This is very much after the fact, but I figured I should carry on the tradition of leaving a record of the few concerts I actually get to go to.
Set List (I’m very sure all of the songs are here, I just don’t know where a lot of them actually go in order. :D)
いばらの涙 ibara no namida
CHASE
GOOD LUCK MY WAY
DRINK IT DOWN
somewhere in this general area is a hyde MC
REVELATION
HONEY
瞳の住人 hitomi no juunin
XXX
forbidden lover
ken solo – MY HEART DRAWS A DREAM
ken MC – SEVENTH HEAVEN
Driver’s High
STAY AWAY
READY STEADY GO – yukihiro solo
encore:
あなた anata
the Fourth Avenue Cafe
winter fall
Link – mid-break tetsu MC and banana throwing
hyde MC – 虹 niji
Starting with ibara no namida was unexpected – I didn’t expect this to get on the set list at all, since it’s more of a sidetrack kind of thing. It’s a pleasant surprise; I love this song to bits and pieces. CHASE/GLMW were great at setting up the energy, and DRINK IT DOWN was as aggressive as ever. REVELATION was fun – it’s very much a fist pumping song, and they did the usual lighting thing with the chorus (YUUGENDOKUSON – beat – lighting on audience). Somewhere along the lines here there’s a brief hyde MC, where he was totally reading off a sheet for Canto pronunciation on stage:
hyde: *tried to say something in canto*
us: eh? o_o
hyde: *tried to say it again*
us: ???
hyde: eh? chotto matte. *looked down cheat sheet and tried again*
us: um… YEAH!
One thing about the beginning of the concert though was that the sound quality wasn’t as good as I hoped – the speakers couldn’t really handle the loudness and a lot of the nuances (namely, the basslines) got lost in the static/feedback noise. Even hyde sounded like he was straining to be audible. It got a little better midshow, but I still found it really hard to hear the bass.
There was a brief hiccup in the beginning of HONEY and hyde had to start over (some mic went out – think it was hyde’s guitar?); the rest of the song was pretty much the usual. hitomi no juunin has always been one of my favorites – I’m actually not very fond of hyde’s new way of singing it, but I’m still happy to hear it, and the chorus was spot on. XXX was one of those songs that I think is good to hear on the album, but kind of awkward live – it’s not that there was anything off; it’s just not a song that lends itself to live audiences. People with those glowstick thingies in the audience were making X signs though :3.
forbidden lover was another one I didn’t expect. It’s very much a song that builds up and kind of explodes and fades out in the end, and the performance was amazing here. They actually brought out the flames (things shooting out fire in the back) too. hyde teared up towards the end here, iirc. ken had a nice solo before MHDAD. This is another personal favorite for me – I wasn’t sure if it would show up on the tracklist at all, but it did and I was very happy. Everything was spot on here too.
ken had an MC right before SEVENTH HEAVEN that was pretty hilarious – he was struggling through the Cantonese pronunciations (lol he actually said “wait a minute k? this is difficult” in Japanese before his talk), but the general gist is that he went to some of the touristy spots in HK, including Temple Street, and bought some stuff for hyde there. It was a set of Angry Birds, and somehow that went to this:
ken: ANGRY?
audience: … BIRDS?
ken: ANGRY?
audience: BIRDS!
ken: ANGRY?
audience: BIRDS!
ken: SEVENTH…
audience: HEAVEN! *ROAR*
Cue audience jumping mode for the rest of the concert. SEVENTH HEAVEN/Driver’s High/STAY AWAY/RSG were all pretty awesome ending songs, even if it’s the standard set. Lots of jumping from tetsu too, and hyde did this weird flailing thing in the RSG chorus parts. yuki had an extra long drum solo ending here.
Encore: we did a few waves during the wait – it was kind of funny, trying to get the people in the back to return the wave to the front. Anyway, there was an instrumental intro to anata that everyone sang along to, and it segued into anata, complete with the shiny ball and falling feathers. I can’t remember if it was winter fall or the Fourth Avenue Cafe after that, but FAC was exciting – I haven’t heard this song in a while and it sounded slightly different (tbh I couldn’t really tell by this point). winter fall was… as expected? They’ve done it several times recently and this doesn’t really sound that different. Link also involved a lot of jumping – I personally really liked this song so I enjoyed this a lot. niji was actually my favorite in the entire concert though – the song itself was love, and the accompanying effects here were probably the best in the entire concert (the background display had a bunch of lighted windows (?) that looked really good with the stage, plus a lot of rainbow lighting).
So, TL;DR highlights:
- ibara no namida
- forbidden lover <3
- MY HEART DRAWS A DREAM
- ken MC: ANGRY! BIRDS!
- the Fourth Avenue Cafe
- Link
- niji
- Tour goods had surprisingly good design – I’m used to seeing really ugly band t-shirts and other goods, but Laruku put out some stuff that actually looked good from a designer’s perspective. It’s too bad that I got there too late for most of it :<. (I ended up grabbing the regional shirt.)
I'm actually slightly disappointed that there were no songs at all from AWAKE, or anything earlier than tFAC. (I secretly wanted jojoushi or My Dear and actually expected In the Air/Blurry Eyes/Caress of Venus.) I heard the Bangkok show had fate, which I also really like – hopefully that will be included in the DVDs.
So now for things that have nothing to do with the concert – this was actually the first time I've been to an arena show. It's definitely different from the small venue ones; for some reason, it's much easier for me to take notice of little details that I probably didn't before (it could also be that I've grown up a bit since the last time I've seen a concert). I also found it much easier to be aware of what other people are doing around me, which was actually pretty irritating – I was sitting on a balcony seat (it was like the edge of the 990HKD range :<), and there was this guy next to me who was obviously here with his girlfriend. That was fine, except since this was side balcony, he was blocking my view pretty much the entire concert, standing there like a block of wood. Still, I enjoyed this and it would be nice to actually see a Laruku show in Japan next time.
