Sawao had a bit of trouble at last night's concert and was coughing. He seems to have trouble with his throat some point in almost every tour lately. Hopefully he'll be able to hold up long enough to get through the 30th anniversary and next year's likely American tour.

prayin sawao's in fighting form for the tour final (was sorta let down that the band weren't as awesome on [i]stroll and roll band[/i] as they were on [i]moondust light for you[/i], so fingers crossed for a god-tier tour final DVD this time around). hopefully a break is all he needs; certainly did liam gallagher's voice a lot of good (although there's no way sawao will be takin like 4 years off).

I hope he's feeling better. And why is a tour to America likely next year? Was this confirmed somewhere that we missed?

[quote="Son Goshin"]I hope he's feeling better. And why is a tour to America likely next year? Was this confirmed somewhere that we missed?[/quote]
Mafu don't miss nuthin'.
A few months back, Sawao answered someone's question about oversees tours on his radio show. He said that he we like to come back to America in 2018. With the new FLCL coming out, it seems like the time for them to return.

Specifically, back in Feb. this year he said he wants to come back to America next year. He then also said that they'd probably come sometime after the FLCL sequel is out, so we'll see. But sooon!

Ugh, why? Now I'm going to have to make the painful decision of whether to go and risk crying in public. Stay away, pillows.

If you were out West, I'd happily invite you to our group for the LA show so we can all cry together.

Haha, I appreciate that. I'd probably be counting on them to come to Chicago again if I was going to see them. Or, hell, if they actually came to Minnesota for once. Then I'd [i]have[/i] to see them.

Just a heads-ups: Tower currently has a Summer sale with some cool items such as the [url=http://tower.jp/item/3651505]2nd Movement Bluray/DVD[/url] and [url=http://tower.jp/item/3432838/REVIVAL-OF-MOTION-PICTURES]Revival of Motion Pictures[/url] for 50% off. I just placed an order for 2nd Movement, and I brought the price all the way down to 1,500 yen after applying some points.
The price won't be this sweet with the added charge of international shipping, but it still might be worthwhile. Sale ends 7/21.

jeeeez 50% off. too bad i already have both 2nd Movement and Revival on blu-ray. Tower's been seriously dropping the prices on some DVDs lately; a Blue Hearts box and a Number Girl box that i had my eye on were suddenly goin for hugely discounted prices and i didnt have the money for them, and now they're all gone.

Met up with Tidusauron for the triumphant NOOK IN THE BRAIN TOUR FINAL yesterday. It was glorious.

I arrived in Odaiba around 2:30PM. Zepp Tokyo opened at 5, so I had some time to explore Odaiba. Helluva hot day, a real scorcher. Met up with Tidusauron after a while and we explored around a bit. Music was in the air that day, folks. Just across from Zepp Tokyo, a rock fes. called "Muro Festival" was going on. You could hear all the bands performing pretty easily even from across the street. They had a pretty sweet [url=http://murofes.com/lineup/]line up of bands[/url].
We took a break and chilled out on a bench for a bit in "Palette Town", and a crazy idol performance started in front of us. We watched a little bit of that, strange stuff. Laughed at the staff members running around trying to prevent people from taking pictures or videos. Anyway, headed back to Zepp Tokyo at 5PM when they started calling the ticket numbers and letting people enter.
I booked the tickets using the special code that came with the NOOK IN THE BRAIN album as soon as I could, and our ticket numbers were around A1000. It seems like a pretty big number, but I think they were decent enough tickets. Zepp Tokyo apparently has a capacity of close to 3,000 people, so when we entered, the venue was still pretty far from packed.
Originally, I was kind of planning on staying in the back. I prefer to have a good amount of personal space and I don't like people shoving me, but I decided I would scout things out inside.
Tidusauron, on the other hand, planned to get as close to the front from the get-go. Once we were inside, and I saw that I had a pretty good opportunity to get pretty close to the front, I followed Tidus and we had pretty good spots not far from the stage; I would say... about maybe 12 rows of people back from right up in front of the stage. When Manabe threw his picks, they landed probably halfway between us and the people in the very front.
It's cool to be close to the band, but one of the reasons why I usually don't try to get so close is because of the crunch caused by all the fans forcing their way to the front once the music starts. This crunch was pretty intense and I nearly fall over and was trampled to death. I almost felt sorry for all the people that I accidentally stepped on during the shoving, but it's something that comes with the territory. It you want to be at the front, prepare to be crushed, stepped on, etc. After the initial crunch, everything was pretty good, though. Before the show started, the music on the speakers was Noodles' newest album.

Great energy, both from the crowd and the band. Since this was my second time attending a show on the NOOK IN THE BRAIN TOUR, it was fun hearing the subtle differences in the performances. For example, at Akasaka Blitz, I thought that it was very cool how Last Holiday had the echo effect on the last "matteru". Last night at Zepp Tokyo, there was no effect at all. Also, Sawao changed up the "ahhh"s at the end of Doko ni mo nai sekai a bit. There were some other instances, but I can't recall at the moment.

01.Envy
02.Hang a vulture!
03.I think I can
04.MY FOOT
05.New Animal
06.Last Holiday
07.POISON ROCK'N'ROLL
08.インスタント ミュージック
09.Ride on shooting star
10.王様になれ
11.Blues Drive Monster
12.どこにもない世界
13.GOOD DREAMS
14.ジェラニエ
15.Coooming sooon
16.パーフェクト・アイディア
17.BE WILD
18.Sleepy Head
19.Where do I go?
20.Advice
(encore-1)
21.プロポーズ
22.Funny Bunny
(encore-2)
23.Locomotion, more! more!
(encore-3)
24.ハイブリッド レインボウ

The packet that the staff handed out after the show contained a pamphlet for the RETURN TO THIRD MOVEMENT TOUR, but didn't mention about a NOOK IN THE BRAIN DVD or release date. During the show, Sawao mentioned about a DVD on a couple occasions, quipping with the crowd about how he only wants the female fans to yell out his name for the DVD, because mostly dudes were doing it. So, I assume that there will be one.

After the show, we met up with some other friends and explore Odaiba a bit at night. We checked out the construction of the "Unicorn Gundam" that they are building to replace the one that they took down earlier this year. We basically just enjoyed the scenery and nice weather until we dispersed and headed home.
Probably my most wild experience at a pillows concert yet, though the tiny NOOK premiere live at Tower Records Shibuya was pretty comparable in terms of crowd energy.

Random notes and stuff that I remember from the show:
Manabe killed all the solos. Had a really great view of him during the show and it was awesome seeing him play the solos.
Someone brought a small child who could be heard acting out occasionally during the small breaks in-between songs. Manabe could be seen looking at the kid and at one point, when the kid made some strange noise, Sawao said "that's not a human!". Anyway, why would anyone bring a small child to a concert like this in the first place? They should really consider a babysitter or something. It wasn't too disruptive, at least.
Apparently, Eri Tosaka was in attendance.
I'll add more details if I can remember anything.

Man, sounds awesome! Saw the retweet about Eri Tosaka's comments on the show, cool stuff. Manabe side for life, dude, I always have the most fun where I can watch him rocking those solos as well.

Thanks for the writeup, super jealous that you're getting to see them so frequently lately haha.

[quote="Mafu"]
13.GOOD DREAMS
[/quote]
Cool! That song is epic. How was the live performance?

For those who do not know about Eri Tosaka (like me ). "Be Wild" was featured in a commercial for wrestler Eri Tosaka, who won the gold medal in the women's freestyle 48 kg event at the 2016 Summer Olympics (Tosaka herself is a Pillows fan, utilising their song "Funny Bunny" as her fight song)." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12NwAiEElPE

[quote="Ashinow"][quote="Mafu"]
13.GOOD DREAMS
[/quote]
Cool! That song is epic. How was the live performance?[/quote]
GOOD DREAMS sounded really good. I uploaded the LINE LIVE (Tsutaya O-East) performance from this tour on the [url=https://www.facebook.com/pillowsjp/videos/704897989693326/]Facebook fanpage[/url] today, so definitely check it out if you haven't seen it already.

Thanks, I appreciate it
Pretty solid performance, not stellar, but still good. Too bad Sawao did not sing the low part of the end-'Yeaaaaaaah-eaaaaah'. That part always gets me. Still going strong after all those years, what a band