| Mar. 22nd, 2005 @ 08:33 pm the pillows at SXSW |
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Status:  satisfied
Sound: the pillows : Kanojo wa Kyou
I saw the pillows on their second performance, the one on Friday night at Caribbean Lights. I am incredibly disappointed that I couldn't go to the one on Thursday night (you had to get invited, or something), but alas. The following post contains swear words where necessary.
At first when I'd heard about the concert, I was disappointed because there was a 21+ age limit at the venue. I'm 19. I emailed South By Southwest (SXSW, the music festival) about it, not really expecting much more than a "sorry, nothing we can do about it" sort of response. I was blown away when I recieved the following response:
"Your wish has been granted. Caribbean Lights has agreed to let
you in but of course you will not be allowed to drink. I forwarded your
name and email to Elizabeth, the owner. She will be expecting you."
After exploding in excitement, I planned my trip and left on Friday morning. I live in Baton Rouge, LA and the concert is in Austin, TX so it was about a 7 hour drive. I arrived at the hotel at about 5, took a shower, got something to eat, and headed to the concert.
The music festival was pretty crazy. The sidewalks were packed with people. After finding a far-away parking spot and searching on foot for Caribbean Lights, I found it at about 7. There was a huge line for it, but when the Caribbean Lights people moved the line to the other side of the building, I managed to slip up to about the 20th place in line.
People with badges and wristbands got priority, which means that people who want to pay cash to get in (like me) would have to wait until there were openings. At first they said the first 35 people will probably get in and anyone after that should just leave, but after 30 minutes or so they re-announced that only maybe the first 10 people would get in due to the immense crowd and the relatively small size of the club. They then announced that no one under 21 would be getting in. My outlook was becoming bleaker by the moment.
Mustering up some courage, I walked to the door and told them my name and said Elizabeth was expecting me. They looked at me skeptically and said that if that was the case, I should speak to the manager who was behind me. After talking to her briefly, she said there was nothing she could do because badge-holders had priority and I was underage.
I felt defeated, but I certainly wasn't giving up. I waited for about 15 minutes as she handled other people and was generally busy, and when there was another lull in activity I approached her again. She asked if I was alone, and told me that if I tried to get alcohol or something, I would be thrown out (which I enthusiastically ensured her would not be a problem). Then she brought me forward and let me in, with a cover charge of only $25 (of which I paid $23 since I had only a few twenties and three ones). I felt incredibly relieved, to say the least.
When I got inside I realized how small the place was. There were only about 250 people there, it was the size of a small nightclub. The first four bands shared one problem in their presentation: they all said some variant of "We lub Austin berry much", but the problem was that they repeated it endlessly. The crowd eventually got tired of the bands asking if we loved them and hearing how much the bands loved Austin and such. It also got a bit tired hearing them tell us about their CDs and t-shirts and telling us to buy them.
The Titan Go-Kings were playing when I got in. They were decent, and won over the crowd with their cute Engrish.
i-dep was great. They had a lot of energy, a cool style, and a cute singer.
The Emeralds were quite good, too. The lead singer was a bit... peculiar. He may have been inebriated, and he wore a weird shirt.
noodles was good. Ayumi and Yoko are insanely cute.
The crowd liked all these acts pretty well. However, I think most of them were there for the pillows, because that's when they really got going. As soon as Sawao walked onto the stage, everyone cheered, and he walked to the middle and stretched his arms out. Then they cheered as Manabe and Shinichirou walked out. This wasn't the beginning of the concert, though - they were just setting up and adjusting stuff. Then Manabe and Sawao walked off again, and Sawao made a gesture to the crowd. Shin-chan was leaving, too, but he got stuck on a part of the drum set for a moment and then squeezed between some cymbals to get out.
I talked to four of the fans there, and they were pretty casual fans compared to me -- some of them didn't even know the pillows' names, much less that Suzuki isn't a member of the band. They knew the FLCL music, but that was about it. I asked if they'd heard anything besides FLCL, and one of them mentioned that he downloaded the Living Field album but was "ashamed" to know that it was the pillows. [face_rolleyes]
The concert was fucking fantastic. They rocked hard. When I watched the Busters on the Planet DVD, I came up with some nitpicky complaints about their performance, but those complaints didn't appear here at all. They were incredible, end of story. Sleepy Head was awesome. I was surprised that they didn't do any songs from their new album; I'd kind of expected them to at least play the single. Unfortunately it was just music from FLCL plus two Penalty Life songs, which I had pretty much expected (though I still called for Kanojo wa Kyou and heard someone call for She is Perfect). I certainly understand that they want to play music that their American fans will be familiar with, but I have seen the song lists for other concerts over the past few days and they've played some songs that I would have really liked to hear.
Sawao technically did the same 'buy our stuff' plug as the other bands, but he did it way better, very short and sweet. It was something like "We have CDs for sale, if you are rich man, please buy me." He did something funny with his arms when he said "please buy me" and the crowd liked it. The other bands had kinda overdone the 'like us and buy our stuff' thing, and this was a lot better.
I was one of the guys in the mass of fans jumping up and down and pumping their fists and screaming the lyrics. It was incredible. About halfway through, I became rather dehydrated, but I wasn't going to give up my spot to go get a drink. I managed to touch the tip of Sawao's guitar when he leaned close to the crowd and he grabbed my hand a couple of times while he was doing the same to the rest of the nearby audience at the end. I was unfortunately too far away from him at the time during Advice when he tried to crowd-surf, and the crowd wasn't really expecting it and just sort of threw him back onto the stage.
I circled myself in black. I kind of look like I'm in pain.
I'm insanely jealous of those at the Thursday concert who got to eat dinner with them, but I scored a few points myself. After the concert, I was terribly dehydrated and had to get a drink (the bartender asked me if I had been at the front, I said yeah, and he went "Man, those guys fucking rock"). Afterwards I went back to try to get an autograph -- I'd brought Please Mr. Lostman (the album that many fans consider their best, a turning point in their style) in hopes of getting it signed. They were coming back and forth from the stage, packing up, and I mustered the courage to catch Shinichirou and I said "Shin-chan!" and he turned to look at me and I said "Onegai!" (no, I don't know any Japanese) and offered the CD forward. He took it and smiled and took the pen, and tried to write with the wrong end of the pen (presumably joking around, it made me laugh anyway). Then he turned it around and signed it, and I bowed and thanked him.
Next, Manabe came by. "Manabe-san, onegai!" I said, and he came over. When he saw PML, he took it and smiled, saying something like "Ooh, Lostman". Then he signed it and I thanked him. The band had gone backstage to an outdoor area of some sort, and I couldn't tell whether we were allowed to go back there, but then a fan came out of there and told us that the band was just sitting there, chilling. A few fans and myself went back there and found them with noodles having a drink.
By this point I was tingling all over. I thought I might faint. There I was, standing right in front of them, feeling awkward, not quite sure how I could get Sawao to sign since he was talking to Yoko. I sheepishly walked closer to them and tried catching Sawao's eye, which I succeeded in doing. He came over and signed it then, and shook my hand.
I was estatic. The other fans saw that I had a pen, and they all asked me to borrow it. This got all of them (I think five of them had come back here with me) asking for autographs, but none of them had anything for them to sign besides T-shirts, Penalty Life albums, and scraps of paper. I got fucking Please Mr. Lostman signed. I'll take a picture of it later and post it.
I bought all the pillows swag there (three t-shirts and the Buster-kun/pillows logo keychain) and decided that I should try to get the white t-shirt signed, as well. First, Shin-chan signed it, writing "the pillows" and then his name. Then came Manabe and then Sawao. As Sawao handed the pen back to me, I asked "Suzuki?" This made them all laugh and call out "Suzuki!" and say some things in Japanese. Jun Suzuki is the bassist, who isn't a member of the band, just a "guest musician" as it were. He smiled, and got up and came over and signed it. I'll take a picture of that, too. The only problem with this is that now, I can't wear that t-shirt, because if I wear it, it'll get dirty, which means I'll have to wash it, which means the writing will fade. Not gonna happen.
Then, the picture. I had purchased a throwaway camera and had taken about 20 pictures until about halfway through the pillows' concert I stopped caring about taking pictures and focused on rocking out. Unfortunately, it must have fallen out of my pocket, and someone must have found it and taken it because I searched everywhere afterwards and asked the employees and couldn't find it. Fortunately the other fans had digital cameras, and the four of us wanted to get pictures with them. So, after they approved the idea, we took turns taking pictures with the four of them. I got mine taken by a guy who emailed it to me. I've got my arm on Sawao's shoulder and am giving a thumbs-up. I look pretty goofy, but I was trembling with excitement and could hardly keep myself from grinning stupidly. I got to shake their hands after that. I did a lot of bowing and "Arigatou"s. It was awesome. Then, as we reluctantly pulled ourselves away and left, I yelled out "the pillows rock!" and put my hand in the air with the "rock out" sign, and they returned it. A member of their crew kept my pen and was giving it to other fans who wanted autographs, so if at the next concert they're using a black Sharpie marker to sign autographs, it's mine.
On the way out, the lead guy from i-dep was selling their CDs near the door. For $5, you get the CD, two stickers, and a little pin. I liked 'em, so I bought it, and the really cute singer got incredibly friendly with me, and opened her arms like she wanted me to give her a hug. I would have loved to do that, but I had already put my hands forward to shake her hand, which I had at first expected her to do when she was thanking me for buying the CD. She kind of laughed and shook my hand with both her hands then. I kicked myself.
Complaints? Well, I do like to complain, so I do have a few. The first guitar lick in Dead Stock Paradise sounded really off-key to me; not sure what the problem was, but I think they fixed it for the second time that the lick is played. For some reason, that off-key guitar sound seemed to come from Suzuki, even though that makes no sense. I wish they would have played a few more songs... I mean, the next band wasn't even part of "Japan Nite". They were pretty good, but I think everyone just wanted the pillows to stay and play more (the crowd almost entirely disappeared after the pillows). I would have liked it if they'd played some slow songs to let everyone rest, because I was incredibly tired after yelling and jumping and pumping my fist for 45 minutes. I would've liked to hear Another Morning or Midnight Down or Stalker or... well, pretty much everything.
Yeah, that about does it for bad things.
In summary, I had a freaking awesome time. The trip cost me about $180 with food and gas and hotel and ticket, which I think was a sweet deal. I've not yet been to a concert anywhere near as awesome as the concert that night (of which the pillows were clearly the most awesome performer).
If there's any way you can attend one of their concerts, I implore you not to miss it. |
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