Live Report 10/03/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE and others

disappearing nose!

I am more than a little late on this one, and so much has happened since then, so this'll be nice and long I think.

Bara came out to Japan to do some stuff but also to come visit me, and she invited me to go see Moran with her, half of whom are ex-Fatima. I don't remember liking Fatima much at all, but I kinda dug Moran's style, and that singyman is charismatic as heckkkkkkkk.

Also, recently I made contact with La Carmina who is in Japan, and Kyu and a friend came, and it was a really nice feeling to play for some good friends.

After a shaky live at Area, it was somewhat of a relief to be back at Narciss, with Hidetora and the rest of the friendly staff, with a real backstage, and in the suburbian surroundings of Saitama.

We went 3rd out of five, and while the place wasn't exactly full, I am proud to say that Laverite had every single person in the place standing up for us and everyone was, in fact, up toward the front rockin' out. Bara and Carmina were snappin' away with real nice cameras.

just after coming offstage, sweaty and tired!

I felt really energized from just being back in that space. Our set was 7 songs that night, and most of them my favorites. We opened with a slower tune, just to be experimental, and with that crowd I think we got a lot of leeway. I was bouncing around and smiling for the rest of the set, though, doing backing vocals on a couple of songs, and was able to showcase some slap and tapping. Ryota, perhaps unbeknownst to anyone but the most hardcore of Laverite fans (haha what), changes a tiny handful of things up every so often: in "Sephirot", the solo is no longer some early-Metallica-like tapping but some impressive sweep picking work; the guitar in "Delusion" is now a deliberate throwback to early-90's VK. They're very minor but someone with a sensitive ear who had seen us enough times would be able to pick up on the differences.

During the 2nd pre-chorus of "Solidarity", Ryota comes over and we sort of play facing each other; just before the chorus hits I bop him on the head. :D


Carmina wrote about us a little bit here and here and has a few photos, but she let me peruse 'em all and I could hardly narrow down my favorite to merely a few, so here are A MILLION, in order of dubious chronology.

Also, thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! I had a surprisingly good one. What with me working so much and having not been in contact with many of my friends for awhile, I wasn't sure how things would go. But the night of my birthday, an hour before leaving the office, my boss, her daughter, and my other coworker threw me a little party with some fancy cakes, good wine, and cute little presents. After work I met up with Masaki & The Funky Gang for drinks and they gave me a lightsaber. Darth Vader's lightsaber. Which would be a useful gift if I were a Sith Lord and needed to kill any Jedis, but that's just dumb.

Because I already killed them all.

With my bare hands.

Went and saw Ironman with The Bunners on Friday, which was good, but then again sometimes I'm remarkably easy to please with oh-ho-how-witty dialogue, superheroes, or Robert Downey Jr. Actually, most superhero movies leave me bored and annoyed (I haven't liked the Spiderman movies, for instance), but this one is the first one other than the first two X-Men films I can say I actually enjoyed watching. Also she is a brilliant gift-giver.

Monday was lunch with some college folks which just felt so good to do, not having seen especially one of them since April.

I was also lucky enough to go to a coupla cool restaurants with Carmina, but I guess you'll have to wait for her book to come out to get the full effect!

My parents WHO ARE AWESOME sent me the season 4 DVDs of The Office WHICH IS AWESOME and I need to get my main computer fixed so I can circumvent all the ways in which I am not allowed to watch season 5's premiere due to my country of residence.

Our next live is this Sunday, 10/19, and we have a big announcement. On 11/23 we're playing with Vagu*Project again and I couldn't be more excited! There are a couple of other interesting things to be excited about, so I'll let you know when those come up too.

Live Report 9/24/08, Takadanobaba AREA: LAVERITE, Schmelz Cure, Gizmo, Roze, 7191, D-ZEL, Ashura

I worked in the morning then SPRINTED to Takadanobaba to get to Area, which I'd never been to and was just dealing with that nervousness of performing in a new venue. Right when I got there I sat down and did hair and makeup, then immediately got up on stage for rehearsal, and since we were going first, then went right into our performance.

My wireless started acting up right as we started Sephirot, and I started freaking out a little bit. But the staff guy standing in the wings had a cord plugged into me just as I'd barely realized that it was having problems. Apparently Barry Allen works in a live house in Tokyo.

In fact, as we got off stage, I whined a little bit and apologized to Ryota and Yue that I had the troubles. Ryota looked at me blankly and said, "wait when did that happen?"

Inertia and Bunny came, as did a couple of our regular fans. It was sort of an audition live, and by that I mean that if the Area people liked us, then we'd be able to do normal booking with them. We wanted to showcase our broad range, so we played Sephirot, Criticism, Tenkuu, Kamen, and Solidarity, all which are very different songs from one another. In fact, as we were talking with the staff afterward in the office and taking care of money stuff, that sort of worked against us in their eyes. They like the songs as individual tracks, but to them we seemed to lack focus in how we want to present ourselves, what sort of bands or events we want to associate ourselves with, etc.

It was all interesting because it wasn't the way we were used to being advised elsewhere. Not that Narciss ever coddles us; they're often quite hard on us in terms of post-show advice but obviously we're doing something decently because Narciss has frequently treated us with particular favor. I don't feel that Area was unfair to us at all, I don't want you to get that impression. It's just interesting to hear another perspective.

We also heard yet another perspective because Sizna from Sugar had come to check us out. He came backstage afterward and he and Ryota mostly discussed stuff.

Unfortunately, mentally I was barely 'there'--I think I was still trying catching breath from my recently very hectic schedule. Still, it felt good to finally get to play our first live in Tokyo!


Thanks to all your comments regarding the Becca video; it was a long shoot for sure but it was a lot of fun. I have never been so well attended-to. We played through the song a million times that day and of course I had to go crazy-go-nuts each time. In between each take I had several people come to my aid; makeup girl for touchup, costume girl for adjustments, water girl with the water, with hole cut out of the lid and straw taped into place, just like when we play live too.

All the people involved were really great, and Becca herself was very sweet and very good to work with. That song is going to be the ending theme for "Kuroshitsuji", a new anime, and the opening theme is going to be by Sid. Seven degrees of Tenuous Connections, I know.


Sometime next week I'll put up my report of our 10/3 show, but in the meantime, check out La Carmina's post about it!

BECCA - I'm Alive

Konpeito found me before I could, even!



Check out that hot, hot guitarist on the left in the blue shirt. :-*

AREA preview

Man, it just does not feel like I have a live today.

kitty :(

The kitten in the picture in the entry below is one of several we saw in Ikebukuro, but my parents just had put my 11-year-old cat Siesta to sleep and buried her in the backyard.

She was the guardian of our perimeters and while she would frequently incur battle scars from her toussles she never failed to give intruding animals a terrific beat-down. She left increasingly and inexplicably large prey on our front porch, placed neatly next to the newspaper every morning, clearly as some sort of offering and tribute to us, her high priests. She would come when you called her name and used to follow me around like a loyal dog when I was 13 and had a paper route.

Pets are kinda jerks because they kind of worm their way into your lives and then when they're gone you sort of feel disconnected from the natural world temporarily.

Live Report 8/31/08, Urawa Narciss: LAVERITE, Cinema Strip, Cheeky, Mistes, CKroll, Baby, Az:Madius, Dorothy

We were 4th out of 8, so here are the bands I didn't see, to get them out of the way:

CKroll, the scary-looking blue dude is ridiculously nice and down-to-earth


Dorothy


Baby, who were excited to catch me and Ryota playing along to Sugar tunes backstage



before

We took the stage and were pleasantly surprised to see an absolutely full house, and plenty of people up toward the very front ready to rock along with us. They weren't necessarily people who had come just for us, but still, it really helped us feel good. We kept up the energy from the previous live very easily and had a great show. I can't help but grin like an idiot up there, so apparently I've become the "smiley one", which is honestly just fine by me. It's fun up there and I'm not about to hide that.

almost after

We didn't call out enough people to break even, of course, but still it was a great turnout. A few coworkers came out, coupla housemates, and Bunny came out too, which was really sweet of her because Narciss is far for people who aren't me. There were also a couple of other girls who said hello but didn't stick around long enough to chat! :(

We sold a small handful of photo sets and were asked to sign them, which is still surreal, and we got presents of snacks from a few girls.
The Closet Child CD sold out way fast, and "Rose mary" is all given out, so the only available Laverite CD is the free Sephirot/Criticism thing in the indie shops.

By the way, I think I've brought this up before, but it gets asked about a lot, and someone (who?! Thanks!!) kindly explained it in one of the comment threads, but here goes:
We have to pay to play a live.

This shouldn't surprise anyone, but it does. This isn't just a Japan thing, either. Here's how it works.

We enter an agreement with the live house that we'll be able to bring in a pre-established number of people; say, twenty. At the door, everyone is asked what band they came to see, and if they reserved a ticket. We give our reservation list to the front before the house opens. You can also show up on the day and say you're there to see whoever, but reserving gets you a slight discount.

For every ticket we do not sell, we pay for. Sometimes, only 4 people come. Tickets are between 2,000 and 3,000 yen, so you can do the math there. That is, of course, on top of equipment rental and the cost of having a sound and video recording made of our performance.

Back when I was playing in punk and ska bands, however, often times we'd just play for free and if the house made enough of a profit we'd typically get $100 or some chump change, but it was just for kicks and at least we weren't operating in the red so it was all good. I don't know what I'm doing in a VK band, though.

Okay, other bands. Cheeky was a lot of fun as usual, and their vocalist Sadon and I got along really well, and the backstage almost turned into an eikaiwa for a second.

Cinema Strip continues to be ridiculously solid, and since Leo and I have similar performing backgrounds we got along quite well too. He had me teach him some psuedo-moonwalkin' dance moves, so I hope he uses them onstage so I can be like "I taught him everything he knows!"

Mistes are also pretty cool actually, and good dudes. Three of them went to high school with Yue, which we discovered randomly last time we played with them. Pretty neat.

Az:Madius is three chicks and they're certainly no Danger Gang or Exist Trace yet. But, to be fair, we're not exactly a Lareine yet.

Another fun show under our belt. The next live is at Takadanobaba Area on 9/24, and we play first. That's going to be somewhat of an 'audition' live for us, because we've never played at Area before. I've never been there before, even.

That's kind of a ways away, so I've gotta find something to talk about until then!
Work is pretty sweet and stuff on the money side I suppose, but it affords me pretty much no more free time anymore, which is why this report is like a week and a half late. Last night I met up with Masaki after work at our respective half-way-home points for drinks and both of us couldn't believe how much work it took to make a plan to chill out.

Welcome to adulthood I guess!

Political Action Hero

Putin gives us another compelling argument to the idea that he is the reincarnation of the stern Czars of old as he shoots a tiger to protect a camera crew.

Two live reports coming up, and I'd actually love to make more political commentary but the internet just doesn't seem to be the place to do much of it because so much of it goes beyond "healthy debate" and into "tinfoil hat" territory, so I'll stick to tales of awesome like this, and whenever Biden lays the smackdown on anyone.

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:

Flier No. 3

what is wrong with my face

Live Report 8/8/08, Urawa Narciss: Laverite, The Skull**** Revolvers, Mistes, All or Nothing, Zig+Zag, Baby

The first of our 3 shows in August! (Good LORD my eyes are round...)

Baby was up first but I didn't see them and they were down in the downstairs dressing room the whole time so yeah.

All or Nothing were crazy guys, cracking jokes left and right, and a couple of them had pretty strong Kansai accents. Didn't get to hear them, unfortunately, but they caught our rehearsal and when we were finished, they told us how much they liked the song "Solidarity", which was really nice of them. We talked to them a lot more in the dressing room, and I played Dream Theater tunes with their guitarist, and then we gave up because it's impossible.

We were 3rd, and initially things were going well. We didn't draw that many people who were there for Laverite, but other people in the hall seemed to be enjoying it, doing the hand thingies and responding well when I looked out at them and smiled.

The show was not without its problems. We played fantastically, I thought; a huge step up from the previous live. I felt really good about my performance, having honed and studied my own movement as Masaki taught me. We've each got our distinct personalities in the band, so I guess I'm the happy one.

Just before "Criticism", Ryota misstepped and changed his sound bank; during the intro of the song he frantically tried to get back to the right program. I put some more flourish on the bass tapping part to fill in the sound. Luckily there was at least one other guitar part being played with the synth parts through the PA, so it didn't sound too dead. Ryota pulled a nice save, doing a cool slide and coming in just in time for the main riff.

Just before our last song, the PA guy (some older guy no one had ever seen before) screwed up the cue we'd gone over perfectly in rehearsal and instead of fading out the previous backing track, faded in to our final song, which meant that keyboard parts were playing along their merry little way without us. After a brief moment of panic, at the same moment, like a cartoon, all three of us shrugged our shoulders and just came in for the second pass of the phrase. I thought it was a killer save, and in fact I often think mistakes are forgiveable if the band can cover well and not fall apart. We don't fall apart.

Ryota was very displeased, however. He'd also overshot the opening of "Sephirot" and his sweep-picking in the solo was, in his own words afterward, "complete and utter crap". The girl in charge of lights, a Narciss staffer we're familiar with, came back and apologized to us for the missed cue. Honestly every single staff person there is very sweet to us. After she left, comforted by Yue and I, Ryota made the good point that he wished the PA guy would apologize himself. He didn't.
Personally I don't mind all that much. Sure, I'd like to put on the perfect live, and I think we can, but if things happen things happen. I dunno, maybe I'm having too much fun up there.

Next up were The Skull **** Revolvers, whose name still rubs me the wrong way so I don't write it out. They've gotten better, less out-of-tune, and I have to admit they put on quite a show. Violinist needs to ditch the music stand and not look so dang bored, though! He's way too outclassed otherwise. They had a small handful of girls from Europe there to see them, one of whom, a sweet Finnish girl, talked to me and told me how much she enjoys reading Rock Japan Elec-tric! AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOOME


Ooh, almost forgot about Zig+Zag. They were theatrical. Robes and masks and lots of orchestral music, songs that were borderline prog in their meandering, a tiny scary little female vocalist with a staff with a crow on it that she waved around and looked like she was going lop off the heads of the girls in the front row. Their bassist wore a full white mask and a bowler hat, which is at least something because otherwise he had a short, normal haircut. The guitarist had loooooooong Mana-like locks and was a very good player, as was the drummer. They frustrated me a little bit because some of their stuff was so cool and really unique, and then some of it was gimmicky and I wished they'd left it back in 1997.

Mistes also had a couple of performance hiccups at first, but again they covered well. The two guitarists went to the same high school as Yue, so they caught up on old times, mentioning old teachers and old friends.

On the 24th we're playing with Suicide Ali, so that's nifty. Also, one girl who came showed us the Closet Child omnibus! I kinda want a copy too, just to hear the comment we recorded!

Off to rehearsal today!

Second magazine

I'm right next to Kaya!

And not all the bands are shown or named, either! Pretty sweet.

(This is Shoxx by the way)

Schedule Change

For some reasons we had to cancel the 10/5 live, but we've put one in for 10/3 instead. Still at Narciss. Update your calendars accordingly! And if you can't come, you know, just make sure you're facing toward Tokyo at 5:00pm Japan time. :-P

EDIT: Also, a re-pressing of "Sephirot" will be distributed in Tokyo indies CD shops starting from 8/20! So that means, like, Third Stage, Club Indies, Like an Edison. (Limited to 300 and only available in person, sorry. And in this case, "re-pressing" means "we each sat at our respective computers and burned 100 copies each, ourselves".)

Cool stuff. Not the cancellation, though, that's lame. Other stuff is cool though!