Best "live" j-music acts

[Jonny]

Uhh hmm Chisako.. damn.. I need to try to see some of that too...

*edit*

Yay she appears once again in Shimokitazawa in July... let's go!

[Glathannus]

I tried to post a reply here before, back when this thread was brand new and when there were no other replies yet, but then I experienced a power flicker without any battery backup, after I'd already typed up five paragraphs, so I decided to wait until my enthusiasm had time to regenerate.

H ZETT M:
We all know he's a monster from his performances with Tokyo Jihen, but how many of you have seen his concert that came out on DVD earlier this year? Compared to his band work, this was truly unleashed. I consider the last third of PE'Z REALVE 2005 to be his next best work, then Electric Mole, then PE'Z REALIVE 2007, then Dynamite Out!. Plus I've personally seem him live with PE'Z, and his one-handed skills are so two-handed-sounding that it's intimidating to my own aspirations as a keyboardist.

SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS:
Like Tokyo Jihen Phase 1, they are oriented primarily as a live band, but at the same time, their studio work doesn't suffer for it. Sometimes I want to strangle their alto saxophone player (I don't have a problem with him in studio), but everyone else definitely delivers - especially the keyboardist. When he's not dishing out Keith Jarrett-like interludes, he's doing everything else his own way, which involves some of the grooviest chords I've ever heard. And for a few rare songs that involve it, the man has renewed my respect for the keytar. For people who like or dislike the DEATH JAZZ ver. of Karisome Otome, that performance hardly any indication of the band's style for when they don't have a vocalist to worry about.

Asai Kenichi:
I can't seem to stay awake through his SHERBETS performance(s) even though I love the studio albums, but his solo-career live performances are surprisingly good, even if the man really can't sing sometimes. I like that he's not milking the Blankey Jet City classics to death. He shelved Pepin for awhile, then when he revisited it for the first tour in over 5 years, he ended up with one of the wildest audiences in Japanese history.

detroit7:
Nabana is the best female electric guitarist, and her vocals are refreshingly different. When I saw her live in-person, she played as if she were possessed, and to a smaller extent, so did the rest of the band. When Nabana was off-stage, it was as if she were a totally different person. What's notable is the concentration she can simultaneously put into her vocals and guitarplaying - I have a theory that lefthandedness has something to do with it. Anyway, I was sufficiently wooed by the skill and ferocity of this woman, and the experience has left me desensitized to so many performances of other artists.

Shiina Ringo and Tokyo Jihen need no introduction in this thread. They're assumed to be on everyone's list here.

[Nimh]

I saw STANCE PUNKS live and after the concert got as much of their music as I could lay my hands on. Big mistake.

I cringe whenever a STANCE PUNKS song pops into my random-play mp3 player. Except for a couple good songs here and there, they just sound like watered down BLUE HEARTS.

Live, though, they were awesome.

[Nimh]

Originally Posted by Glathannus

H ZETT M:
We all know he's a monster from his performances with Tokyo Jihen, but how many of you have seen his concert that came out on DVD earlier this year? Compared to his band work, this was truly unleashed. I consider the last third of PE'Z REALVE 2005 to be his next best work, then Electric Mole, then PE'Z REALIVE 2007, then Dynamite Out!. Plus I've personally seem him live with PE'Z, and his one-handed skills are so two-handed-sounding that it's intimidating to my own aspirations as a keyboardist.

Oooh, I've seen HZM live as well. I agree, he's a captivating figure on stage. Offstage, he just sort of meanders around shyly.

[Glathannus]

H ZETT M's concert DVD for his solo-career, is sold out everywhere. So I'm not sure how many people will get a chance to see it now. You can hardly even find it on Yahoo! Japan Auctions, if ever. It is simply gone.

[natsume]

Saw Boredoms at Kyoto Seika University's gymasium this past weekend. It was EPIC, starting with the first song (which followed an excellent and psychedelic extremely loud DJ set) featuring two of the drummers paraded around the in-the-round stage on sort of mikoshi-esque platforms carried by eight men each. They did film it, so we will see if it gets a proper release, and is not embarressingly produced like their last live DVD.

The set blew my head off. Seems like the kind of thing many of the "old-Shiina" diehards would love; rocking, extreme, and insane. They are definitely a "live" experience, I almost never play them just to listen to them. For me, they only really make sense in a live context.

[kuro_neko]

YUKI is hand's down the best performer I have ever seen. Not all artists are great performers, their music tends to be a personal thing and putting that on display and creating an interesting and fun show can be difficult.

Utada Hikaru, for one, doesn't put on a very fun show, despite having fun music, because her voice is a bit weak and doesn't hold up very well after repeated lives, which is probably why she very rarely does national tours (she has only ever done two).

But YUKI is so head over heels into her own music, she sings from the bottom of her tiny frame, all the way up through her body and into her arms and legs. When she performs she wears crazy dresses but always simple athletic trainers, because she runs and jumps and dances all around like a pixie. It is completely infectious. I've seen her three times and it was the most insanely infectious show I've been too. I could watch her perform live for years and not get bored.

this is one of my favorite songs from her first album.

YUKI-wasureru uta(live)

she also does ballads really well live, this is another favorite song

YUKI-prism

edit: that shirt is quite amazing. It is quite alarming how many people don't know the difference between the Japanese Flag and the Imperial Flag. I was recently at a Dir en Grey show and there was a kid in cosplay with the Imperial Flag spread out across his back. This is a bit of a strong comparison, but I have heard wearing the Imperial Flag compared to wearing a Swastika since it was only used in correlation with defense forces (nowadays) and with the military during WWII. It is a nice design but it is kind of stupid to walk around wearing it given it's history

[TeslaGuy]

^ I don't think Japanese students are taught much about WWII. When I was there one of the actors I was working with refused to believe that there were kamikaze pilots.

That war is probably viewed as ancient history by most young people. My dad actually fought in it, so it's very real to me, but I'm relatively old myself.

In my opinion it is curiously ignorant to wear one in Japan, but very stupid to wear one in China.

[kuro_neko]

specifically, I have never seen anyone in Japan wear one. I was speaking about people in Germany and the United States specifically. You see them a lot in the United States actually (oddly enough considering it was the occupying forces who banned that flag)

[TeslaGuy]

Aha. The swastika vs. the rising sun in the US. I suppose the fact that the swastika is still a common anti-Semitic symbol, and that white supremacist groups have adopted it, and that racial prejudice is such a sore spot here has a lot to do with it. I can't really think of another symbol of a foreign power that triggers anything close to the feelings that it generally does.

I imagine that people who lived through WWII might take offense to the Imperial Flag, but that conflict was so long ago that I am not surprised that Japanese symbols from that era don't provoke responses in most people today. I think some Americans also feel uneasy about some of our behavior during the war in the Pacific Theater, with our use of the atomic bomb and the internment of Japanese Americans, and that may temper our emotions when confronted with reminders of that conflict.

Not that you aren't right, and it is an interesting observation. But most people aren't as intelligent and educated as you are.