October 18th, 2004 @ Numadu Noir
Imitation Pop's Noiz Japan Toy's Panic Tour Open the Gate 2004

Bands in order: NEED+ADD, Knasc, Imitation Pops NOIZ, PANIC*ch

Ren and I are totally the coolest for making it to Shizuoka and back on a school night! Woohoo! It was a three-hour ride by local trains, but a fun and cultural experience seeing Shizuoka for the first time, with the ocean and Mount Fuji visible from the train window. The live opened at 5:00 and started at 5:30, but because there are very few trains in the middle of nowhere, we ended up waiting around at our last transfer station until 4:55, and arrived at Numadu at 5:15.

Map in hand, with the sun setting behind us, we half-ran down the main road in search of the live house, until we came upon a barely visible park with a line of girls waiting. Most of them were in their school uniforms, but you could tell they were waiting for the concert, and two guys with badges stood around trying to look official. There were about 25 people and they all stared at us like they've never seen a foreigner before. It was hilarious. Even more hilarious how obsessively they were letting us in... in groups of seven! This guy was standing in the park entrance and waving his arm in front of people like a turnstile, counting them! It was TOO funny.

We found out once we got in, it was because we had to take an elevator up to the 5th floor, so 7 was the capacity limit. Very happy to find that Panic did have my reservations (I made them late the night before and never got a confirmation so I wasn't sure), and they were giving away the tour postcard at the door (that before you only got when you bought something) AND it was signed! Yay!

I was expecting some hole-in-the-wall like Route 14, but Noir was decently sized and cozy, a generally well-designed live house... in fact it was just really all-around good. I really haven't been to a live house that I didn't have some gripe against. It was nice!! There were headbanging bars but no space between the stage and the audience, the stage was about AREA's height, or maybe a teeny bit lower... Either way just about perfect! The goods tables were inside the audience area along the side walls, and down the hall they had a huge bar with a million different drinks available. There weren't very many people there (no surprise), mostly young girls and some guy in a Vivienne tie and Cocolulu jacket who bought a stack of Panic photosets (giggle). They were all SO rude to the first bands though, holy crap! For some reason they all crowded the stage and then when the band came on... they walked away, or sat down!

The first band was NEED+ADD, and they weren't spectacular or anything but they were trying. We were some of the few people polite enough to remain standing... not right at the front, but no one was really in front of us. They were going for some casual visual style, with black silk shirts and nice fitting pants. None of them were really attractive though, which sadly I think is why none of the girls decided to give them a chance. They were well put-together though, they had talent... Just the lack of fans put a damper on their liveliness, they seemed to be holding back.

After their set, everyone (who wasn't sitting down already) sat down on the floor again. The band sat at their goods table and started waving gleefully and smiling at us. We waved back, and they started giving thumbs up and being really silly. Ren ended up going over and buying their CD, and they gave her a sticker and one to give to me too. So cute!

Next up was the band Knasc. They were young and cute as HELL, looked good with decent hair and costumes with some effort put into them, had so much energy they were practically running in circles, but the only problem was they were THE WORST BAND I'VE EVER HEARD!! They were trying so hard, but the guitars were out of tune... they didn't match the recorded drum beat, they didn't match each other... it just turned into a cacophony of loud noise. I mean usually bands seem good and fun live, then you hear them on CD and think "GOD!"... but this was notably TERRIBLE. I'd be afraid to listen to their cDs! Yet they had all these girls at the front who had decided to stay simply because they were a really attractive group of boys (hey, now we know how Nightmare got popular! har har just kidding :P) They had cute spikey hair and ties and everything, they really did try... And their energy level was a rare thing. If you took the energy and looks of theirs and put it with the talent of NEED+ADD, there might be something good to come out of it.

And of course Panic SHOULD have been next... considering it was a NOIZ event... but just to confuse the hell out of us, Imitation Pops NOIZ came on. The vocalist started talking in the mic behind the curtain, introducing them and then somehow combining their name into Panic Channel's and making everyone laugh. Then he asked if it were okay if the two band were friends! Hahaha, cute. Then the curtain opened and the music started...

THEY ARE SO AWESOME!! Words cannot describe! I'd always held a mild interest in them but I didn't think they were SO cool! They just put on this awesome show, their costumes are extravagant and over-the-top, and they're all such loveable huggable space robot characters! ♥ ♥ I loved the dances, and the music was extremely unique. And they had the whole robot thing going on... They each came on stage individually with this music running, and they did this robot dance as they were introduced. The shimote guitarist Masato is sexy as hell especially doing a robot dance, woo! Their costumes were spectacular, all made of lots of vinyl and stuffing and feathers and neon things. If you haven't seen what Noiz looks like, I suggest you look at a picture now, because I can't even begin to describe them.

Masato removed his guitar for a few songs and would sing/rap with Angel Taka. They did crazy dances and went back-to-back and spun around. One song had a particularly fun dance that I can't remember but oooh they were just the best. At the end they one-by-one "powered down" and sat on the stage, then started up again and all formed this awesome superhero group pose in front of the drum set with the music "blasting off". Then they each did their final dancey thing at the front of stage and went off. Oh god, they were so damn awesome!!

And then it was PANIC's turn, and three Tokyo front-row girls pushed their way to the front like crazy bitches. We couldn't tell if the giant gyaru behind us were the same Tokyo giant gyarus, but either way they were still giant gyaru that loved to catapult their fat asses at the front rows. It seems like most of the people there were there for Panic. I was like 2nd/3rd row, depending on the arrangement of people because everyone moves around. Panic came on looking cute as ever. Takumi had on this little striped waitress dress it was tooo cute. Meguru needed his blue redyed, he was wearing a blue windbreaker with a blue Super Lovers hoodie on underneath. He was wearing a lot of blush and looked positively glowing, he was toooo cute. The others had the usual outfits on. So they were all happy happy yay!! And then... their sound system exploded! Auughhh! The poor guys! It just wasn't ON when they started! Halfway through the opening line, they turned the speakers on. And then the mic started screeching feedback so badly that Meguru had to stop singing. It kept doing that throughout the song... he got frantic and ran to the guitar mic that was all wrapped around and he couldn't move. Five roadies were running circles around the stage trying to fix whatever went wrong... Oh man! I felt so bad for them. Finally in the middle of the second song they fixed the mic...

After that minor disaster they all got genki again and put on a really good show. They played 7 songs (which is LONG!), although I forget the order, and did an encore of Kodoku mousou. Meguru kept messing up the girls' hair in the front row, it was cute. For 829, when he babbles random stuff between the "panikku panikku"s, he was saying stuff like "Shizuoka Shizuoka". They jokingly referred to Takumi as "the jerk behind the drums", which was amusing. They're always picking on Takumi. This live started a still-running inside joke, where Meguru said after going to Hokkaido for a live, he noticed everyone pronounced the word "zehi" (certainly) like "zesshh". So during the MC he kept pronouncing it like that.

It was all the usual teaching of dances to Lovely and Kataomoi. The most memorable part... oh god. It was really embarrassing! There's that dance for Kataomoi: right arm up, left arm up, swirl hands in front of you, saku and look confused up to the ceiling (or maybe just Meguru does that), point-point-point-point, twirl hands to your side, clap-clap in the air. It's really freakin fun and Meguru does it the whole song. Usually he looks down when he's doing the point-point-point so he's not singling out anyone... So anyway, he's all like really close to the audience, and we're all dancing, and he looks right at me, and I'm like "eek!" and miss a step and my dance gets all thrown off... so he KEEPS looking at me making sure I'm copying the dance right, and we point-point-point at each other and then he makes a big OKAY sign with his hand and smiles. I was like ahhhh I just had to mess up while he was watching! But his smiling was tooo cute!

So they ended with sufficient flourish, and we bolted out of the live house so we'd be able to get home before the trains stopped. Lives outside of Tokyo are always a different experience; with different groups of fans and everything. This was a rather pleasant one; even with their sound system problems they proved they can play through mistakes and still make for a really fun time. I'd totally go to Shizuoka again for them!