Blog - Manna live report
Manna live report
Just yesterday morning I learnt that Manna would play a live show at Apple Store Shibuya in the evening. Being a fan (I own and listened many times to all of their albums), of course I had no choice but to go! The event was named "Manna Plays & Sings vol.4", probably after a series of shows that had been on hold since very long ago.
Manna was the pop unit of Kamomiya Ryō ("Couples"-era Pizzicato Five) and Kajiwara Motoko, and was active only from 1991 until 1993. It's hard to believe that they would come back 13 years later! Most of their songs are happy pop tunes. Unsurprisingly a lot of melodies remind me of "Couples", though the orchestration isn't as complex as Pizzicato's. Most songs sound very MIDI, but then again that's how a lot of J-Pop sounded back then (and still sometimes does).
They played a one hour set, including a dozen of their best songs and also sang Pizzicato Five's "7 o'clock news" in duet. The set list went something like this: (with a little help from Mixi)
suiren no hana / wangan Song / Monsieur Dandan / watashi no kokoro wa Papa no mono (Japanese version of Cole Porter's "My Heart Belongs to Daddy") / boku no Marshmallow chan / amai kangae / 7ji no News / aoi sakana / jitensha to natsu to / taiyō kaigan / aozora no mukō e / Happening
Motoko's voice still sounded like on their recordings, if sometimes just a bit shaky from the emotion. Kamomiya-san played some parts on a Yamaha DX-7 over the back track streaming from his iBook. They were all smiles and looked happy to be on stage together again, and it seemed like they couldn't help but sometimes laugh at how strange the situation felt after so long.
They said that the unit never officially broke up, so it's not quite exact to call it a reunion. Now, they're trying to compose again together, but will only do so without forcing things or rushing. Once they'll have accumulated enough good songs that way, who knows, maybe we'll get a new album! Being located in a bit remote locations, her in Karuizawa and him in Kanagawa-ken (I think), they said that they use iChat to compose together.
They also seemed enthusiastic about playing more shows, and the Apple Store sound guy/MC said he's looking forward to hosting "vol.5", whether that was a joke or a plan.
Posted on August 29, 2006 at 19:24 | Tweet
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