different engagement. We ended up spending the night getting some delicious food, chatting it up with our one night European room mate and his friend, and sleeping. The next day I pulled on my faithful, never fails Kenichi cosplay suit. We met with Haruka, who sat some mini speakers on the table in the Ouji house main room, played some Green Method (which we had never heard), and then they began messing with me. First Monica used mousse, water, and a hairdryer to straighten my American curly hair. Then Haruka attacked with hair spray, trying to get it to stick up Ken style. This is actually the first time I'd cosplayed Ken for a live and not had SMOKER take care of me. The entire process took almost two hours, but showed a wonderful cross-country example of team work. We hopped on the train, headed for good ol' damned Ugusudani, and got in line for our CDs. I was hopping with excitement to buy this CD... mostly for the pictures, not the songs. I could easily recall loving The Super Star a shitload back when I heard it the first time live, but the clips of it and Element that were posted to the official web sites did them no justice. I thought they made the songs sound bad. However, the CD jacket was absofuckinlutely amazing. I wanted it. I wanted to hold it. Caress it. Cosplay it...? I bought it, and excitedly looked at the pictures. How colorful. How brilliant. How gay. They were selling Yohei's latest single too, and all of Ken's CDs (as usual)... poor little Yohei with only one, and Ken with everything. We walked to McDonald's after
the purchases went into a coin rocker, got some food stuffs, and
made fools of ourselves laughing over inside jokes. I'm sure Haruka was
quite embarrassed by our foreign-ness! We headed back and I saw Kaede (Snakey)
and everybody else, and ran over to play with then. Bec and Monica started
getting all antsy as they spotted all the Kenichi and Daisuke cosplayers.
We took a million photos, I got Disneyland Halloween chocolates ^o^, and
they began to let us all inside. Most of my friends had incredibly good
numbers, and headed in long before us, leaving us all waiting in anticipation.
I was more nervous that it was my friends' first concert, than that I was
seeing E-Machine again. We got in, went up the elevators, Bec and Monica
panicked needing to know what to do, and we ran into the live house, packing
ourselves into center near-front (so center that a video of the concert
shown days later at Ken's banquet had my head blocking a good bit of the
stage), but still maybe 4 throngs of people back.
The next part of the video was "THE SUPER STAR Jacket Shooting!". Yay! So we were treated to roughly 5-10 minutes of video footage of E-Machine wandering the photo studio in those fruitlicious costumes. It was amusing to no end - they sat on the couch, posed, and then Ken would jump up and run to see the image on the back of the digicam, with this childlike grin on his face. Aw, jeez. They tried lots of different poses, like Mizue sticking his leg between Ken's legs. Er. Okay dudes. Don't fanservice us or anything, you're all old guys! The video finished and the lights were killed, and E-Machine began filtering onto the incredibly smokey stage... Hideki, Mizue, Ken, Yohei, respectively. We were screaming and jumping up and down as per usual. Be Myself Be Yourself began, but the lights were FUCKED! UP! We couldn't see anything but smoke, but we HEARD them singing and playing! After almost a good 15-20 seconds (a long time), the lights changed and we could see everyone clearly. So we screamed more, Bec and Monica probably screaming the loudest (or especially just Monica who's mouth was practically in my left ear). They played the song well... which is cool, because originally I thought it wasn't the greatest song, but now I completely love it. Good job, men.
Around this time they took a small break to introduce themselves. I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT when the spotlight shone on Yohei, who just stood there, blinked, and it was incredibly obvious Ken had been about to talk but the spotlight person had messed up. Well who can blame the guy, how many bands pay 80% of the attention to the guitarist and the remaining 20% is divided amongst the other members? Iceman usually put Daisuke in the spotlight also... so I suppose it's not who's in the middle, but who was in Iceman, that makes you the most important. Of course, now it makes sense. So Ken thanked us for coming and made random little comments to Yohei. The two kind of fought back and forth - as usual - which is always fun stuff. At one point they started arguing in English - to what purpose I DO NOT KNOW. But it was something like this... Ken: Yohei, what?
...of course I was fucking cracking up. Whenever I do this, which is often, Ken always turns and stares RIGHT at me. As he did. I need to learn to zip my pie hole. In any case I yelled at them in Japanese to do their best with English! Also somewhere around this time Monica began obsessively loving Yohei. She continued to whisper to me how cute he was, what a little cutieboy. It was love at first fruity hip thrust. They went into Tick Tock, a slower song. Despite that (I kinda hate slow songs, how can I rock out??), I LOVE this song, and I CANNOT WAIT for it to go onto a CD. Yohei still seems to sing "Sweet sweet saa", although this time around I was hearing "Sweet sweet suck". At least now he ends his made up phrase with a K, making it remotely similar to tick tock. I could hear Monica making little happy sighing noises watching Yohei get totally into this song. And he really did - he is adorable. Ken has a cute little plunky guitar solo that he rocked out too... during a slow song...? Siren's Melody from DA Valentine Party flashbacks, anyone, anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Yohei walked off after they finished - which I was expecting - and Ken and Mizue did a song together called TELE-VISION, which I do believe is some sort of cover. It was, like Element, very psychedelic, slower, definitely not a rock song. When they were done that, Ken and Mizue talked and joked to each other for a pretty long time... discussing like 10 different topics. Ken finally, as I expected, began asking us if we were happy. Not happy, actually - a word he made up, YAPPI, was what we were instead (his first post to the SEXX BBS was about yappi). We weren't loud enough. He had us repeat ourselves. This time OKAY! He made comments about the SEXX BBS which I guess he loves... some stupid joke I totally missed about P-Machine... yes, P, no typo. And they played the Rolling Stones' HAPPY. "Baby keep me happy..." It's so cute how much Kenichi loves them.
They went on to play Beautiful Pain (another slower yet kinda rockin' song) and SPIRAL, which has the weirdest technoish opening that always freaks me out. They talked for a while after... and Yohei and Ken discussed how their next and last song was a CHRISTMAS SONG? Christmas in September, baby baby! I felt this was odd but I decided to go along with it. After all, Christmas in Japan is merely all of America's non-religious Christmas traditions, except stolen. They finished the live (har har) with 1224... get it? 12/24? December 24th? Christmas Eve? DUH? DUHUHURR? Funny, boys! It was a lovely song with an entire verse in English... that now, I cannot recall, but part of it was perhaps "I don't want to miss you on Christmas Eve"... Yohei's English was clear, well spoken, and I understood ALL of it at that time. GOOD JOB YOHEI IZUMI. DO YOU HEAR ME? Good English man! Work on it a little more and maybe I'll take you on a date. They left, and the live was finished. Boo hoo hoo... oh wait, the Encore, of course, mochiron desu!! How could I forget. They all returned after roughly 10 minutes... Yohei was lagging. Monica kept saying "Where's my baby? Where's my baby... there he is!" And so he was. Before they began I turned and grinned. "They are gonna do one thru ten your dream count down," I predicted with confidence. And GASP - they began my absolute number one ichiban suki na E-machine song, 1-10 ~ Your dream countdown, which live, has this awesome up and down techno opening, with hardcore lights and plenty of Kenichi spinning. They jammed - we rocked - and Ken got so freaky with his bad self that he BROKE HIS GLIMMER MONKEY! Yes, he broke his guitar. The strings popped right out in the middle of the song, and he quickly tossed that one aside and pulled a really sleek, mezurashii BLACK Glimmer Monkey on! I can't recall ever seeing this before besides being on the side of the stage in case Ken broke his guitars, and it was damn hot as hell. In fact, I want one. Oh well, not for sale in that color!
We left, filled out our surveys, and played with my friends some more, posing and shooting awesome photos. I got a great shot of me and Kaede posing... but then my phone died the instant it was saving, thus it is forever gone D:<. We returned home, me with class the next day, and homework that night, Haruka with work, Bec and Monica with a mere day long wait before we began our descent into the black blackness of....... the south. Kansai. OSAKA. I traveled with the two of them back to Ouji, where we had left heavy bags, and we returned to the Yamanote Line. I left them at Ikebukuro and boarded Tobu Toju for a 45 minute ride home to Kasumigaseki, Saitama. I did my homework. Dreamed about touching Sharkie's hair. Realized only 48 hours later, I'd be watching Daisuke Asakura live. So it starts...
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[
I wrote this report from my memories ONLY. Details or timing of events
may be slightly skewed. Stay tuned for final edit. ]
Element
began afterwards. This is a song I'd heard only about three times at this
point - live, mysteriously, and the cllip that had been posted to the SEXX
site. Now, my impressions on it the first time were that it sounded like
a Kuroda song, and that the English they sing is "don't mash the halibut".
Well - all those things remain true about this song. It's best described,
really, as "psychedelic". Lots of weird techno and strange sounding guitar.
Mizue did some impressive fingers-only bass guitaring, which I can't remembering
seeing before... probably because I don't usually pay much attention to
poor, talented Mizue.... ;;;;;. He's so smart, yet we all look towards
Kenichi because he was in ICEMAN!! Yeah! Whoo hoo! Even though Ken has
the weirdest voice of all the members (who speak). By the way, the real
English is "too much bad element".
And
then played THE SUPER STAR.
FUCKIN'.
A. I enjoyed this song more than most the first time I saw E-Machine,
but this time around they either had practiced more, or gotten more into
it as it was their newly released single. I don't know - but jesus, watching
them do it I could only think "Please play this again tonight." I've come
to the conclusion that this is the most perfect E-Machine represent! song
they've got out so far. It stars all of them at different times. Mizue
opens with a deep bass solo, with Hideki's drums behind him, then some
remixed voice techno, then Ken rocks down with a guitar solo, before Yohei
starts singing, very well. The song has little clips of people cheering
in it, which always confuses me in the audience... like where is that coming
from, are people behind me randomly screaming and clapping in the middle
of this song? Mid-tune there is another long solo, where Mizue does another
totally awesome bit of fingers-only bass magic (he walks center stage,
making it really easy to see his cool handiwork). When Ken's solo begins
he totally freaks out, jumping to the middle center (one day he's going
to kill Yohei), and stomping his one leg up and down in his little way,
rocking out hard, bouncing and twirling. Intense, man, intense.
Re-emerging
in a different outfit, Yohei very passionately sang Please
Don't be Blue.. "Please don't be brruuuuuuu~u!" "You cut
my best away..." Who the hell knows what the words really are. Sometime
around after this song, they decided to hold "The very first Ask E-Machine
any question you want!" session. There was only time for two questions,
but Japanese people are so terrified of talking personally that at first
nobody raised their hand... and finally one girl got brave. When Ken and
Yohei practically pounced on her, she cowered back in fear ( aren't they
weird? ), and asked her question...Why was Hideki barefoot on the new single
photos? She had to repeat herself before they heard her. Finally they just
kind of looked at Sharkie, who said "Da" a couple times, and Mizue translated
(I think) that he didn't want to/didn't have/didn't care for new shoes.
Then Sharkie lifted up his leg to show us he was barefoot at that moment,
also. AWESOME Sharkie! The second question went right over my head, but
merited a 10 minute response, to which SHARKIE SAID SOMETHING ACCIDENTALLY.
In agreement with some Kenichi statement, he mumbled "sou deshou"... too
close to a mic, closer than he thought. After this he looked shocked and
Ken, upon hearing it, flipped and did a million double takes, like WHAT
THE HELL HAPPENED?! It was rather amusing. I wanted to raise my hand and
tell Hideki I loved him and that his English-speaking fans call him Sharkie,
and is that okay with him, and would he marry me? But I was too nervous
I would mess up my Japanese (scarily enough I do know all that vocab, but
my grammar...? The world may never know), and stayed quiet. God I wanted
to, though! I'm going to practice and hope they will have another question
session! Being the only foreigner usually at these lives, I am 100% positive
my tall, obvious self would be called on in an instant. Especially since
Japanese fans are so terrified and I am not.
As
I had wished earlier, they then did THE SUPER
STAR one more time. And it ruled. And when they finally
left for good, Ken told us to hang on, something else was coming up. The
video screen came down again - and a PV for THE SUPER STAR played! It had
been made from the 1st ONE-MAN live... but I hadn't seen any cameras where
these shots were coming from! It was damn awesome. As the PV faded out
into a fiery kinda background, the screen read E-MACHINE NEXT LIVES: ....
and then, 11.13, OSAKA CLUB DROP. My mouth FELL. THE FUCK. OPEN. And I
could hear the rest of the audience kinda gasping too. I was about to spend
about 300$ to go to Osaka the NEXT NIGHT, an EIGHT HOUR BUS RIDE, and I
hadn't planned on returning anytime soon. Well, my immediate reaction was
"I can't go", but of course I am going :). And when it next read 11.20
TOKYO CINEMA CLUB, there were audible sighs of relief and cheering. Us
poor Tokyo folk, not knowing nothin' bought' no Southern Japan!
Set
List
