2012/01/21

Tokyo Jihen - 2012.01.20 - Music Station


This is Tokyo Jihen's last performance on Music Station, which aired yesterday. The band decided to pick up both the last and first singles of their career: "Konya wa Karasawagi" and "Gunjou Biyori". As usual, the instruments are all playback, but Ringo seemed to actually give an effort this time, showcasing some of her best vocals on Music Station ever. The stage includes a Phase 2 logo with the Phase 1 colors, which was a very nice touch and matches the song choices.

Much to my surprise, they didn't really talk much about the dissolution, with only some comments from Ringo and Kameda. They did have somewhat of a special focus on the show, however.

For the stalker-ish fans (like me), I've included the first few seconds of the Big Bang performance where you can see Ringo curiously looking at them in the background. I wonder what she was thinking about.

01- 今夜はから騒ぎ (Konya wa Karasawagi)
02 - 群青日和 (Gunjou Biyori)

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PS - I'm opting for 480p videos, since I can achieve smaller filesizes that way (200MB compared to 500MB for a 720p version). However, I'd like to hear everyone's opinions on this choice.
I've also changed Megaupload with Rapidshare, considering the recent incidents. I'll have to reupload every video on this blog as well, so before that it would be nice to know what you think of this choice too.

2012/01/17

EMI ROCKS 2012


Even after the dissolution news, Tokyo Jihen keep treating us with (somewhat) good news.

The announced performace at the 2012 EMI ROCKS edition, on February 19, is still up, and Tokyo Jihen will perform in this festival along with other big names from EMI like Acidman, Straigthner, 9mm Parabellum Bullet and Miyavi.

Yet another event to look forward to, during these last two months of Tokyo Jihen.

2012/01/10

Sadistic News


The word is out: Tokyo Jihen have disbanded.
Through a series of messages from every member, posted on Kronekodow and the official band page, Tokyo Jihen announced the end of this Phase and also the band itself.

It is truly a sad day for every fan, including myself.
I can only find hope in believing that Shiina Ringo will not stop being a musician and continue her solo career.
But I'm not here to express my feelings on this matter, I have done it in other places.

Tokyo Jihen have announced a farewell tour to start next month. Tickets will be sold from January 13th to January 23rd, and the dates/venues are as follows:

February 14th
神奈川県 横浜アリーナ
Kanagawa Prefecture - Yokohama Arena

February 15th
神奈川県 横浜アリーナ
Kanagawa Prefecture - Yokohama Arena

February 21st
大阪府 大阪城ホール
Osaka - Osaka Jo Hall

February 22nd
大阪府 大阪城ホール
Osaka - Osaka Jo Hall

February 28th
東京都 日本武道館
Tokyo - Nippon Budokan

February 29th
東京都 日本武道館
Tokyo - Nippon Budokan

Price of the tickets will be 8888 JPY for all venues (approx. $115).

They will also participate in the January 20th episode of Music Station. A chance to promote color bars and talk about the disbanding, I'm sure. Hopefully also about the future.

2012/01/03

Shiina Ringo - 2011.12.31 - 62th NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen


Took me a while to upload, but here is Ringo's performance at the New Year's Eve National TV Show, the 62th NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen. It's her first time performing at this important television event, after all this time, and altough Jihen are present in the stage, it's really supposed to be a solo thing, with Ringo being part of the female team or Akagumi (Red Team).

She does perform one song from her solo career, the latest single "Carnation", and afterwards a Tokyo Jihen single, "Onna no Ko wa Daredemo". It's important to notice that this live arrangement of "Carnation" is exactly the same as the one performed during the Discovery Tour, which differs greatly from the orchestrated original song.

At the beginning of the video we can see Ono Machiko, who is the star of the dorama "Carnation", and also the band Arashi, which coincidentaly has had a strong connection to Ringo for some reason I've yet to understand.

01 - カーネーション (Carnation)
02 - 女の子は誰でも (Onna no Ko wa Daredemo)

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