Blog - Party People Party

Party People Party

Hopefully better late than never, I thought I'd give a quick sum-up of Nomiya Maki's Party People Party held on October 28. It was the release party for her recently out album "Party Pepole", and, as expected, she pleased her crowd!

My friend Miwa and I got to Shinkiba by subway around 11:00. It was my first time going to ageHa and it wouldn't have been too easy to find the place from Shinkiba station without a map.

When we got there, we walked a bit around the premises and found Maki's souvenir room containing stage outfits, travel souvenirs from around the world, Kiss collectibles and Pizzicato Five memorablia. We also went outside to the rumored pool and beach, and found p&art sasanoooha. While it was chilly outside, they surely weren't cold wearing their "panda blousons", Junko's beautiful self-designed furry jackets. I had brought my small panda I had received at one of their shows several years ago.

Maki's show took place in the main hall of course, where the stage was set up like a runway coming to the middle of the crowd. It all started at about 1am with the album's opening track Party Girl and the girls of Romantica dancing on stage with Maki. Then p&art sasanoooha came on stage, dancing around wearing their superb "panda blousons" and playing with three large panda heads, for their song odoru "oshare techō". After a quick costume change, Oui Oui appeared, and sang their great cover of tATu's Not Gonna Get Us, which fit perfectly with the Oui Oui concept.
Next, Akagi Tadaharu (ex-Films) joined Maki to sing the Yamo (Kraftwerk)-produced Yamate Line. Then appeared a few surprising dancers in white KKK-ish outfits, later to reveal themselves as girls of Romantica (and their undies as well), while Maki sang Kiss' I Was Made For Lovin' You.

Left in the dark for a suspected costume change, the screen showed a picture of Maki and the words "NOMIYA MAKI" moved to form "PARTY PEOPLE", which then morphed into... "PIZZICATO FIVE"! The crowd gasped.
The following P5 set featured only Maki, her tambourine, and an acoustic guitar. The guitarist was none other than Suzuki Tomofumi of Portable Rock (Maki's late-80's band)!
Pizzicato Five set list: Happy Sad / Sweet Soul Revue / Triste / The Night Is Still Young / Message Song

Next up was probably the biggest surprise of the show. To the music of Princess & Prince Of The Frog, one of my favorite songs on the new album, Maki appeared in a huge princess' dress, so big that it was supported inside by a frame with wheels around it. It looked perfect though it was near impossible not to laugh at every small step Maki made dragging the outfit. A picture can be seen on her blog.
By the end of the song, Maki had moved close to walking out the back of the stage, but rather than disappearing she detached the dress' velcros and walked right out of it in a gorgeous black dress. Kikuchi Naruyoshi came on stage, looking much smaller than Maki (probably because of exagerated high heels), and they sang the cover of Futon's High in duet, with a full verse in Thai as on the album. This was announced as the last song.

Of course Maki came back for an encore, and sang the first single Big Bang Romance. The song started as p&art sasanoooha's remix, then transformed into Nipopo's remix (he showed up to sing his part), and then into the full original version. The last song was Cosmic Night Run, which features m-flo and also Yokoyama Ken (Crazy Ken Band), during which Maki called all guests back on stage to properly close the show.
I'd have liked if m-flo or Yokoyama Ken would have showed up during the encore and was actually expecting them at any moment until the last seconds, but no such luck. I sure can't complain about the number of guests in the show though!

Then we were a bit confused about the schedule. I wanted to catch both p&art sasanoooha, who had told me they'd play by the pool at 2:30, and also Futon who were set to play in the main hall. It was already past 2:00 so we waited by the pool for a while as other DJs played, and also took the opportunity to eat cheap curry (there were several convenient food stalls, useful when a late night appetite kicks in), and only realized a bit late that Futon were already playing. We at least caught the best of the show as after a few songs Maki came on stage, wearing a red punkish torn sweater (reminding me of one Nakanishi Toshio wore for the Plastic Sex set at Fuji TV Factory), and sang Question Girl (the original song they wrote for her album, and the only song from the album that hadn't yet been sung), a live version of High, and also another Futon song.

We then went back to the pool aroud maybe 3:30 just in time to catch p&art sasanoooha's crazy set where they mostly played weird but very funny mashups such as Daft Punk × Utada Hikaru, and Abba × Pizzicato Five! I didn't spot any new song from their upcoming album. There I also got to finally meet P5MLer Kevin, after meaning to meet for a few years.

Not long after Pansasa's set ended, we went and got tickets for the 4am bus about 10 minutes before departure.

Posted on November 9, 2005 at 07:40 | Tweet |

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