Through the Eyes of a Vagrant

When I was browsing around the internet I went to the homepage of Bonnie Pink and noticed that during her new “One” tour that she would be coming to Okayama on July 17th. Rockin’! The tour took her all across Japan starting with Nagoya and eventually ended in Tokyo. I knew well in advance and was able to buy tickets on the first day they went on sale. I did it using a Lawson’s kiosk. The way it works is, you first get a piece of paper from the kiosk after you choose your event, and then you have to give it to the convenience store clerk. Then you pay the clerk and they hand you the tickets in a nice Lawson’s envelope. It wasn’t too hard, especially if you knew the code to get the venue to pop up quicker on the machine, which I learned from the website. The tickets were around 5500 yen which wasn’t too bad for a concert.

It was held at Crazymama Kingdom Okayama. The venue is fairly small and sits on the 4th floor of a building. Upon arrival, a security guard was waiting near the stairs, who was basically just greeting people, and therefore it was pretty easy to tell where the venue was from that alone. After I climbed up to the top of the stairs, two men immediately asked me for my ticket and 500 yen. What? I just paid for these tickets, and they cost me 5500 yen. I have to buy a drink too? What a dirty trick.

Anyways, they had people selling stuff related to Bonnie Pink near the doors, which I just glanced over before heading in, as it was fairly unimpressive. The venue was maybe only 2/3s full of people and there was probably no reason for me to buy my tickets so quickly. There were many signs around the venue and the most notable were “No bodysurfing or moshing” and “No re-entry.” Luckily, none of the signs said “No photographs” like most concerts in Japan. With that being said, I only saw one other person with a camera.

There was no opener and at 7pm the band went out on stage without Bonnie and played an intro leading up to her eventual entrance. I was surprised at the number of people in the band. There were six members in the band: a percussionist, a lead guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, a pianist, and the singer herself – Bonnie Pink. The stage was too small for Bonnie’s band though and the drummer was tucked away in the back corner out of sight. This was a little bit disappointing for me. Instead, the percussionist stood in the centre with a large number of instruments surrounding her.

I had bought the “One” CD when it first came out, but I wasn’t altogether impressed with it and ended up selling it shortly after I bought it. It didn’t have a lot of songs that really grabbed me, and many of them were boring ballads. The recording quality also didn’t seem as crisp as I like. But apparently this album was recorded in a large number of places all over the world, which she mentioned during the concert. This concert changed my impression of the album however. She used a variety of instruments and the made the music very colourful. The entire album has a very uplifting feel and almost the entire concert itself was fairly upbeat and cheery. Bonnie is known for using a lot of happy-sad chords, and that’s the kind of flavour I’ve come to like and expect from her. But these songs aren’t really like that at all.

Bonnie didn’t take one break and played for two hours straight, which I found pretty impressive. She had an incredible amount of confidence on stage and she never once looked shy or nervous. Her drummer, on the other hand, was quite shy and blew his chance in the spotlight when she called upon him to do some rhythmic clapping in front of everyone to the song “Tonight the Night.” He fumbled with his hands and couldn’t really come up with a good rhythm, but it was cute anyways. And like this, the concert was fairly interactive. During “Happy Ending,” one of her new songs, she had the males and females do a two-part harmony in the middle of the song. It sounded really good and it was a lot of fun! During “Tonight the Night” during the encore she had the audience clap along to several impromptu Latin rhythms that she clapped out, characterised by their syncopated beats. That kind of participation was a good way to end the concert. Most of the songs during the concert were from her new album “One” but she played some songs from her past albums including “Mint” which was a treat to hear. She also did a surprise Michael Jackson medley in tribute to him. It was well prepared considering he just died recently. It had seamless transitions and sounded like they had been practicing it for a while. The medley started out with “Black or White,” and was followed by “Billie Jean,” and “Rock with You,” with it returning to “Black or White” to finish the song. Near the end of the concert she played one of her new songs “Get on the Bus” which she said was created with the tempo of a bus in mind. It didn’t seem too popular as not too many people in the crowd seemed to know too much about it when she asked them from the stage however. To top everything off, she finished the concert with an encore of three songs.

Altogether it was a lot more fun than I expected it to be, and it raised my opinion of her new album “One.” The biggest downside was that there weren’t many songs I could sing along to since most of the material was new.

Set List (starred songs are not on the “One” album):

Rock You Till the Dawn
Fuschia, Fuschia, Fuschia

MC

Princess Incognito
Won’t Let You Go
*Mint
One Last Time

MC2

Try Me Out
Play and Pause
Himitsu
*Anything for You
Michael Jackson Medley (Black or White, Billie Jean, Rock with You)
*A Perfect Sky
Joy
Get on the Bus
Kane wo Narashite
Happy Ending

Encore:
Mousou Lover
*Heaven’s Kitchen
*Tonight, the Night

Bonnie’s homepage: http://www.bonniepink.jp/english/main.html