Live Report 8/24/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE, Ray, D'LORE, VesuVio, Homura,

We were sixth out of seven bands, and therefore I was up in the dressing room for most of the show and couldn't see most of the bands and can't remember which other ones played that I'm not remembering, but whatever.

With all the free time you have up in the dressing room, you start to go a little crazy. I always have a book or my DS handy, Yue sleeps, and Ryota and I practice guitar. We also doodled a lot in my sketchbook.

Like, seriously, our rehearsal ended at like 2:30 and we didn't go on until 7:30, so we had a lot of time to kill.

So finally it's time to go on, and there are so, so few people that come to see us specifically, and it's getting harder and harder to keep our chins up in the face of that, because it just means we have to pay more at the end of the night. But we made a promise to each other recently: no matter what happens, we will have fun, because we've practiced enough to be secure in our playing. Even in the face of mistakes or missed notes, we must enjoy ourselves, so much so that it sucks people in like a tractor beam, even from all the way to the back of the hall.Yeah, it's a bummer to have a tiny fanbase, but you give your all because no one will come to you until you've reached that balance of good playing ability, attractive stage personality, and using your music as a communication tool.
Ultimately, I have to please myself first.

Yue was particularly good that night, and I just focused on enjoying playing my parts, smiling like I know a secret, and trying to make eye contact with everyone in the room.

Everyone was sitting down, except two guys were enjoying us and standing on my side. Gradually, the songs seemed to reach many of the girls, and, sitting down, they did the little hand motions. Honestly? That's enough for me. For now.

But the guys started looking behind them, beckoning some of the girls to come forward. Finally, midway through our set, about ten girls rushed toward the front, enjoying each other, enjoying the silly guys, enjoying us play, sakuing and giving us little heart signs, applauding our ballad, and getting really pumped up as I laid down the funky groove on "Sexy Dance", and did the neat little side-step thing we do in the verses of "Solidarity" along with us.

We got off the stage and couldn't say anything. "What the hell was that?" I finally said. Yue grinned. "I don't know, but it was definitely cool." We turned to Ryota, who always starts off with the bad parts of the performance before saying anything good. "That was kind of the best," he said.

Taking care of money at the end of the night, even the staff was surprised. "Did you know any of those people?" they asked. We didn't. All of them were new. Which meant that they wouldn't count toward our ticket total for the night, but I'd rather have had a great show and have to pay a bunch of money than to play a poopy show and have to pay a bunch of money. Still, a couple of them bought picture sets, a few said they'd be back the next week for the free live, and some even wrote sweet fanmail to us.

One thing I noticed is that Ryota's tell-tale pre-show nervousness is dissipating. He jokes that it's because he was so nervous meeting Kamijo that now playing a show is merely small potatoes.

I'm really, really looking forward to Sunday's show.

"Rosemary" is all "sold out", and 300 copies of the re-pressing of "Sephirot" are in and around the Tokyo area: Closet Child (Shinjuku, Ikebukuro, Harajuku, and even Yokohama), Like an Edison, Club Indies, and Third Stage. It's absolutely free, so go pick up a copy.

Tomorrow is the Exist Trace 'revival' live. D:

Live Report 6/24/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE, OZxBONE, Ray, Velllapis

A band had canceled at the last minute, and we were asked to play in their stead with short notice on a Tuesday afternoon. I got my afternoon covered, worked my morning shift, and rushed over to Narciss to find myself only 15 minutes late and still significantly earlier than many other bands' members. (From now on, I'll work my morning shift and then go to the live, instead of taking the whole day off.)

We went smack dab in the middle, 3rd band of the evening.

There were four people there for us. And in total there were probably eight people in the whole place.

It was dead. As were we:

That's an accurate depiction of how we felt in our heads, but actually when we got out on stage we had quite a bit of fun and played well.

Ray were nice guys with a really cool singer who exuded masculinity, and OZxBONE are our live buddies. Their bassist quit, but honestly with just the 3 of them it seems to work well. Masahiro (v&g) plays lefty so he and Ken-Ken make this nice-looking V-shape between them that highlights the drummer in the back. You can't plan that sort of thing. And even with only four people for them as well, they played fantastically. Masahiro appealed to those of us band members sitting at our merch tables, and we all got into the set with him, having more fun than we thought we would. It was almost touching.

I'm just glad we didn't have to pay that night! It was a special request direct from Narciss so we only had to pay for equipment rental and recording and stuff.

Next one is on Tuesday, free, and I have no clue who's playing with us. :)