I might was well add my comments to make this a full review of DCT's West Coast tour.
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The Vancouver stop was the last stop of a short West Coast tour for Japanese super group Dreams Come True (DCT).
Here are my comments.
I arrived at the Orpheum theatre with my wife, and two friends about 40 mins before the 9pm show start. My wife and one of my friends was a willing attendees but I kinda dragged along my other friend by offering to pay for his ticket. There were two long lines pointing in two different directions to each of the two main theatre entrances. One line was for people with backpacks that had to be checked in, while the other lineup was for those who were unencumbered. They also searched bags and checked anyone wearing long and bukly clothing. It certainly looks like they were pretty serious about not letting any recorders or cameras into the theatre although I did see the occasional flash go off during the concert.
The line moved pretty quickly and we got in and sat down on the lower orchestra row 21, The Orpheum Theatre is divied into three main sections: lower orchestra, dress circle and balcony. The theatre itself seats over 2700 people, and I would say that this concert was around 95% sold out. I said hi to a couple of friends I spotted a few rows away during our wait for the start of the concernt. Looking at the audience composition, it looks like there were a large number of English Language exchange students, many of them female. A rough guess for the audience age range would be 80% was under the age of 30. I was probably one of the oldest guys there
(I'm in my late 30's btw).The lights dimmed at 8:00, the audience clapped and cheered. Out into the spotlight walked...huh? It was the opening act named Bob Kallin, a local folk rocker. He joked about his reception by the audience and sang a couple of songs. I wasn't too interested in his act, and both of friends were bored stiff. It seems like a lot of the audience was too because they talked through out his performance.
Finally, he finished at around 8:30. But the concert still hasn't started yet. The lights went up and the roadies continued to set up and test equipment. Finally at 9:00, the lights dimmed again and finally Miwa and Massa walked on the stage. The excitement and applause was pretty loud. Miwa and Masa made some funny comments about their tour and their English skills, with Miwa calling us here "Vancouver Babies"
. Masa also commented that this was their biggest audience yet on their West Coast tour. I'd say the Vancouver stop had a pretty good turn out considering that DCT sells out stadium size venues in Japan.I'm not that familiar with the DCT reprotoire but it looks like it followed the playlist from another review in this forum.
There was lead singer Miwa, bassist Masa, a lead guitarest, keyboards and drums. I have to say that Miwa certainly has a pretty good vocal range and was a lot of fun to watch on stage. She certainly did a lot of moving around and dancing with the music along with waving and blowing kisses to the audience. I thoroughy enjoyed the songs although there were some sound balancing problems that made hearing some of the vocals a bit difficult. Some of DCT's tunes must of been signature songs because when Miwa pointed her mike towards the audience, most of them were able to sing along. When they did the Encore 1 song (Ai Suru Kororo), the cheers and clapping was absolutely deafening. I would have to say the level of energy and enthusiasm of the concert was incredible because "WE STOOD UP THE ENTIRE TIME"!!!!!. That's right; for 1 hour and 45 minutes, the entire audience in the theatre was standing, swaying, humming and clapping to the music. As far as I can tell, no one wanted to sit down. I dunno if this is typical with Japanese audiences standing like this for a long time because my knees certainly didn't quite agree with it <ouch>. At the end of the concert, a number of audience members gave her bouquets of sunflowers. I assume it must be her favorite flower.
Overall, my a wife and I along with one of my friends thoroughly enjoyed the concert. The friend I dragged to concert didn't agree with us, calling the performance rather artificial.
As a side note, they were also filming at this concert, On the way into the theatre, I spotted a notice taped to a door saying that they are filming a concert video called "DCT - West Coast Mix 2002" and that audience members will be filmed. Cool!! I guess I should keep an eye out on the CD Japan web page (www.cdjapan.co.jp) for an upcoming an DCT concert DVD.
