>>>DAISUKE ASAKURA LIVE ~Quantum Mechanics Rainbow~ (2005.03.25/26 @ TOKYO INTERNATIONAL FORUM [3 Lives])
It was very rainbow inside. I cannot explain too well all of the rainbows, but damn it was rainbow. The video of the moment had to be Daisuke falling on his ass a lot - no, not a tape of the Zepp Tokyo live, but a video of when he went indoor snow boarding for a Tokyo DAte photo shoot. He is no sportsman, he's a music man, and an older one at that who looks like a silly hunchbacked grandmother when attempting X-TREME SNOW BOARDING. He just kept falling, even when the staff was HOLDING HIS HAND and he was inching forward with the board horizontal to the slope. ...sigh. Dai-chan. We hung there for a bit before Yamanotesenning it to the Tokyo International Forum in Yurakucho/Tokyo (of course). Tea met up with two of her AWESOME friends, who were very pleasant and fun to hang with, and I ended up seeing them at every live. We got in the goods line and waited about 45 minutes. I stared longingly at the new tour bag. SCREW that old blue one with the green writing. This had the new QMR logo, DA's silhouette with some moons and gay stuff. And it's RED dudes, I frikkin love red. I decided to get the phone strap, because the one during the fall tours had sold out very fast, and then I found out this new strap would break easily. Moving on more quickly, I met Chesha, it was magic, and we found our seats, second floor. This is sort of how each day would go: the next day it was Chesha and my friend Setsuki and I who went to the Darwin Shop. Chesha and I went to the afternoon live with first floor tickets, Setsuki and I attended the night live with third floor seats (how pretty the light show was). Now I will proceed to detail the songs that are forever burned into my memory. I won't bore you, dear reader, with "it was a lovely song and I was moved". That's true here about all of the music, but some of it was especially special. So were the mimes. appearance is played as a man in a suit slowly walks down the aisle in the front row, and on stage "appears" an odd scene before him: one man on the left in a chair, seemingly insane as he types at his laptop. He resembles the Tin Man from OZ. In the center, a bundle of black cloth. On the right is a man who looks ragged and tattered... I got the impression of a war veteran, his uniform resembled a military one (to me, nobody really knows ANYTHING, it was never explained). He is freaking out in his chair, having seizures and shaking. The man in the suit approaches, shaking laptop and shaking man, to no avail. Shaking man suddenly goes stiff, his arms ticking off hours and minutes, a human clock. The minute arm goes faster and faster as the man in the suit unravels the cloth, revealing a black robed figure with a pointed hood, holding a large jeweled sphere much bigger than a regular globe, if you can imagine. The robed figure stands, raising the object, and the figures all stop to watch, as the lights fade and enough smoke pours out to hide that in roughly 15 seconds of waiting, Daisuke has appeared at the keyboards, and begins playing Quantum Mechanics Rainbow! Did you imagine this correctly?
Of course the dark robed figure is Daisuke. I had the feelings as did the rest of us the entire time - finally in the third live, right before it all faded to black, he lifted the hood and grinned at us. Totally wrecking how scary that black robed figure is. When it all starts DA is wearing his gothic, tattered kind of outfit, very similar to the AXS New Year's thing. It was quickly stripped away to just the shirt and pants, it looked very hot, so I understand why. Antares Pain is one of the memorable songs I want to write about now, mainly because when I first heard this song on the CD, I didn't like it. It reminded me of Iceman very much, but I didn't like it. It grew on me, and finally live, we were screaming along as DA prompted us: "SAVE MY PAIN! ANTARES SAVE MY PAIN!" and it was the first hot, sort of yell out loud and start moving song of the tour's set lists. Dragon -hi.ryu-... highly memorable, why you might ask? DA was not even on stage to play it. However, this was another song I never appreciated, until DA spared no expense. The creepy, very Oriental sounding song, probably inspired by China - with mystifying Oriental guitar work, bells, and Dragon growls, plus the really cool CG video of a really cool dragon flying around, panting, attacking the audience and snarling fire at us, and pausing to hover in the air, bobbing up and down as it flapped its wings, during the softer moments of the song. So cool, I liked this dragon, plus added roars were put in. Sometimes there were dragons flying all over. So I'm a sucker for dragons... Oh my god. So I'm gonna skip the next few songs he did - beautiful but merely instrumental, listening and enjoying kinds of songs - with more mimes doing dumb stuff like chasing lights and walking slowly across stage - because I NEED to talk about Orange Tea Time!!!! AAAH!! AAAAHH!!!!!! So the stage had split levels, sort of, and some mimes brought out a small European style table and sat at it on the upper level, sipping tea and reading a paper (I KNEW IT!). DA wanders out as the song begins, looking confused, as Man-In-Suit offers him a bowler hat. For me? gestures DA. FOR YOU! gestures Man. DA puts it on and poses and we are all, DA SO CUTE SO CUTE AND FLUFFY! He sings, bouncing, as Suit guy juggles, does hat tricks, and plays with the other mimes. DA skips merrily across stage, bouncing and singing, and at one point AAHH!! Either Annie or Alex, one of the big goldies, was led out onto stage. The doggie lunged for DA but was walked up to the second level and then off again. WE SCREAMED LIKE MANIACS. At the last live there was no doggie - but the doggies showed up at a later time. During the vocal break in the song, DA took soft plushie doggy key chains and flung them into the crowd merrily. I have a specific memory that I believe the second time, Daisuke was so gleefully tossing key chains at us, that he missed his cue. The vocals went on WITHOUT HIM and he ran, humiliated, back to the microphone, trying to be all, "I'M NOT LIP SYNCHING, THAT VOICE IS JUST THE ALTO PART", but honestly it was so not. DA, have more confidence in your voice. He was bright red and giggling as all this went down.
The human clown puppets were made to dance and sway by the will of their master, a ringleader sort of man, who attached them to strings and dangled them as he controlled their movements. Daisuke led the crowd as we went crazy for this incredibly hyper song, and we were made to jumpJUMPJUMP, because YOU!! ARE!! MASTER!!! HAPPY GO ROUND, HAH!! HAH!!! MEMORY GO ROUND, HAH!! HAH!!! Keep in mind this song was only a few after 'Deep Blue' Resolution (I wrote enough about that amazing song in October), and I was already tired from going nuts, but GOD I WENT NUTS!!!!! I WENT NUTS ALL THREE TIMES!! I ended up stripping down to my bra too because IT GOT FUCKING HOT AND I WAS FUCKING NUTS!! THIS SONG IS GREAT!!!! Eventually the puppets turn on the master who is fumbled off stage. Daisuke is still BOUNCE BOUNCEing and we BOUNCE BOUNCE because YOU!! ARE!! MASTER!! (it is SO COOL watching the entire audience of thousands of people jumping with this in unison) and when the rocket sounds go, Daisuke imitated a rocket taking off, and during the last performance Annie and Alex came trotting out, SO CUTE AND FLUFFY! Oh god, I'm so, so hyper at the mere memory. I love this song. I was so sad I would never bounce with DA to this song again... until he played it at the CLUB EVENT IN OSAKA!!! I nearly killed my boyfriend during that one. During Red Coder "anemone", which is another highly intense song, and only one rocking song past Puppet Master, I tired myself again with the rocking out - but this song isn't made for jumping and bouncing and singing along, it's made for thrusting your arms out and making the horns with your hands and head banging your way through the seat of the person in front of you. DA seriously rocked the house again, and this song rocks, because it's one of those "here's a quiet moment and SUDDENLY IT GETS LOUD AND YOU ROCK OUT AND HEAD BANG AAAAARRGHHH!!!" Message from 7 Lights, the final non-vocal non-encore song, is honestly a slow song, and perhaps even boring when listening on a CD as a foreigner who can't catch most of the story the lyrics tell. Yet, standing there watching DA put his little heart into this, changes how you feel about a song. Then watching your friend next to you, who's followed DA from his very start with TMN, break down crying as she listens to him singing stuff like "it's nothing that needs to be said... you can find me where ever i am, because you are me...be born again, for the sake of finding the same rainbow...". It seems like not much written and translated (off the top of my head, no less, as I re-listen to this song), but really, when that tiny, chubby faced man is up there looking at his thousands of fans and starting to cry, and your friend is weeping, all you can do is not cry yourself, hug her tight and whisper that you completely understand how she feels. (awwww.) In the end, Daisuke surprised us all by bringing out two of the female vocalists from the QMR albums... first the opera singer of Mona Lisa Overdrive (and Meme crack), then Mayumi Fujita, who sang for us Personal Safety (but I would have much preferred another one she did as well, Blue Sky Blue). His third encore was himself singing and guitar-rocking-out to the ever loved remix of The Seeker song, Stigma -indigo-saurus!ver.-. All three lives ended with Neo Age ~ technically an Iceman song, my friends ~ and a big burst of rainbow colored confetti from the stage. I caught am armful thanks to my great seat the second time, and used it to cheer from my worst-seat the third time with Setsuki (who had previously thought DA was straight.. haha..). This song makes ME wanna cry. Especially at the end of the third live because... it's over. Maybe no more QMR lives ever in the world. No more 'Deep Blue' Resolution. No more Indigo Algorithm. No more Orange Tea Time. No more Puppet Master. I might need a hanky just thinking about it. My life is a simple life, yet dancing live to those songs amidst my Japanese counterparts... ...is heaven on earth, my
friends.
PHOTO SPECIAL! Many of
these are from trips to the Darwin Spring Shop before going to lives...
at lives you can't take TOO many photos!
Set List - DAISUKE ASAKURA
LIVE ~Quantum
Mechanics
Rainbow~
[Tokyo International Forum]
|
So
the friday of the first live I finished class and headed into Shibuya to
meet with THE TEA. I waited by the big head thing in the west exit, having
strange times with a homeless man. I also got bored and tried on various
samples in the body shop. You don't care. Tea arrived and we absolutely
Darwin Shopped it! See, I'd tried to go to the Darwin Spring Shop once
before, dragging my friends Jose, Soshi, and Miki along, but it was closed
and I had not known - because I am an idiot.
Schrodinger's
cat ended with a short, 5 second long flash of a big kitty
face on screen - and a cute MROW??? before the curtain suddenly shot up,
revealing two human puppets, their master, and Daisuke (who's changed from
his gothic ensemble to a crazy clown outfit - with gigantic rainbow pants,
a pink patterned vest, one sleeve tight black leather, the other a poofy
sleeve with orange feathers, and orange feathers around his neck). What
else? The transition from kitty meow into one of my all time favourite
songs ever, Puppet Master,
was kind of breathtaking.
