June 22, 7 pm was the start of a great event at CLUB QUATTRO in Nagoya. Although due to school schedules i was late by roughly twenty minutes, i could still catch a few songs of the support band Supe. They played the same kind of music that Story of the Year played later, but i simply don’t know its genre. It’s a great genre for sure, a mix of In Flames and Sum 41, or something along those line, i hope you get my drift. The thing is, gigs of this kind tend to be great. Great. Although Rancid is not of that kind, their speedy music is what made their live in Tokyo so great, and i probably need not say how fantastic In Flames was.

Even though i had no idea what Supe was, after their performance i was seriously considering buying their album as an act of good faith. They played great.

And after a short brake came the main event of the night, Story of the Year. To be honest, i don’t know Story of the Year but for a single song (Wake up).

A while ago the punk of the university, Daizo told us about a gig to come, mostly organized by him, with a few punk bands performing, including his. The date was yesterday, and it was a quite good gig, and a definitely great night. Four bands performed, none of which i knew, and we were also a bit late on the first. Yet, the party started up soon, and it was quite fun. There were classic punks with mohawks as well as “otaku punks”. The latter played the highest quality music there, but i just couldn’t get the crowd to move. Daizo’s band is him, another japanese guy and two foreign students. They played last, and least. Lots of chatting, and very few good tunes (and lots and lots of mistakes). Not the best ending after the previous bands, leaving a bad taste. After that we (Kang, Rado, Thiwanka and me, out of which i think it’s safe to say i’m the only “punk”) had a still not-that-great dinner at Matsuya (the best don is still Sukiya), but then came the change with discovering another Aladdin shisha bar there. Stayed there till the last train. Just when we arrived back i met Paul who called me to play dota. We won, but in a lame way (zero kills, 26 death). Yet the evening ended up great, and i get the feeling that today might be just as good.

I had high hopes. AC/DC is not one of my favourite bands, because most of their songs are the same, but i still know all of their old albums, and even listened to Black Ice—once, and that was more than enough. Still, as old school rock’n’rollers, i expected them to deliver a frenetic show, making me want to jump all the way to the stage and sing full power. Tremendous fail.

First, there was no show. At all. Hardly any visual effects, the lights were way too simple and/or not matching to provide any real experience, most of the projected effects were simply lame, the stage equipment, such as the intro train, the sickly disgusting Rosie doll, with the exception of the cannons for the finishing song For those about to rock (which, in my sense, should’ve come first), looked totally low quality and off. Bassist Cliff Williams and rhythm guitarist Malcolm Young were standing all the time beside the drumset, playing, only going in front to their mics when they had to for backing vocals.

Today after an afternoon of pretending to practice the songs (it wasn’t going nowhere as well as i wanted to, though i can play most of it, just mess up the rhythm all the time, and considering i’d be the rhythm guitar, that’s quite troublesome), having a really filling lunch and watching the seventh episode of the fourth Skins season, which i must tell you all, is very shocking, like very, but i’m not ms Scoledario (i was surprised that she dated O’Connell irl as well) to spoil everyone, you should just watch it, so after all this, i hurried off for Shibuya. I didn’t know where that Club Quattro was, but after finding it, i realised i’ve been in that building (although in the bookstore of the first floors) earlier.

This was my second High and Mighty Color concert. Since the last time, i got to know more of their songs, so in the roughly ninety minutes they played tonight, there was hardly a song i didn’t know. The show was great, the setlist was very powerful with a bunch of new songs, according to band members some songs having been written just for this gig. Of course they played their greatest hits (Pride, Ichirin no hana), and some that are not so much of popular hits, but are closer to me. The atmosphere was good as well, lots of jokes and laughs, which with the music, made this show what it was: great.

One thing that surprised me a lot was that both guitarists played on seven-stringed guitars. I hope they have transcribed for six-strings as well.

Yesterday i made the last class finish a bit earlier, but still i could only hear two or three songs from Each of the days, a japanese band (Tokyo Zepp is quite far from the university). It wasn’t that outstanding, and it was funny that the guitarist used the guitar i wanted to buy (very cheap) (at least it looked the same). They had two drummers, and one of them was a girl, quite unusual. Actully, i didn’t even know there were this many bands, this made the event kind of a festival, i thought it’ll only be CKY, Atreyu and In Flames. Not quite…

Then came the first break, and i met a couple of american navy people, they were long into drinking, but still really nice people. From then on i appear on a couple of photos i guess, as a “random hungarian guy”. I also got to know a japanese girl, whom i helped out when she couldn’t understand what the drunk americans were saying anymore.

Endless Hallway played really nice catchy music, sometimes with quite amazing riffs, and they all look the favourite of teenage girls way. They played for roughly half an hour, just like Each of the days before, it was just how it had to be before the bands coming after. I guess this was the time when beers started to fly.

That break i met new people again, more and more from the navy (of various countries) and japanese as well, two girls and two guys, talking away the whole break. And realised that Asahi draft is more water than beer.

On the 27th of november i went to a concert in Shibuya O-EAST, again. (Same place as the Opeth gig.) This time it was Sex Machineguns, and it was great as expected.

To start with the only bad point in the whole night, it was extremely overamplified, as usual, so i ended up stuffing tissues in my ear. (After the other Machineguns gig in may, i couldn’t hear with my left ear for three days…)

And that’s all the bad points: in every other aspect, the concert The 冠 (Kanmuri) and Sex Machineguns did was simply great.

Tuesday, the seventeenth of november in year 2009, from evening seven o’clock Opeth played a fantastic concert in Shibuya O-East, Tokyo. They played for two great hours. I can’t list all the songs in the setlist, but they mostly played songs i knew, with a few from the older records i’m not so familiar with.

Not only the music was great, as expected from (in my opinion) one of the best active progressive bands, but between songs Åkerfeldt’s hilarious comments made everyone laugh too. (It turned out Opeth renamed themselves Swedish manboobs, i’ll have to re-tag my mp3 library.)