11/15/2007

A big thank you to Sandra at Campus Circle and Yuriko at Sony for getting me in the show. Mind you, it was nowhere near sold out. Couldave been ugly if it stayed at the about twice-bigger Fillmore as it was first announced (capacity 1250)

The change of venue allowed kids to come in which they did unenthusiastically, I think accompanying parents or what not. The spectrum was quite wide, though the audience at its core was formed by the bay area's Japanese community. Weirdest peeps: a big black man wearing a suit, totally loving it. Tie: a not-thin white woman wearing what appeared to be a cosplay outfit though I may be wrong

There was a very strict camera policy so I didn't so much get to flex my point and shoot skills. Here's one from Seattle on Tuesday by brucedene

I'd say their SF outfits were better.. in that j-stairu loose clothing fashion. Yumi wore a big Bugs Bunny tee while Ami had a weird shirt that said "socs stay gold socs" or something. Both girls rocked Stacey Adams

Yumi looks a lot better in real life, though Ami still the cutey. Yumi has more stage presence though, more fun moves (the up and down bop with the leg bent)

The show was in general too long for me as a casual listener though the fans really ate it up. How can I describe Puffy Amiyumi, it's your basic energetic j-pop with a big slant on rock. The solos were so unnecessary

In the tradition of asian concerts, Puffy broke every 3-4 songs to have some banter and talk to the audience. Their English was hilarious, even more so cuz they were reading from a notepad. Very endearing. What we learned from the fobby English: they love SF, were here a year ago, had dimsum today (yamucha, hao chi), the band collectively loves clam chowder, they touched on the Gap ads (photographed by Annie Leibowitz of Vanity Fair) and checking out posters at the store downtown

They were a lot more comfortable speaking Japanese (mostly to each other)

The highlight was "Closet Full Of Love", a new song. Something is darn sexy when the girls say "oh, o-oh". Also the song "Asia no Junshin" with the panda mask (seen here, awesome) and some vocoder thing. People yelling an-ca-ru (for encore) was kinda fun, and also the ridiculous band introduction where they would just keep chanting the musician's names

They sold out of the new cd Honeycreeper which is only available as an import right now. It was $25 which is still savings, yikes. I ended getting a $20 tshirt that is way too small haha. Maybe for my gf



As a non fan, the set list is pretty hard to crack, I know it included
- Tokyo I'm On My Way
- Mole-Like, what was with the dance routine that had construction workers
- Oriental Diamond
- Basket Case (Green Day cover)
- Closet Full Of Love
- Asia no Junshin

miyagawa reports

They appeared with Hi-Standard's "I can't help falling in love" the cover of Elvis (I wonder why?) and played lots of new and old songs, including "Tokyo I'm on My Way", "渚にまつわるエトセトラ", "Hi Hi", "Team Titans" and "Basket Case (Green Day)".

The ended the main show with their great hit "アジアの純真" and the encore was "サーキットの狼"

Mato also writes

that they played "Joining A Fan Club", the Teen Titans theme in English, "PUFFY Is A Monster", Japanese version of Planet Tokyo (Akai Buranko)

Fun times