The Pillows Rock!!

My friend asked me if I liked Japanese rock band the other day. I replied I don't think I know anything about them. She said "me neither, so the Pillows are coming on Wednesday, wanna go??" I said "sure, what is The Pillows??"

So that is how I ended up at a Pillows concert last night. The Pillows, apparently, is this Japanese rock band. They are famous for doing the soundtrack for FLCL (I guess you anime people would know). The whole night started out wrong. First of all, one of my friend got lost to the carpool spot so we were late, and then there was really bad traffic across the lake (god I hate the bridges). Then the place we picked for dinner had really really slow service (and a Vietnamese old dude singing really badly on the keyboard) so we didn't end up at Club Motor until half an hour after the show was suppose to start. But we weren't actually late as they haven't even begin to let people in! so really, all that lateness meant nothing since we still had to wait half an hour just for the concert to start. Club Motor was kind of a dump too, it is just a big warehouse with some lights and stage using black sheets of paper as backdrop.

Then we found out there was 2, TWO!!! opening band. Stereo Future and Noodles. Stereo future is actually an American band, and they played some nice alternative music. I didn't like the singing though, I think they are more of a instrumental band. Noodles is this 3 girl Japanese band, very typical Japanese girl band I think. The songs were not bad but I hated the singing and it was really kind of boring. Their recording sounds much better than them live.

Ok, at this point, you must be thinking. gosh, you whine soo much! And you would be right, I was soo bored and my feet started to hurt. That is when The Pillows came out, and gave one of the most amazing concert I have ever been to. They were incredible! The lead singer was able to get the crowd of 500 going just by a look. With all their energy, they might as well be playing for a crowd of 10,000! we had some like 5 crowdsurfer going at the same time, which is not easy consider how small the crowd is. Everybody is jumping so much I was afraid the floor is gonna gave. (this is all from sober people too!, no alcohol allowed). They actually had to tell people to back up because the people in the front are moving the stage with their jumping lol. The lead singer was an awesome singer and a very good guitar player. They had such wonderful stage presence, as contrast to Noodles, to hear and see them live was 100 times better than can be conveyed on their recording. They just exuded energy and passion. They must played for an hour but I couldn't tell because it was over way too fast and totally worth the 3 hours I spent waiting on them lol . Now this is not usually the music I am into and I think the recordings on youtube are just ok. But live and in person, they are absolutely incredibly! I think I am a fan now :)

Here is some pictures taken by random people (found on Flickr)