Rock Out

Imagine a guy with Mic Jager's on stage swagger, Bruce Springsteen's band setup and song writing for the working class, combined with a real "manly" like singer, I'm thinking Toby Keith, whose mere presence on stage swoons women and gets dudes all stoked about lifting weights.

Take all that, and roll it into a Japanese fella who is 51 years old (which I still just can't believe) and you get Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi. His music in Japan is classified as "New Music". If he were in the states, it would be classified as Classic Rock.

A couple of months ago, Yu a good friend of mine, invited me to go with him to see an arena concert Tsuyoshi put on in Okayama. I've never really been much of a concert guy. In fact the biggest act I saw until a couple of days ago was James Taylor in concert with my mom. Hard core, I know....

But Yu is a fan. And a big fan at that. He's seen Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi in concert around 15 times, all over Japan. So on a Saturday morning we hopped in his car and drove the two and a half hours to Okayama. Driving in Japan at this time of year by itself is a cool experience. The fall colors added to the always present mountainous terrain provides jaw dropping view after another.

The arena we saw the concert wasn't super huge, but held around 6, 000 folks....more than eough to suit me. (Sidenote: All I can think about when surrounded by a large mass of people, is what would happen if everyone panicked and rushed to leave in a hurry...like if there was an earthquake, or a large fire.) Thirty minutes or so before the doors opened up we walked around outside the arena where some of the true die hard fans, all dressed up like Tsuyoshi, hair cut the same as him were playing his songs from the past 20 years. And there must have been 30 or so guys doing this. It felt kinda like walking around the streets of Vegas and seeing Elvis impersonators one after another. And in front of each one, folks would sit down crosslegged watching and singing along. Some were really good, or so I was told, and others not so much. And the fans that had already lined up to get inside listened getting worked up for the concert. (After the concert was over, these guys went right back outside and played the songs we all just heard even more, it was incredible)

So Yu and I get inside and find our seats. Yu, who had bought the tickets 5 months ago, got us real good seats. He had told me before that we were on the fifth row, but in my head I had pictured that to be in the stands. You see, it was one of those concerts where the stage was a mammoth structure in the dead center of the complex and they filled people in every possible nook and crany that they could fit a folding chair into. We were on the arena floor, and our fifth row tickets by luck of the draw put us right next to the stage. There was still several yards filled with amplifiers, pyrotechnics, electronic equipment and a slew of stage hands, but I was so close that when in the middle of the concert, when Mr. Nagabuchi realized there was a bearded white guy up front and center, pretending to know what was going on, I could see the smirk on his face.

Thats right, we locked eyes, even though it was for just a couple of seconds....it was special, some might even call it "a moment". I'm pretty sure he spent the rest of the night singing to me, and no one else.

About that, its an interesting experience being so close to a rock star surrounded by people who are super big fans. They'll stand for the entire 3 hour performance, know all the lyrics by heart and passionately fist pump or sway for every song. It's not a time when one can simply sit there and observe his surroundings and cultural differences....especially when one is 6'3" (187 cm tall). After the first minute I realized that it was either COMPLETELY stand out or imagine like I knew what hell he was singing about and that it also moved my soul. Yu just laughed, because he knew that up until two weeks ago, when he loaned me a CD, I had never even heard any of the songs before.

I know rockstars don't get paid to be humble and reserved, but watching this guy was like watching a peacock strut around. To other peacocks in the general vicinity he might be a real big deal, a force to be reckoned with, but to anyone else, he's just another loud bird.

So it was fun, interesting and completely wild.

After the concert we had to drive back to Shinji because of the yearly chorus contest at the Junior High School. Each class prepares a song and sings it infront of the entire student body and attending parents. We didn't get back til 2am, so needless to say, listening to pre-teens trying to hold a tune was....interesting.

I'm glad I went to the concert, though I probably wouldn't do so again...just too many people. Of course there were no cameras allowed in the arena but this guy keeps a pretty extensive website setup of his career (ego stroking?). If you click here, you can see a "tour report" of that very night Yu and I saw him.