[Recovered] Hiro's us-mix NYC concert report

[Jei]

Hi, everyone! Sorry for making you guys wait for my NYC live report. Here it goes...

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DCT had a show “MGO u.s.-mix”, on May 29, 2002 at Irving Plaza, Manhattan NYC.

Irving Plaza is one of the mid-sized clubs in the city. I assume its capacity would be around 800 (I might be wrong). All the tickets were sold out a few days before the day of the event (which I heard of). Since their concert tickets are hard-to-get in Japan (although their shows are mostly taking place in huge venues), the show in US was a rare occasion for both DCT and audience to perform or see in an intimate situation.

I guess this show was primarily intended for Japanese audience in US rather than to promote their music in US market. Actually, over 90% of the audience was Japanese (this is my estimate) and the lead singer Miwa spoke mostly Japanese to the audience during the show. In fact, the show was a part of their concert tour that consists of 3 parts, pp-mix (for fun club members, which already ended), us-mix (3 cities in US) and arena-mix (which will start in July in Japan) of their latest Japanese album “Monkey Girl Odyssey.” Thus, most materials performed were from “Monkey Girl Odyssey.”

The show started at 10:00 pm. As soon as Masa and Miwa showed up on the stage, it caused great excitement in the crowd. DCT opened with “Snow Dance.” (Well…I like this song, but this song is about the winter in 1999, the very final year of last millennium. I was not sure it was appropriate for the opening). Anyway, Miwa made a small announcement after the opening saying that she was very sorry to make the audience wait for such a long time since they had a show in NY almost 5 yeas ago and very happy to do a show in NY again. After a couple of Japanese songs from “MGO” performed, they introduced some new English materials including “One Yesterday” with Ron Sexsmith who is the co-writer of the song (he wrote the lyric, he said). It was a nice ballad song and Miwa & Ron’s harmonized vocal was astonishingly beautiful. I hope we will have an opportunity to listen to this song on CD sometime soon. DCT performed total of 4 English songs. One of the songs was an English version of “Shiawasena Karada” from the album “Love Unlimited” released in 1996. I guess Miwa directly translated the Japanese lyrics to English. It was a nice surprise for me to listen to one of their old familiar songs with English lyrics. Other two songs were completely new materials that I assume Masa wrote the music and Miwa wrote the lyrics (They didn’t tell us the titles, though). I believe these new English songs will be on their 2nd US album. Surprisingly, they didn’t perform any songs from “The Monster –universal mix” their 2nd English album released in Asia. Even though Miwa sang “Asaga Matakuru (English title: “Another Day without You”)”, it was performed in Japanese. Personally, I wanted to hear English version of it. They continued to perform more songs from “MGO” including “Crystal Vine” which is a theme song for "Disney's Atlantis” Japan release.

Finally, Miwa sang “Love Love Love” (their biggest hit single) to show their appreciation for the support of Japanese fans.

They performed two songs as an encore, “Aisuru Kokoro (Will to Love)” and “Sankyu.” This u.s.-mix tour was the first public appearance since Takahiro Nishikawa left the band. Miwa didn’t make any comment directly about it, but just said, “We had a very hard time, but your support gets us moving on.” In addition, she said that they would have a show again early next year and hopefully 2nd US album would come out sometime soon. The show was over around 11:20 pm.

Since I’m used to seeing their highly produced shows (both live performance and on videos), the show was a very “raw” DCT performance. The setting was so simple. The band was made of guitar, base, drums and keyboard; no female background vocals nor horn section. The sound was very rock band-ish. It was definitely different from the DCT performance that I experienced before. However, the main attraction of the band is Miwa’s powerful vocal (you can’t deny that, right?), so it was not disappointing or less entertaining at all. Rather, it was a great opportunity to see such a different style of DCT’s performance.

Anyway, I enjoyed their live performance a lot and had a great time at Irving Plaza. I was able to see them from the shortest distance ever and with the cheapest price of the ticket (It was just $20. Arena-mix will cost over $60 in Japan). This was a great deal!

I can’t wait to see their live performance again in US with new materials next year!

Here is the list of the songs they performed.
(Well…since I didn’t take notes, the order of the song may be wrong)

1. Snow Dance (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
2. Sukidakeja Damenanda (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
3. Puraido Nante Shiranai (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
4. Shiawasena Karada (Love Unlimited, English)
5. ? (New: English)
6. One Yesterday (New: English)
7. Say it (? I’m not sure) (New: English)
8. Flowers (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
9. 24/7 (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
10. Asaga Matakuru (The Monster)
11. Itunomani (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
12. Crystal Vine (Monkey Girl Odyssey)
13. Love Love Love (Love Unlimited)

Encore:
14. Aisuru Kokoro (Sing or Die)
15. Sankyu (Delicious)

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If you have any questions about the show, let me know.

Hiro

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Hiro