May 15th, Kichijoji Star Pine's Cafe Wen I saw Shugo Tokumaru in 2007 at his "EXIT" tour at Daikanyama Unit I thought the venue was way too big, and I was glad that he chose Star Pine's Café this time around. The venue had room for about 350 people, which was perfect.
Supporting act was OORUTAICHI, the guy who did one of the remixes on "Rum Hee". I'd never heard anything else from him other than that track, so I didn't know what to expect. I found his music to be a bit..strange. Sort of a crazy fusion of folk/psych. Some of it even reminded me of Animal Collective. I think Animal Collective are overrated though. Anyways, OORUTAICHI did some crazy vocal stuff accompanied by dance moves, so it was cool enough.
Shugo Tokumaru played the first track together with a band consisting of drums, keyboard/accordion, percussion etc, and then he did an acoustic set alone followed by another set with the band. When he plays alone you really get to see how skilled he is on the guitar, and also the more quiet songs sounds really beautiful. The new single "Rum Hee", "Green Rain", "Parachute", the songs that have lots of instrumentation serves their right better with the band. And it's more fun to watch.
Before playing "Parachute" Tokumaru asked if anyone had learned the song yet (the tabs are on the "Rum Hee" cd), and if anyone had they could come up on stage and play it. No one had. It might just be because I'm unexperienced with any instrument, but that songs sounds impossible to play. Did I mention yet that Shugo Tokumaru has some serious skills?
As usual Tokumaru was quite talkative. At the bginning the first thing he says is: "Last night I dreamt that I killed somebody and couldn't play tonight. That would have been a bummer."
He played to new songs. One up-tempo and a quiet one. Personally I liked the last one the best. I like the up-tempo songs too, but I also wish he would do more songs like the one's from his first album. Anyways, almost everything he makes is good, so I'm not complaining.
Towards the end they even did a cover. 「世界大好きな曲をやります」I have now heard "Video Killed the Radio Star" played on banjo and can finally die happy. It was hilarious. Tokumaru should definitely do more covers. Before he has done covers of Pete, Bjørn & John's "Young Folks" and M. Ward's "To Go Home" which can be downloaded from his myspace site.
Shugo Tokumaru is actually doing a tour in Europe in July, and he's even going to play in Norway! Wish I was at home so I could go. That would have been fun. Anyways you should go see him. Check out the dates here:
http://www.shugotokumaru.com/eindex.html
www.myspace.com/shugotokumaru
Shugo Tokumaru is actually doing a tour in Europe in July, and he's even going to play in Norway! Wish I was at home so I could go. That would have been fun. Anyways you should go see him. Check out the dates here:
http://www.shugotokumaru.com/eindex.html
www.myspace.com/shugotokumaru
1 comment:
great blog~!!
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