Live Report 6/15/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE, Atomic Tornado, OZxBONE, Diz-, Denial, Zack's Hidetora Stargazer

First things first: the day before the live, I met up with Shuurei and his pal Mike, both formerly of Okinawa, for some chill out/make new friends time.

From L to R: Shuurei, pizza, Mike

That was a lot of fun, and it was a great way to get psyched for the next day's show.

We went up first, again, although with a setlist that I was really proud of, and a new song at the end ("Solidarity") that most of the crowd seemed to like. I was having a lot of fun, Ryota was moving more than usual (that is to say, moving at all!), etc. Coming off stage, it was the first time that all three of us were at least somewhat satisfied with ourselves.

We came out after our set to meet up with Faith, Shuurei, Mike, and then Marius and Wolfgang, who had some awesome tales of run-ins with Vagu Project and Danger Gang to tell me about. It was awesome to see those guys again. Marius took some live pictures of us so I hope I get to see those sometime!

Next was Diz-, hard and heavy, and their guitarist was a big, big guy. Go big guys in VK.


Then OZxBONE, who are our buddies, and way nice, and they're jokey and silly and SMG-y and there's some cutesy manzai in the middle of their set, so good job, boys.

Atomic Tornado was extremely talented. The guitar solos and twin parts were great, and they all had good presence, and the vocalist had this great 80's metal voice, strong and pure like harsh winter sunlight or something overblown and power-metally like that.


A band called DENIAL was after them, and I really like crisp 7-string guitar playing, and they were solid performers, but there was no bassist, although there was a bass displayed predominantly on stage.

Then uNruSt, who came out to this brutal intro music and then for their first song played something down-tempo, light, and sorta limp, but they got better over their set.


And finally, Zack's Hidetora Stargazer, with Hidetora on vocals, formerly of G.O.ZVII, a band that Yue really respects. Hidetora actually works at Narciss, and he's such a nice guy and gives us fantastic advice and encouragement. They played some GOZVII songs, some Akira songs, and a cover of the Pillows' "Hybrid Rainbow".


The other 5 Americans all had to jet so we made our goodbyes. I was so glad they came out to support me; I'm often quite overwhelmed by how nice people can be.

There's supposed to be a video of me, Ryota, Yue, and our staff girl trying the chocolates that Miss Thrillz sent us, but youtube is not being friendly and that's sad because it's a quaint little thing.


I got a bag full of snacks from one fan, which was really great. We sold quite a few photo sets, and people wrote really nice things on the questionnaires. Also, one fan bought this for Yue:

One thing that's a little bit of a bummer about going first is that we spend all our time in the downstairs backstage area instead of the 3rd floor one with all the other bands of the night, so there's much less interaction. Ah well.

So we got asked to play a special live on 6/24(a band canceled, so other than equipment rental we play for free), which should be interesting. I wonder if anyone will come out on such short notice.

There are a couple of little Laverite-related surprises coming up, so I'll let you all know when I can give away more details.

On 7/26 we're playing with Byakura again (yay!) and in August we'll play with a band called Az:Madius, and at least one if not all of the members are ladies, so it seems. And, on 9/24, we will play our first show at Takadanobaba AREA! :D

Live Report 3/5/08, Urawa Nariss: LAVERITE, Mei, Antikythera, Phantom Avenger

Phantom Avenger were really young dudes, Denial were tightly-controlled, well-played 7-string heaviness, and Mei was Osaka-funny, with the singer going out into the crowd to have a smoke during a prolonged instrumental section. Antikythera I didn't see, because WE WERE NEXT.


For free lives at Narciss, order is decided by a combination of rock-paper-scissors and drawing straws. Among us, Yue lost so he had to be our representative. Each of the other bands' representatives got around and decided the order to draw the straws with janken as well. Yue won this time, so he got to pick first, and he picked number 2. As long as it wasn't number 1, we were happy.

We pulled in twenty or so people who came just to see us; of those, six were my crew. There were three people from my house (two who had also come to my first live), two girls I used to go to lives with whom I hadn't seen in quite awhile... also, Inertia came but I was such a jerk and forgot to put her name on our final yoyaku list!! >_< Yami Yume also dropped by after a long hard day of actual work and ended up missing our set for reasons outside anyone's control, but still I was very glad to meet someone new and thankful that she and of course everyone else took the time to come out to see me.

As for the show itself, we were so much better than the first show. Ryota moved a lot more, Yue's personality started to show, and I was groovin' as usual. We had three full rows of people in the very front (not counting the people standing in the back who were also doing the hand motions that are a sure sign that they're enjoying us), and they were going pretty wild, especially for Ryota.

Tonight, Ryota got a new nickname: Ryoko-tan, which is of course a play on Shoko Nakagawa's nickname, 'Shoko-tan'. Ryota's a fan of hers so he rather likes it. He is far and away the most popular out of us three: even on several of the questionnaires, there would be no messages written in the spaces for Yue and me, but lots written only for Ryota. To be perfectly honest, I rather like it this way. Yue can chat people up very well so he plays mock-wounded that Ryota gets so much attention, and I'm still too busy standing wide-eyed at our table, absorbing all the craziness.

My favorite questionnaire of the night was Inertia's, by far; she said she enjoyed the set as a whole (god bless her) and that of course there's room for improvement and listed some great things we could work on. The other guys were pleased that we got something like that: too often those that write questionnaires for us are die-hards so I feel as though I am being given little indication of what we're doing right or wrong. I mean, I like all the fluffy nice messages, too, but y'know, I like to know how to suck less. :)

Ryota's a huge Lareine fan, as is Inertia, and after we got offstage, Ryota looks at me and says, "That girl! On your side! Who is she? Is she a friend of yours?!"
Me: "Calm down, man; yeah, she is. Why?"
Ryota: "I've seen her at Lareine events and stuff! I wanna talk to her!"

So I introduced them and then Ryota totally clammed up because he's ridiculously shy but was clearly happy to be talking to someone that shared his interests (he wrote about it on his blog too).


The whole evening had a very good feeling. After we cleaned up, changed, and packed up, we went down to the office to take care of money stuff. Free lives are really pricey for the bands, but lots of people come and apparently they're highly desired, so they can be difficult to book. The Narciss staff was really impressed at the fact that we had the most fans come out that night, surprised at their reaction, and surprised that they were all so pretty. They also said that LAVERITE fans have the best manners. :)

And then they finally noticed that maybe I'm not Japanese, and Yue told them that I'd done some modeling (an over-exaggeration if I've ever heard one), and they looked at me and just said "ah, yappari". Whaddya mean?! >_>;;

Our fans are an attractive bunch, though! Although our fans are Ryota's fans, mostly. He's our draw. That's fine by me! I kind of like being in the background right now... I still need to observe, and learn, and listen. I'll be making minor adjustments to my costume in the coming weeks, and I've GOT to do something non-crappy with my hair, and work on makeup, and basically suck less as a whole.


Next live is 3/29... EIGHT bands, with Byakura and us being definitely the biggest reasons to come. ;)