2004.10.07 Motoyawata Route 14
Bang-Doll Kantou Four Days

Bands in order: Benom, Rayvior, Bang-Doll

My first time going to Motoyawata, it was kinda spur of the moment... I was going to go see Bang-Doll the next day, but ended up not being able to. I didn't know Motoyawata was relatively near Tokyo, so I decided to go to this one instead and take Ren with me. On the train, I realize it's the station after where Gio used to be... It's pretty far out in Chiba.

At the crosswalk before the live house area, I'm like "....is that GOU over there??" I could recognize his homey-like walk from across the road. It was him. And then down the street Ikumi was walking with someone! It was pretty funny. Seeing that, I should have had a premonition about what the livehouse was going to be like. We found it with no problem, Route 14, which is on the road called... Route 14! Clever. There are 4 people waiting outside, two guys and two girls, and some weird old man talking to himself who got on a bus. It got to be 6:00 so we all went inside and crammed into the elevator amusingly.

The door to the livehouse was closed, so Ren took it upon herself to open the door. Well, they had the dressing room door across from the entrance wide open so we saw some half naked men. OOPS! The staff lady was like "Err... hold on a second!" so we waited on the stairs with two girls that looked like they were trying to be Tara from Panic Channel.

Once it was finally opening time, we go in to THE SMALLEST LIVE HOUSE EVER!!! Holy SHIT man... It was BAD! The stage wasn't even raised... it was just a corner of the room marked off by speakers. It was so small... sooooo small. A bizarre shaped room too... it was vaguely triangular, with no backstage so all the instruments were stacked up in another corner. Most of the fans there were sitting on these benches lining the walls. And at starting time, there were 14 people there, including us. Wicked embarassing.

So the music goes up and lights down and 6 people run to the stage; the two Tara girls, two other girls in matching hoodies, and two reluctant looking guys. The Tara girls were all excitedly saku-ing and doing hand dancing and everything. One even pretended she was moshing her friend from behind, as if there were 30 other people around her. And there weren't. The band was Benom. Ren and I had looked them up beforehand and giggled at their silly name, but once they started playing we looked at each other in shock... They were good! And not only that, they were sooooooo cute we decided to run up to the stage and stand behind the first row. They were just adorable! I am sooo in love. They were wearing mechanic's jumpsuits with B's drawn on them. But the blonde vocalist (Kuroe) is gorgeous and the drummer (Yuu) is sooo cute. Mini-Yuuga (his name is Haiji) was MCing at the end and was all like "HEY Yuu, you have black tears on your face!" (his eyeliner had run rivers down his cheeks because he was crying!) and he's all like ";_; they're tears from my heart" and I nearly DIED.

Of course they were all really young and energetic and they also loooved Bang-Doll hahaha. They thanked them for inviting them to the event, and told the audience to watch them because they're so cool. Benom's my new pets ♥ They were surprisingly talented and catchy too, for such an amateur band. One song had that sports event chant thing in it..." dun dun dundundun dun dun dun LET'S GO!" and that was funny. They also had a thing for squealing "Yahoi!" in the most adorable fashion. They played six songs that were all very good.

The staff girl gave us a free CD when we turned in our enquette.

After them was some other band named Rayvior (roarrr!) that all wore red and we sat down and ignored them... Oops. The look wasn't too good, they all just threw together whatever red items they had in their closet, and one of them had on red snakeskin pants. That was baaaad. They had a ton (ok like 10) of people at the stage, including some really excited tall guy, and I think one of their moms with a video camera. It was someone's birthday so they brought out a big bottle of sake and then had him chug a can of Chu-Hi. But he only drank half the can, he was a lamer.

So then it was Bang-Doll's turn and I was like AHHHH because THERE WAS NO ONE AT THE STAGE!! There were... four girls. WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THEIR FANS??? I was all afraid I was going to come back to Japan and they'd be like super popular and everything... but it was the opposite. I didn't WANT to stand in the front row because it was SO EMPTY and SO SMALL you were practically on TOP of the band if you were standing in the front row. A couple more girls came... a couple meaning yes, two, making 6 people in the front row, and they even left space for me in front of the microphone. But I didn't want to! So I stood a little bit back but there was still no way to avoid eye contact at all! (normally this wouldn't be bad but it's so awkward with a band like Bang-Doll! I mean it was fine with Benom because I'd never seen them before. Here it's like HEY what's up!)

But Bang-Doll was pretty awesome anyway. They sadly still had the same costumes as last summer but Ryousuke got a Bang-Doll tattoo and a new zebra shirt. They were half-assing their hair and makeup today (I would too), but spared nothing performance-wise. But ahh Ryou was like a dirty old man, winking and rubbing his crotch in a terrible way, and kept his shirt off the whole time, with his leather pants pulled up high enough to give himself a mega-wedgie. Ahahaha god I'm embarrassed for him.

They played Kill'em trendbastard, and Delaz and Dual Personality and Unknown All... a new song in there too... a couple more, don't remember the exact order. Ikumi was being really hilarious and making faces the whole time. Hiroki really doesn't look as hideous with blonde hair as I thought he would. They were amazingly active for an audience of 20 people, and it was a lot of fun. Gou threw his pick and no one cared to catch it so... I have my first Bang-Doll pick. After they left the stage, and girls were like "encore encore!" and they came back in like 30 seconds... Hahaha I've never seen an encore so fast. So they played Bang the Head and then left.

And I turned around afterwards to see that the entire band of Benom had been headbanging behind me! Then they ran off to their table and tried to look cool. Well not really, the cutie drummer went around giving out their CD to everyone... When they saw we already had a copy he freakin bowed to the ground and thanked us 500 times. The vocalist was so shy they were all like forming a protective wall around him. I am so stalking them now, they are too cute for their own good! We had to leave right away because it's so far away... but it was a good time. :D