Well,
the 7th Avenue Club is WAAAAY too far away for me to ever visit again,
and fuck, it's cold by the Bay (I think I have pneumonia now!) But
I'm glad I didn't know what a pain in the ass it would be before I
left, otherwise I'd have stayed home and thus missed Eyes=Mirrorge
in kimonos! Yum!
The
day started out expectedly crappy -- I'm still getting over some tired-achy-blah
illness, but woke up feeling much better than past days, so I guess
that's all I could ask for today. Stopping in at machida on the way
to Yokohama (where the show was) I hit the usual CD stores, and saw
nuthin'. Nuthin'! I was reduced to buying J's solo album Pyromania
for Y500, even though I never listen to the 256kbps mp3s I have of
it. I needed to get SOMETHING!
Of course,
it was raining the whole time, and cold, and just miserable. Lunch
with Kayo was nice, though, even if the food sucked.
Afterwards,
Kayo headed home and I headed to Yokohama. Take the well-named Yokohama
line to Yokohama, switch to the Negishi (as in "inconvenient")
line for two stops, get off at Kannai, and get blasted in the face
with freezing rain coming off the Bay.
7th
Ave is just around the corner from Yokohama Stadium (which I will
forever associate with guns because it was here at Yokohama Stadium,
five years ago, that I saw my first Japanese cop, carrying a gun,
and got confused -- cops carry guns in Japan?! -- until I remembered
it was England where they don't carry. Which seems nuts, but I digress...)
So I
get to the club, a few hours early (Machida sucked, remember? So I
left early) but the Disk Union in Kannai is too far away to go to
in this crappy, dark, cold, icy, miserable, wet wet weather, even
though the last time I went, I fetched Realive (L'Arc's most
recent live DVD) for cheap, especially considering it had just been
released mere days prior).
So I
find the club, pretty easily, and there's a few people in the lobby
leading to the stairs that lead to the basement-level club, but the
lobby looks cold. So I walk away, but then one of the girls comes
running out yelling for me -- it's the Dir en grey fan from last week
-- and so I hang out for a bit, and listen (from the lobby) to Eyes=Mirrorge
soundchecking downstairs while I talk to them and munch on Choco Chip
Pan. After a while I head for some good hot coffee at the corner shop
and catch up on some early Le Carre as I sip my coffee of the day
("Plain").
An hour
later I'm back, waiting in line which a bunch of metalheads that,
had i worn jeans and my motorcycle jacket, i would've fit in nicely
with (but as it is i'm "Nevermore" style, so named because
the two times I saw them in NYC, the singer was wearing what i am
now: leather pants and an untucked, thick black dress shirt with the
sleeves rolled up. Add a chain hanging from my belt, a skeletony necklace
'round me neck and my lipring (never leave home without it!) and ta-da,
instant concert-mode Gordon! Damn I hate lines...
Next
bummer of the night: No Photos Allowed!
Fuck
Youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!
They
even search your bag, and some people are honest enough to hand over
their camera. I hide mine and don't use it the whole night... though,
oh, how i ached too... there were some really cool shots. They had
some seemingly pro photographer shooting them (their manager? a parent?
He was way too adult-like...) and Kureya promised to have the shots
at the next live I could be at, in January. There's also some video,
too, that I appear in...?
When
I "check in" with the ticket guy -- I had secured an advance
ticket through the band -- he's like, "Nope, no "Gordon
Wells" on the list. So I'm like, "eh? Honto?" And he
checks again, and meanwhile everyone behind me is starting to get
fidgety because it's taking more than the standard 10 seconds to process
my egress and finally I'm just like, "Hmmm, oookay" and
pay the full Y3500.
Inside
is a bunch of people from last time, and after exchanging pleasantries
I'm like, "Damn, I wasn't on the list again or something?"
and one girl's like, "Huh?" And we march over to the ticket
dude and she's like, "He's on the list, dumbass!" And points
to my name, and the dude's like, "Oh, that Gordon"
or something, and does one of those smile/bow/hand-chop apology things
in my direction, which seems sincere enough but still, it's like,
DUH, if I had a tennis racket I'd boink you on the head with it.
I hang
some more, with Mune, Daisuke, Rocky, Kureya's sister whose name I
still can't remember but she's really nice, etc., and I waste my $5
drink ticket on a Coke (but I'm not healthy enough to get a beer),
and Akane, the main merch table girl, takes my ticket from me and
instructs me to reach into a deep greenish-silver metal box she is
shaking in front of my face. Never one to disappoint, I obediently
reach my hand in and come out with... an Eyes=Mirrorge demo tape!
This
is very cool: there are three colors of demo tape: red, green, and
yellow. Each have different songs, the red one has Clock of the Mask,
which sounds very bedroom four-track produced, which is fine. Each
one is free. But only when you show your ticket for the gig. So at
each show, you have one chance to get another tape, but reaching in,
you might get the same one or a new tape; but then either way you
win. Because if, for example, I get a red tape again next time, I'm
forced to track down a fellow EM fan who has two greens or two yellows;
so you can kinda make new friends if you have doubles, and the EM
community gets a little bigger and stronger, and more likely to wanna
meet and come to see EM for the fortieth time, and that's cool all
around, ne?
The
show goes great, the lights and sound are exceptional, save for the
fact that because the stage is only 15 inches or so high, the manned
spotlight in the back sometimes casts shadows from the audience onto
Kureya. (A minor complaint!)
The
girls look great in the kimonos they're wearing too -- Ren even has
a black leather bondage-style "belt" (if it's nine inches
wide is it still a belt?) around her petite waist, which looks really
cool with the kimono and the black sash behind. (I tell her as much
after the show, prodding the metal circle in the middle of the belt
with my finger; that was fun!) And she's also like, jeez, your hands
are freezing -- because the AC is on full blast in the club, and it's
fucking cold! In the back, by the bar and merch tables, anyway! So
be warned, that place is just an icebox this time of year; the only
club I haven't sweated in, ever!
Knowing
the songs a bit better now, too, I can headbang or do the fist thing
at the proper times, and embarrass myself less... So that adds to
the fun. And after, we talk again -- they're looking for a drummer
-- and after they head out I chat with the staff and fellow fans a
bit and overall have a rather cool time; finally, I'm part of a circle!
~I belong to a group!~
It being
the weekly Metal on Metal night, three metal bands went up on stage
afterwards. They were okay, though a little same old same old... the
guitarist for the last band, Mephistopheles (I think), was quite amazing
on the guitar -- a regular Yngwie -- but I can't remember a single
solo he played, so story-less were they. Such a waste!
The
ride home is a giant hassle, because the train I need only runs once
every TWO hours after 8pm. So rather than wait 75 minutes for the
next train (the Yokohama line), I take some ancient piece of crap
line the seven minutes to Kawasaki, then transfer to the yellow yellow
happy Nambu line, which runs through Noborito. As it turns out, I
save ten minutes over the Machida-based trip from this morning, so
it turned out well, but it's not the kind of planning you want to
do when you're tired, wet, freezing, deaf in both ears (well, not
deaf really, but there's just enough ringing to be annoying), plus,
hmmm, is that all-over-ache the result of this evening's show OR the
illness I thought I dissed this morning, coming back to haunt me?
But
I have my new EM CD to admire (no pictures?! Gyp! But I can study
the words, at least) and I did get a seat on the train, so the world
doesn't suck completely. But it's a month til the next EM show, and
I won't be able to make it... so it's actually TWO months for me.
Boo!
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