October 12th, 2004
Omotesando FAB: Project Eden Presents

Bands in order: Ayane, BEAT, eL'trip, Love Can, Silver, Project Eden

Emma had brought me along to this live, she had gone to see BEAT, and I was interested in seeing Love Can. But I really knew nothing about any of the bands playing besides Love Can being kitty-tastic, so it was going to be a night of adventures. It was definitely the emptiest I've ever seen FAB. They had moved the goods tables inside the audience area, and there was still plenty of room. We stood against the wall on the right side of the stage, and there was only a sparse front line for every band.

After an hour of waiting, the lights went down and something weird happened. On the wall across from us, a projection screen lit up and some trancey techno music started blasting. It was of some CG ocean, and then a date wavered on screen. It said December xx, 2004. And nothing else happened. Huh? Well eventually (after a LONG time), more words appeared. Project Eden First Oneman! Okay. Apparently Project Eden were having the first oneman in December and wanted us all to know. By burning it into our brains leaving it up there so long. The music was cool at least. Eventually it transitioned into tonight's event, listing the band names one by one, also given an ample amount of time to spin around screen. Then the scary part started. Project Eden's promo pictures of themselves are not very good. In fact, they're downright ugly in some cases. So after listing all the bands, including a big "secret band" (who? we knew them all. It was apparently Silver and we weren't supposed to know they were playing), Project Eden's faces began zooming on the screen, spinning and getting bigger and smaller in a rather bizarre way. After a rather long repetition of this, Ayane's kanji wavered on screen and the band started playing on stage.

Ayane was a rather odd band made up of two members: a keyboardist (well, he played the key-tar), and a guitarist/singer. Most of their music was pre-recorded drums and other instruments. In fact I think all of it might have been pre-recorded, because the singer ended up not playing the guitar after the first song, and their sound didn't change. The keyboardist also did not do much but play several chords, and didn't really affect their music. They were both dressed head-to-toe in cutesy girls' Putumayo clothes, and had very cutesy songs. The thing was, they looked to be in their mid twenties or so, much too old to be trying to pull off the cutesy thing. They seemed awkward in it, especially when they tried to do a song about cats and had these meowing hand motions. If they just put on suits or some other respectable clothing that suit them more, they might be better. They just kinda weirded me out.

Next was BEAT. We had gotten our reservations through them and were given a free CD because of it, and they were doing a promotion to get people to come to the seven lives they were doing in one month (which is a LOT for a little band), by giving purikura of themselves out at each show. So we got a little card with 7 spots and one purikura of the vocalist already stuck on it. BEAT are five young boys who I described as "half-assed visual suits punk". Not in a bad way, they were all just wearing white shirts and plaid pants and ties, with an assortment of accessories. It suited them. They were very cute and energetic, and probably had the most fans there. The bassist Kekke had his name written on his face and sang some of one song, which was cool. The singer Nory messed up the lyrics at one point and everyone in the band started cracking up. They announced their drummer, who had been support up to now, was joining the band officially. And they were all really happy.

eL'trip was after them, with four members where they needed to be (in other words, no recordings needed!). They were probably the best and most mature/professional sounding band of the night. I was really surprised. They had basic nice-looking outfits with Japanese-style trimmings; the vocalist wore a pink jacket with kimono fabric sewn on parts. He looked extremely pretentious, like one of those people that would think they're a French Vampire. He had neon blue contacts on and amused me. The bassist was wearing a skeleton-ribbed print shirt and a kimono-style skirt, with punky spiked hair. The guitarist was the girly one, with his hair sticking up in a big pigtail and lots of ribbons hanging off it. I really enjoyed their set, they were really put-together sounding, with a lot of movement on stage, some moshy parts and even a bit of headbanging. They still didn't have many fans though, which was sad. After their set, the bassist was running around the audience in a white hoodie hugging the enquette box, begging people to fill out the enquette and buy their very inexpensive CD. He was very excited when we did.

Love Can was next, who I can say now they are by far the WEIRDEST BAND EVER! In a good way. The best I can describe them is "psycho comedic kitty punk". They started off by harmonizing "Love Can" before going into the first song. They were covered in paw prints, all wore cat ears, and were sooo goofy. They were always smiling, had little choreographed kitty dances, and the guitarist made bizarre faces like a Japanese comedian. They were so wacky, and so fun. Unlike Ayane who tried to be cute, Love Can just were crazy and knew it. During the member introduction song, everyone would saku at the member being introduced, except the guitarist made a big X with his arms and told everyone to make kitty paws instead.

Silver was indeed the secret band, although secret it was not, as it was written on the ticket. I don't know why they were so special, but they confused me. There were disco lights on stage, and they were a bunch of aging guys in h.naoto clothing which just didn't suit them and their short businessman-like haircuts at all. They jumped around and in circles and were overly genki, shot gold streamers out of a gun all over the audience. They played pretty straightforward rock, and were good for what they were, but something about them was disconcerting and Emma and I resorted to examining and speculating the contents of their pants instead of paying much more attention.

So after seeing all of Project Eden's projection screen weirdness, we were hoping for some serious pretentiousness on stage to laugh at. But WOW were they good, and not ugly at all! They were all in fact quite attractive! Especially the bassist, wearing very little clothing, who had the best toned body ever. Woo! Their costumes were a strange mix of medieval/renaissance with some Asian influence, lots of flowing sparkling things and lots of sparkling makeup. Very theatrical and unique. They did not have a drummer but had removed practically everything from stage and decorated it with fabric, if I remember correctly. Their music was not just good but also had a lot of feeling put into it. Sad, but uplifting? Not sure, but I liked them a lot!

Afterwards we entertained ourselves with enquettes and watching boys beg for them. Good fun! I ended up with 3 free CDs!