>Part One: Daisuke Asakura Live Tour '04 Cultivate Meme ~about Quantum Mechanics Rainbow~ @ ZEPP OSAKA

9/20/2004
From my personal journal:
"this morning i told haru my chest and stomach hurt really badly, and tried to take a nap, worried i would be sick for the best weekend of my life. she suggested it was stress, or that i'd accidentally eaten seafood... but it's not that kind of pain. i realized about five minutes ago that anytime i listen to my favourite daisuke music, or think too hard about what's coming, i get a knot of excitement in my tummy. it HURTS! i've been doing this Quantum Mechanics Rainbow project, drawing chibis from each CD cover and coloring them in really really nice, with super well done details, to distract myself from being bored this three day long weekend. sitting here drawing these, haruka telling me all about what is gonna happen, our super secret plans to get daisuke to notice the americans, bec logging on for the last time before going to the airport, finalizing everything..

the last time i felt so sick from happiness i was on the stairs in shibuya o-east, listening to faint guitar strains coming from the ceiling... the first time i ever saw kenichi in concert was about an hour later. i was so sick then i almost threw up. but that was so sudden - i planned it all by myself in one month, and only had haruka to share my delight with ... and my japanese SUCKED balls then, so our delight was mostly limited to "doki doki desu" and other general terms.

we've been planning this... oh jesus.. i don't even know.... since springtime, early springtime i think. i paid for these tickets ages ago. this has been waiting to happen for so many months. daisuke is the root of what makes me happiest. like other silly things... duo maxwell being one... daisuke has changed my life. he came before kenichi and iceman and kuroda and t.m.revolution. he was first. he did everything. if it wasn't for him, i wouldn't have a hobby, i wouldn't have a ...night life here in japan, hehe. i wouldn't have bec and monica. i wouldn't have japan at all... tokyo international university, the shibatas... or haruka. i wouldn't have HARUKA. the one person who's enabled me to fufill so many of my dreams. the only person to ever force me to eat tomatos. it all boils right down to a funny, bowlegged, bleached blond 37 year old who is an absolute, fucking, cannot be denied genius. and i don't give a shit who's sick of hearing about him or who thinks i need a life. i don't need a life! i've got the best life of any nineteen year old broke college kid i've ever known. and why is that again?

fucking christ. ...saturday. five more days. over three years of waiting. two concerts in a row. daisuke asakura... what could i ever say to him if given the chance? thank you doesn't fucking cut it."
 

09/24/2004
My friends Bec and Monica came from America a few days prior. This night, I headed into my beloved Shibuya to meet the two of them and Haruka. Haruka had just then learned due to a parental conflict she wouldn't be traveling to Osaka together with us. Which in the end, turned out better than it would have otherwise. Thus began our mishaps. From Shibuya's Hachikou exit, we walked to the subway, and rode to Smoker, ten minutes late for Bec's hair appointment. We had some drama about what color and style to do, finally settling on golden blond Hiroyuki Takami kinda kewpie hair. While she had that done, we enjoyed looking through Smoker's collection of Daisuke books, feeling more excited that we were about to see him for the first time in 24 hours. Haruka had to head home, we parted, and when Bec finished getting her hair done, we paid and started walking back into Shibuya's center. We rode three stops to Shinjuku, from where we boarded a bus at 9:30 exactly bound for NEW DREAM Osaka Station.

The bus was just fucking awesome. We had second floor seats, right in the front row - giving us extended legroom, and a perfect view of where we were going. We made ourselves at home but didn't have Bec and Mon's suitcase, which contained CDs and snacks. Hungry and having only a mix CD and green method and one CD player (not to mention the guy sitting next to me who ate smelly roast beef and talked to himself nonstop about his lost ticket), we headed out into the dark of night (ooh). Halfway through, we made a rest stop... I was feeling too foreign and obnoxious to ask the bus driver to let us get the suitcase from the trunk, but I failed at teaching Bec the Japanese for "May we please take our suitcase out of the trunk?", so I just asked the dude. He went to a lot of trouble to get it out for us. I felt retarded that we only grabbed goldfish, chocolate, and a big box of Honey Nut Cheerios out from it.
 

09/25/2004
After a horribly sleepless night fidgeting all over my seat and the floor, we arrived dead tired and probably looking like corpses, in Osaka Station, at 6:00 am bright and early. More mishaps began to occur one by one... the station was awfully dirty. The bathrooms were even worse. The bathrooms had no toilet paper. To buy toilet paper it cost 100 yen (about 1 dollar). We didn't know exactly where or when to meet Haruka (which we figured would be around noon). Too exhausted and hungry to even think about Daisuke coming out in 12 hours, we decided to board a safe, clean train bound for.... Kyoto!

In Kyoto, things were lovely. The station was huge and clean. There were helpful, sanitary bathrooms. The entire place was this awesome looking mall with a movie theater decorated with The Mighty Atom (Astro Boy) statues. We walked outside, where a kinda crazy old woman stopped to say how beautiful we were, but... was Bec a boy or girl? Hungry still, we decided to go into the first place we saw, this super fancy Italian style place without little plastic models of their breakfast. I'd read their nice katakana stating they had three different sorts of breakfasts. The fancy, fancy overpriced place ended up charging us five dollars each for a bit of toast, a bit of sandwiches, a bit of tea, and a bit of scrambled egg. For all of us. It was about a bit. Yes. But, clean and happy as it was, I wasn't upset. Plus we sat in the bathroom wasting time and I charged my cell phone. We left and sat in an outdoor place in Kyoto city for about an hour, just chatting it up and trying to stay awake and not get sick and throw up our bits of toast thinking about Daisuke in 9 hours.

We returned to Osaka Station. Yuck. Haruka called, she was on the shinkansen headed right for us! She'd arrive around 2ish. We were to go to Doubutsuen-mae subway station, which was where our hotel was. She suggested we play at the zoo (doubutsuen) while waiting for her. Thus we did. We paid to go into the zoo. Saw rhinos and stuff. Ate ice cream and hot dogs. Watched punk boys make cotton candy. Mostly we laid in the grass and slept. Finally, sweet sleep! I hadn't laid my head down properly at this point for over two days. When we met with Haruka, it was nearing the time to go see Daisuke. Ah Jesus. We went to the hotel, cleaned up, bought some snacks, and... got on our way.

The ride to Zepp Osaka was beautiful. It was like all of Osaka was a theme park.. there were old spots where everything was nasty, rusted, and dirty... but if you kept going, you came to the wide areas with clean new sparkling things, places that had been more recently added on to the old city, and we passed through such beautiful things. We saw the sparkling ocean, and the tallest ferris wheel we'd ever seen. When we got off, there were signs pointing us in the way of Zepp Osaka. We walked out of the station towards the seemingly brand new building built right on a river that emptied into the sea, on a tall hill. I realized there was a parade going on today. A parade of young women all walking in a thick line towards Zepp Osaka. It was thrilling. The crowds contained people that were only photos to me before, the sailor suit cosplayer, and more... it was the largest crowd I'd seen waiting for a live, and it was amazing. Finally they were calling us in. I remember Bec just looked at me as we started to head into the building, and saying "This is fucking insane, Gin."

Inside, we rushed into the arena - and god damn. There were his giant, robotic looking keyboards on stage. I glanced for a second, my heart pounding, We rushed to get some seats... not too bad, we were about fifteen twenty rows back. I went to get my drink, and bought a tour bag, and sat down again, distracting my hurting tummy by looking at the pamphlets in a pack we'd been given. Low and behold, there was my boy and his E-Machine! Mads love will never die.

After this my mind kind of melts into one big long period of waiting. People were messing with his stuff on stage, Haruka asked me which side he'd come from, I said left... I saw someone carry a "key-tar" over there. Monica began crying at one point. And then the lights went out and music began to play. Two guitarists (one of them looking oddly like Gackt Camui) and a drummer in casual wear were set on the stage. The rainbow lights going nuts, Daisuke Asakura entered stage left (how right was I?) and stood at the microphone. My voice was going hoarse already.. I could feel Monica clawing at me...

And Ride on Free began immediately. To dance to Ride on Free you slowly lift your arm as he sings "Ride, ride, ride on free...."  on "free" you twist it then trail it to your right above your head as the word trails off. I did this and bounced madly to my first ever live Daisuke Asakura song, a song I'd only ever heard a live version of before. He played it on his "key-tar", sang the deep parts, and spun in circles... around this time I realized this was definitely Scorpion, Daisuke's "alter ego" from the U.K who is incredibly cocky and self confident. When he sang the sexy bits in the middle of the Ride on Free's, I heard Monica screaming beside me. It was all and all, very powerful. We calmed down a bit for him to tell us he would play BLUE SKY BLUE, minus the guest singer, and had us sing along. I just watched, grinning, not knowing the words one bit.

Thus began Angel Algorithm, at this point one of my two number one songs from Quantum Mechanics Rainbow. I panicked (and noticed Haruka grinning at my reactions). Daisuke hung Chinese firecrackers on his mic, switched to a bright red "key-tar" with Dragon Friend attached, and began jamming down, often bowing to us Chinese style (the live version had some Chinese music tweaked in also). At one point he picked up two large, odd looking snow angels. He had them dance over his head before helping them to toss firecrackers into the crowd. It was wonderful. Hilariously geeky. Amazing. Religious, even.

He paused to talk to us a little, at this point. He had various "funny" moments, where a girl said she'd be his curry making maiden, and he asked us what we could cook for him if given the chance. I just wanted to scream "PIZZA!" but never did. He asked who was seeing him for the first time, and we fucking FREAKED out, in perfect American style! Unable to figure out why we were so weird, Daisuke peered into the lights trying to spot us, and pretty much unable to he just waved energetically and did a little gay dance, imitating our hyper bouncing. Damned Scorpion! He then introduced himself to all us newcomers, tilting his head with a little "Yoro-shiKU!". D'awww. Dai-chan.

He went on to do Quantum Mechanics Rainbow I on his big robotic keyboards, and then... a Real Time Sequence. Wow. For those who don't know, or never saw Power Scale's live video, a RTS is when Daisuke writes a song in front of you. He pounds a beat into his keyboard, his computer records it, and he then just builds and builds, with more beats, melodies, rhythms... pausing every time he adds something new for us to praise him. What a man! >:D That was followed immediately in a flowing sort of way with Meme Crack -HARUKA KANATA no Major e-. I love that song, and the beat he had designed for the RTS stayed in the background. Lovely. I'm failing to mention the way they did the lights. In Japanese there's a word for it... "sugoi". I guess that translates to great, but it indicates something powerful to some extent. The lights were rainbow themed, flashing with lasers and dancing along perfectly to the music. I have no idea how they did it. It was like indoor fireworks, lovely, sparkling rainbow ones. They made a great show perfect. During his keyboard and piano ballads, odd shapes also projected onto the walls around Daisuke, right out of 21st Fortune. Fuckin' A.

He had us sit, asking very politely about it too. He sat at the grand piano to the left of the stage, and began playing some powerful ballads, which were naniwabushi da yo jinsei wa,~etude on C-String~ and Toybox in the Morning (which he said was incredibly nostalgic for him, all the way from D Trick, his first album). After those we sang along to the adorable aoi hana -Heinrich von Oftendigen-. At certain points during all these songs I kept tearing up, but would not allow myself to cry. We sang along best we could to aoi hana, and he then played Indigo Cave (at which point I thought Monica leaned over to tell me she hated the song, but in fact she was telling me she loved it and I couldn't hear her properly). It was done beautifully. In the middle of his piano playing, he stopped to talk to us a bit, asking which album was our favourite and taking a vote. He first asked "Who liked.... RED!" Then started laughing in the same way he used to while torturing Kinya on the floor. We just "eeeeeh"'d at him. Finally he asked us about the albums we HAD heard, saying he was very very happy when people raised their hands. When he asked if we'd keep buying his albums, one person yelled "I'M FINISHED!" and Daisuke looked scandalized, stopping and standing to try and spot them, asking "Who?! Who?!"... mwuaha, Scorpion will not be wronged!

He left after Purple Dawn, and Haruka jostled me to tell me "Now he is hurrying, hurrying!" and did "taking off clothes" motions. Well, that was promising. As he changed, Mytyl -mirai no kuni- played, with each sweeping note one of the big colored rainbow lights faded (red, then orange, etc...) until all was black. And Daisuke returned.

mercy-snow -Violet Rays ver.-. I don't think I can really write about how he performed my other favourite QMR song. It blew my mind. By far, hands down, this song was the best done. No other song could have beaten it. The lights, the beat, Daisuke's playing, and his performance... it was breathtaking. Imagine, if you know the song, all the music suddenly going silent as the robot says "I know, I do", then Daisuke singing "Heart in a-" here the lights and music swell and flare amazingly, "-mercy light....".  I was BLOWN. AWAY. As I write this report, my heart is pounding at the memory. Jeez. His outfit was also new - a white shirt with silver snakeskin belts and buckles wrapped around it, with striped pants (the same from Indigo Algorithm's cover photo) and a long black feather boa.

techno beethoven and Mona Lisa overdrive then rocked me well. That opera, however, will always scare the bejeesus from me. It was one of the first times I'd really heard techno beethoven (sweat drop) but now I absolutely love it. Amazing what the memory of hearing and seeing it live can do for a song (raising eyebrows at E-Machine's "The Super Star"). These were done in very Daisuke style - up on the keyboards, his leg doing little kicks, banging on the keys - another few of those "Wow, It's DA" moments happened here. He then got on his "key-tar" and began 'Deep Blue' Resolution - having us sing the "blue boy" parts. Now, if you know me well, you know I think he's saying "moon pie", despite lyrics proving me wrong. That man is saying MOON PIE! I struggled not to say moon pie, but I often did anyway. I'm a bad girl. Seriously, though, I tried. The song rocked out hard, blue lights abound.

Moon pie song ended. And I heard it.

He picked up the red guitar and I heard it. I heard Iceman playing. There's a time in your life, if you are lucky, when something you really love but could never have is right there in front of you, real and loud and coming from a person, not Winamp. It was like I was a Southern Baptist and the Lord had risen. I SCREAMED. dope light was playing, and I was screaming, so much that Haruka clung tightly to my arm, out of both emotion and probably worry I might jump so high I'd hurt myself. Indeed I was jumping. I jumped and thrust my arm forward over and over, and didn't rest one time as Daisuke played. He jammed down on the guitar for Ken, sang the words for Rin, and the rest he'd taken care of himself anyway. He took all of Iceman onto himself and he did an incredible job. What a superior performance. I figured it didn't get any better than dope light.

Until Re-communicate started playing immediately after. I tried to calm myself, pushing my arm up again and flicking my wrist along with Daisuke, as I used to do so often just watching the video... that video when I first saw Daisuke, in that black outfit, during 21st Fortune, singing Re-communicate, and I fell in love. This ran through my head as he sang, and when the chorus began... "Mou ichi do, kimi no koto, boku no koto..." I sang along, and burst into tears. I was crying and choking but I kept doing the dance, singing along, watching Daisuke's grinning little face. When it was over and he waved good bye, I waved with both arms, still crying, screaming Thank you, Dai-chan. He was gone and I slumped into my chair, buried my face in my hands, and sobbed. Such a dramatic, overkill reaction, you might think, but when taken into consideration what this man and his music have helped me to accomplish, it was a cry worth having. Haruka rubbed my back, and cradled me against her chest, my crying interspersed with little giggles and such. I was just so happy. You cannot imagine this happiness.

Daisuke returned wearing his Green Method flowery shirt and Violet Meme pants. He talked to us for a bit, introduced his supporting players and let them talk about some stuff they are working on, then did his finale, beautiful symphony-only for your life-. He used a whistle which he blew on to the beat and it was adorably geeky. They threw three giant, pink balloons in the audience, which the fans kept pushing back on stage (they were so big Daisuke could have slept in one), to which the players responded by kicking them back. The emotion had been beaten out of my by Re-communicate, but left me feeling refreshed and happy, so I grinned a very toothy, happy grin throughout the entire encore and when Daisuke waved good bye for real, I was not the least bit sad. One, it was such a happy moment, I COULDN'T feel sad. Two, I'd be seeing him in an hour and a half in Club TRIANGLE where he would be DJing a club event, Sequence Virus 2004 -Summer Party-!

>Part Two: Daisuke Asakura Seq Virus 2004 -Summer Party- @ Osaka CLUB TRIANGLE

When Silver left, Daisuke immediately took over the boards, and the crowd surged forward suddenly - I don't really remember if I voluntarily moved my feet or just got shoved up as they all pushed, my feet dragged. Daisuke started with a Disney Happy Halloween song, putting a pumpkin hat on and bouncing around. He kept bending down to scribble on the boards... why, I don't know, but I am sure a DJ would. We all jammed down to his mixes, following his carefully picked hand motions. It all came together into one big flowing techno remix night, but among the songs he played were such gems Robots, Against the Rules (you know, GET READY SO CRAZY!! by AXS? I expected Bec and Monica to explode, we weren't thinking he would do any AXS), Mickey Mouse Club March (English ver.), Hung me for the Distance, Gate II~Sensitive Gate (!!!!!!!!!!more Iceman!!), replicate VIRUS,  Division by Zero error, and a shit load more, although a lot were just generic techno. Note, these were ALL different remixes from various albums, not the originals.

During Against the Rules (we're talking 2002 -AA Trance- mix for those of you in the know), Daisuke sensually slid out of his pink jacket, showing that his white shirt was not only very tight, but also said SEX in gigantic pink letters. Around this time some staff got down behind him and starting moving the big stereo closer... but as this man was out of sight, it was merely moving on its over as though it were going to fall on and eat DA. It was also interesting that the entire event was filmed - one camera constantly on Daisuke, the other constantly on the crowd. We clubbed and danced the night away, Daisuke constantly grinning and laughing up in his little DJ nook, mixing up the night and being very chill. Nobody could tell me that man was almost forty if I didn't already know. I'd laugh. Loudly.

By the time we had to rush out in order to make it to the final subway out of town, I'd been on my feet for hours, if not most of the day, I had DA's image imprinted on my mind, and despite the stress, mishaps, and nastiness of the earlier day, I felt happy like never before. When I finally found my bed, I fell into it without even undressing, and slept harder and better than I can ever recall.

(did we ever get home? continue to It Really Happened, Terrible Banquet of Kenichi Ito ~Second Volume~ report for the shocking conclusion.)
 

Set List - Daisuke Asakura Live Tour '04 Cultivate Meme ~about Quantum Mechanics Rainbow~ [Zepp Osaka]
01. Ride on Free
02. BLUE SKY BLUE
03. Angel Algorithm
04. Quantum Mechanics Rainbow I
05. Real Time Sequence
06. Meme Crack -HARUKA KANATA no Major e-
07. Jade of sorrow
08. Purple Dawn
09. naniwabushi da yo jinsei wa ~ etude on C-String ~ Toy Box In The Morning
10. aoi hana -Heinrich von Oftendigen-
11. Indigo cave
SE. Mytyl -mirai no kuni-
12. mercy-snow -Violet Rays ver.-
13. techno beethoven
14. Mona Lisa overdrive
15. 'Deep Blue' Resolution
16. Dope Light
17. Re-communicate
EN. beautiful symphony -only for your life-