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Old 2012.06.24, 05:46 PM   #33
Scribble R
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Join Date: Aug 2008
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Scribble R can barely hear you above the sound of how awesome they areScribble R can barely hear you above the sound of how awesome they are
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It's topped Discovery as my least favourite concert. Tengoku, Creamy Season, Omatsuri Sawagi and Kuriyama #2 are my highlights but they didn't blow the roof off or anything. It's funny though -- I thought that Creamy Season sounded LESS Ringo-like when SR performed it. I didn't like the setlist, but I think Ringo herself was disappointing more than anything-- between this and Discovery, it seemed like she wasn't trying hard enough. Oh, and I agree that Men Playing With Each Other Under the Sea benefited the most from the orchestra. I can't be bothered to be disappointed about the trashiness of the costumes and dancers, etc.

It did make me look at TJ’s career retrospectively though. If Bon Voyage suggests that they were going for campy cartoony clusterfuck all along, then I now think that Variety is the best album out of the latter three. . If we agree that part of Shiina's appeal is how 'raw' she is, then Variety is the only album out of the three that has traces of that appeal -- not in just her vocals, but in how undisciplined the band is and how clunky and scattershot the individual tracks are. It makes for an amusing side story (gaiden!) in SR's legacy. Why didn't they go for a Bon Voyage-ish set-up for Spa and Treatment?

(Sports and Dai Hakken are Variety played straight. She could have made their albums increasingly obnoxious -- turned it up like she turned up MM with Shouso Strip (I wonder if SG sounds truer to Variety than Variety's successors). Instead she streamlined it and we got harmless pop, with tacked-on whimsy for the concerts and promotional stuff.)

Anyway. DOMESTIC Service: The Concert :-X
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