A little over a week ago, on Sunday the 16th, I saw Diru live for the third time in my life. Once again, they played at Guvernment, the same venue they first headlined at in Toronto during Inward Scream back in February 2007. Once again, I waited outside in the cold for hours just for one of my favourite bands in the world. And despite everything bad I had to deal with to see that show, it was worth it. Dir en grey is always worth it.
Last year, I waited in line for about four hours to see Inward Scream. For The Rose Trims Again, I waited about six hours in the cold. While November is not as cold as February, it was still highly unpleasant to stand outside for so long in that weather. I did, however, take refuge in the Loblaws next door a few times. I even bought a key lime pie to share with my friends in line, at one point. You can’t really complain about life when you’re outside, hacking into a whole key lime pie with plastic spoons, waiting to see Dir en grey. That’s practically a life of privelege right there.
Other than that, those hours in the line were pretty boring. The whole way to the venue, my best friend Hiro and I were wishing that we didn’t have to go wait in that line, especially since we’ve waited in lines in unpleasant weather to see Diru before. But in the end, I know that we’d both feel crappy if we stayed home while Diru were playing a show here, so we’ll always go endure those lineups to see them. I just accepted it and dealt with it. The best moments spent in the line were probably when members of the band walked out of the bus and into the building, as they weren’t that far away from us. Before I got there, Die had actually come out and signed some autographs, including my friend’s guitar pick of his that she got at the end of last year’s show. It was her birthday that day, too, and Die is her favourite member. The autograph seemed to have mostly come off by the end of this year’s show, though. D: Ahh well, she still has the experience to remember. In any case, when we saw Shinya and Kaoru walk by, no one yelled at them or anything (I think a large number of the people at this show had seen Diru before), but when Toshiya came out, a few people yelled out “Toshiya-san!” and he waved to us as he walked inside. Since August 2006 I have loved Toshiya for how damn friendly he is, since the day he came right up to the group of us in the parking lot after Family Values and waved to us. He is the friendliest guy.
We waited a really long time for Kyo to walk by. Eventually he came out, but he was wearing a hoodie, so half of us who were far away couldn’t really tell that it was him. For all that waiting and watching Kaoru go into the bus and theorizing that he was put on “Wake up Kyo duty” (we were bored…) and bitching about Kyo staying in there for too long, his eventual appearance was rather anti-climactic. But no one really cared, anyway. Again, I think most of the people there had seen Diru members in person before.
When we finally got let into the venue (my friends and I were among the first people, as we were very close to the front of the line), the security guards were being really weird, and made everybody sit down in front of the stage. If you stood up there for even a few seconds, one of them would tell you to sit down. We were being treated like kindergarteners, and it was really weird. In any case, we tried to sit on the side in order to stay away from the moshers during the concert, but as the place filled up, people sat even more on the outside than we were, so we wound up on the inside, after all. In any case, as we waited, we heard that there was a sign by the merch stating that if you bought a copy of their album there, you could get it signed after the show. Not wanting to pass up on such an opportunity - there had never been signings or meet-and-greets when they’d played here in the past - a few of my friends and I bought copies of the album. I wound up having to hold onto my copy for the whole show, but somehow I managed not to get even the case cracked at all. That was a freaking miracle.
The opening band was Johnny Hollow, since The Human Abstract got stuck at the border. (I’m sorry, but lolol.) While Johnny Hollow’s music isn’t entirely my thing, it’s really good, and they played a good set. They seemed like cool people, too. Alas, it was a pretty chill opening, which was good for trying to save up one’s energy for Diru.
Now, if there’s one thing I find stupid, it’s people starting to mosh when there isn’t even a band on stage. And quite seriously, people were moshing from just after the opening band ended until…well, the end of the concert, I guess. Now, I will state it here and now that I do not get rock shows. I don’t get moshing. Why do people insist on beating the crap out of each other during concerts? I go to concerts for music, not for violence. Someone who was with us later said that moshing is the point of concerts, but I honestly think that’s really stupid. In any case, I have no real desire to die at a concert, so when the death pushing began, I was quite rather unhappy. It got to the point that I even tried yelling at the people around me to stop fucking pushing because not everybody there wanted to die. No one cared. I was near this one guy from our group at first, but eventually decided that it would be better to try and move more towards the side, so I did. I eventually made it to a spot beside this one girl who’d latched onto a rather large guy in front of us. She had no idea who he was, but he was like an unmoveable wall, so I held onto his back for the beginning of the concert, until I was being pushed side to side so much that it just became pointless. Eventually, after a few songs, I was able to sort of ride the crowd to a spot somewhat to the side and much farther back than I’d initially started out, but I could immediately feel it once I was in a spot where there was no pushing, and everyone was just enjoying the show. It was an instant relief. I later watched the encore from the area just outside the bathrooms, as my friend got pretty beaten up in the crowd and needed to sit down. I stood up beside him and would occasionally run a little bit closer to the crowd for parts of songs. I went crazy to The IIID Empire, as I always do, against the wall outside the bathrooms. I half kill myself to that song, always, as a rule…I can’t help myself. Doesn’t matter if people are watching me.
Anyway, the actual show. Stealing the setlist from this Batsu thread, which I just found through a Google search for the setlist.
Sa Bir
Obscure
Grief
Agitated Screams of Maggots
Disabled Complexes
Agitated Screams of Maggots-Unplugged-
Toguro
Conceived Sorrow
Glass Skin
Dozing Green
Merciless Cult
Spilled Milk
Repitition of Hatred
The Fatal Believer
Hydra-666-
Encore
Gaika, chinmoku ga nemuru koro
Saku
The IIID Empire
The Final
Clever Sleazoid
This person’s order isn’t entirely correct, but I just changed the parts that I remember. Like Conceived Sorrow -> Glass Skin. I will never forget that, because it was the most amazing thing in the world. During Conceived Sorrow, I was practically having a religious experience, or I at least looked like I did; I had one hand on my chest and the look on my face was probably…ridiculous. I’m quite sure the guy beside me gave me a funny look. But it was amazing. For one thing, I love that song and it easily brings me to tears, so hearing it live was a big enough deal for me, anyway. But when he took away the mic just before the last chorus and sang those two lines without the mic, and an octave higher than those lines are in the recorded version, and everyone shut up and I heard his voice singing out into the room, it just felt real, and it was one of the most completely amazing things I have ever witnessed. For the rest of the song, I was just dying. I was completely under Kyo’s spell. And then they went into Glass Skin, and it was the perfect song to follow that up. I was very, very satisfied.
So, let’s see. I was a bit disappointed when I found out while waiting in line outside that they’ve been opening with Sa Bir these days instead of the usual G.D.S., because I’d only heard G.D.S. as a show opener once before (during Inward Scream, as they skipped it on the Toronto Family Values stop in ‘06) and hearing it as they walk out onto the stage in front of you, after only having seen that show opening on Youtube before, is really something. But oh well, the music playing as they walk onto the stage isn’t half as important as the first song they actually play. And of all of the songs they could have chosen to open with, they chose Obscure. Julia is a happy Julia, indeed! Aside from Obscure being such a classic, getting to hear anything from Vulgar live makes me absolutely giddy. (I’m pretty jealous of Montreal getting Audience Killer Loop - Audience Killer freaking Loop!!! - but I can’t really complain.) That was a damn great song to start the show with, because who doesn’t love Obscure? And next was Grief. I’ve always loved the guitars in Grief. Moreover, it’s fun singing along to the “fuck you fuck you” parts (….well, I guess that says something about me), and even better, the misheard lyric still sounds like “AC/DC fuck you” live! I love that.
Now, when I heard the beginning of Disabled Complexes, I think I shouted out the song title or something. The song featuring the misheard lyric I named this blog after, yo! I know it’s stupid of me to get so excited over misheard lyrics, but…let me have my moments. I waited the entire song to hear “WHAT IS PILLOW FIGHT!” screamed out live…and it didn’t happen. He totally wimped out of that part and saved his voice for the next part or whatever. BLAH! I forgive him, and all, but that was a tiny bit disappointing. XD
Agitated Screams of Maggots kind of went by in a blur, since it’s never been a favourite (except for a few times when I was really mad and just wanted something…loud). I don’t know about this “unplugged” thing on the Batsu user’s setlist, but I don’t have many memories of the assorted random Kyo vocalizing moments. They happen. They’re fun. I think I liked Toguro, though it was kind of a blur for me, too, since I wasn’t too familiar with the song yet. (I’d only listened to Uroboros the day before the show, and I was half asleep on the way to Japanese class for much of the time that I listened to it.) Conceived Sorrow -> Glass Skin was, as I said, amazing, and Glass Skin was fucking awesome live. I remember green lights and headbanging a lot to Dozing Green. Merciless Cult, I remember headbanging and singing along to the “aishite kudasai” parts, like I have every time I’ve heard that song live. Seriously, I’ve heard that song live three times, and that just makes me like it that much more, though I tend to forget it exists these days. I’ve always liked Spilled Milk more than most of my friends who I’ve discussed the song with, and hearing it live just heightened my appreciation for it. I really enjoyed it.
And OH, REPETITION OF HATRED! I fucking spent that entire song trying to figure out what the fuck it was, because I knew it was a song from The Marrow of a Bone but I could not for the life of me remember what song it was. Been awhile since I’ve listened to much of that album, aside from The Pledge. Thank you, setlist, for giving me my answer. I remember them playing The Fatal Believer, but don’t remember much about the performance itself, except I think that I laughed in my head at mishearing some line in it as “your boyfriend” live, just like I mishear it in recordings. Pretty sure The Fatal Believer is another song I’ve heard all three times I’ve seen the band live, and that makes me biased towards it, as well. Hydra-666- was another misheard lyrics moment for me (I’ll stop someday, I swear…), as I only figured out what song it was when I heard “FLOOF. FLOOF FLOOF.” That was actually in my personal message on MSN once. I think I got it from a Youtube comment on an upload of the song. Yeah.
So after that, they went off stage and I found my friend after getting a text message, and settled myself at the back of the place with him, outside of the bathrooms. Then the encore began. I’ve zero memory of Gaika, because a) I didn’t really know the song yet, and b) I spent most of that song sitting down with my friend and not actually watching the show. Saku, it took me a minute to realize that it was Saku, but then I recognized it and ran a little bit closer to the crowd to headbang or watch a little. I think the order after that was The Final and then The IIID Empire, but I could be mistaken. In any case, I spent parts of The Final talking to my friend, parts of it over near the crowd headbanging and singing along, and parts of it running over to my friend and singing it to him. xD It’s pretty much a staple in our karaoke repertoires, to the point that all of our friends who’ve been to Korean karaoke places with us at some point know the words to the chorus. In a weird way, it didn’t feel like such a crime talking during the verses, just because…well, that song is like home to me. I sound stupid, but it makes me think of my friends, and good times with friends and Jrock and Diru shows, and in that way it kind of makes me feel safe. So I felt like I could talk through those verses all I wanted, to my best friend, and it was okay…until the choruses and the ending came, and then there was no way I could stay sitting down. No way. As for The IIID Empire, I headbanged like crazy to it, like I always do, as I mentioned earlier. Having a wall to support me made it a lot easier than in the past. I fucking love hearing that song live. And then, they ended with Clever Sleazoid, which I believe they did last year as well. Despite Clever Sleazoid being…well, Clever Sleazoid, I’ve kind of developed a fondness for it (beyond the parody lyrics, yes), and that makes me enjoy hearing it close a show.
Alas, the show was over, but the night wasn’t quite done yet. We still had to get our CDs signed. Unfortunately, this part of the night became one HUGE frustration, due to the security guards being COMPLETE ASSHOLES. They were all giving everybody different information about which lineups were for what, they kept touching me when I wasn’t doing anything to anybody, and they didn’t really care about us wanting to meet our favourite band and just wanted us to get the fuck out of there. I found myself waiting in the coat check line, despite a friend having all of our group’s coat check tickets and already waiting in the line to get all of them. I felt intimidated by the security guards yelling at me, and didn’t know what else to do. When we got to the end of that line and got our coats, we turned back to go in and get our CDs signed, and a security guard tried to stop us but the “fake Kyo”, as we’d dubbed him (a guy who’d basically styled himself to look just like Kyo, except significantly taller) talked to the guard and he eventually let the three of us (my friend, fake Kyo and I) in. I said something like “You’re cool, fake Kyo” and he turned around and just looked at me, and I looked back at my best friend and we laughed. Of course, fake Kyo had to maintain that “cool” exterior, in order to pull off the whole Kyo thing. You know how it is.
So we walked back into the main area of the venue, and we saw Die and Shinya seated, signing people’s CDs. It was just them, but I didn’t mind. The line was quite short, so we didn’t wait for long. During the first songs of the concert, I’d been planning out Japanese sentences to say to all the members in my head, but when I got into that line I knew that I wouldn’t be able to say anything but 「ありがとうございます」 - “Thank you very much.” I wasn’t even going to bother trying. I was right behind fake Kyo, and my best friend behind me. At first we had a frantic scramble to get our CDs open, because the plastic wrap was ridiculous and there were sticker barcodes holding the cases closed and the security guards were bitching at us to have the liner notes already out by the time we got to the table. I was literally afraid that they would make me leave if I didn’t get it open fast enough. A random girl in front of us in line helped me open mine. I watched fake Kyo go through, shaking Die and Shinya’s hands, and I decided that I would shake their hands, too. And so, it happened. I got up to die, held out my liner notes to him, he signed them, I took them back, said 「ありがとうございます」, bowed, and reached out to shake his hand. And he shook my hand. Same deal with Shinya. Neither of them said anything back to me, from what I remember (unless I was just so fucked out of my head from meeting them, at the moment, that I didn’t even notice), but they both smiled back at me as they shook my hands. I felt like they were kind of looking at me in a curious way; later I decided that it might have been because they hadn’t expected the random young girl to go to shake their hands, as well. But dammit, I got to touch two members of Dir en grey. I’m a happy girl. My best friend said 「ありがとうございます」 to both of them, as well, though they apparently said thank you back to him and reached to shake his hand, first. I obsessed over this at first, but I’m over it now. I’m just really…OCD. Apparently the girl who was there translating things for them then said something like “Haha, they’re all saying thank you” and Die laughed, and my best friend looked over and laughed too. PWNAGE, WE ARE THE FOREIGNERS WHO UNDERSTAND THE JAPANESE! But I was out of the room by then.
Ah, speaking of that girl, the fake Kyo had been saying he’d driven from Montreal to see this show, and the girl translated it to Japanese for Die, and Die was like “Montreal? Wow.” Oh man, that’s the first time I’ve remembered that moment since it happened. That was great. Meeting Die and Shinya like that at all was great. It’s funny, they’re these cool band members and grown men, but sitting in front of us then, they were smiling and completely adorable. God, I love you Dir en grey.
That’s really all of the night that’s worth noting. I did manage to only lose two of my fake nails during the show, and I saved one of them in my pocket to glue back on later. That and not getting my CD cracked at all was pretty damn impressive, considering how close I came to being shoved into the mosh pit and fucking killed. When we all went outside after that, I was having trouble processing the fact that I’d just met two of them at all - it took me until later in the week to start feeling really excited and happy over it, once I’d finally processed just how awesome it was - and we stayed in the parking lot for a little while, talking to people, trying to buy a drink from the hot dog stand (they were sold out), and watching a member or two go back into the bus, before my best friend and I decided that it was a little ridiculous to stay waiting to watch them go into the bus after all that, and we left with that guy from our group who I’d been near at the beginning of the show. We stopped at a convenience store on our way back to the subway station, went home, went to sleep, goodnight.
Ah, the beginning of the show before Diru came out was funny, actually. This girl just behind and beside me had a shoulder bag and it was pressing against me a lot, so finally after the opening band ended I turned around and told the girl “Yeah, your bag is kind of assraping me,” but in a joking way, not pissed off or anything. She then proceeded to grope that one guy’s ass, pretending it had been my arm (though he knew it wasn’t), for the next TWENTY MINUTES OR SO. It got a little over the top, seriously. Like that woman holding a boom mic who kept sticking it in Ben Kowalewicz’s crotch during that interview in Billy Talent’s MTV Diary. (If you have any idea what I’m talking about.) But once the pushing started, I found myself pushed up against three Asian guys - the guy from our group, and two guys I didn’t know - and I realized, “Wow, I’ve only dreamed of moments like this.” I’m just saying. It was really, REALLY amusing to realize that I was pushed up against three cute Asian guys and they didn’t mind. I mean, lawl. Then, as the guy I know tried to help me get to a place in front of him which I thought looked safer, I at one point wound up stuck against him in a freaking COUPLE POSE. It was absolutely hilarious. And nobody cares about this story, but…it’s fun for me to recall it. And it has nothing to do with Jrock anymore, so nevermind.
Ways the night could have been better for me? Aside from the cold and the asshole security guards and the idiot moshing kids and all of that bullshit, of course. It might have been nice if I’d not been too lazy to bother getting other merch, since the posters actually had the band on them, this time. (The poster I got at Family Values was the one with an explosion happening on it, and I had that on the wall beside my bed for a long time but would look at it and think, “This really has nothing to do with Dir en grey except for their name.”) As for the setlist, I was really hoping that they would play The Pledge, as I am so. completely. in love. with that song. but I wasn’t too disappointed, because the setlist was pretty damn good, and Conceived Sorrow more than made up for The Pledge’s absence. Still, I would love to hear that song live one day.
Dir en grey are always going to be worth it for me. I’ve seen them live three times now, and I intend to see them live as many more times as possible. And the next time I meet any of them, I will say something more than just thank you. I will say an actual sentence. I hope. But yeah, I love Diru. With every show, I only love them more.
Fuck, I haven’t even talked about the members’ performances. I’ve already typed it out on my LiveJournal and said it in a vlog, so let me just copypaste from my LJ entry:
“The show was great, anyway. I mean, Kyo, goddamn, I fall in love with him a little more every fucking show. I don’t know how he does it. He keeps going despite fucking himself up and needing surgery on his vocal chords or throat or whatever…and he keeps going and sounding amazing, and being amazing. And he did the sexy dancing, a lot more than I’d ever seen him do it live before. It was awesome. Toshiya was the other one who really worked the crowd; he was damn into the crowd interactions. Shinya’s drum set was so high he was practically up on a pedestal, but I could barely see him past the symbals…but I love him. Die’s hair is longer now, and he had the wind machine on him again. Near the end I saw Kaoru standing up on a speaker or whatever headbanging, and it was pretty hardcore. And then at the end, Shinya was frisbee-ing out drum pads to the audience, LOL. Didn’t catch anything, but whatever. My copy of the new album is signed by Die and Shinya. Julia does not have the right to complain.”
While I’m at it, here’s my morning after vlog:
I’m done now. So, anyone else who’s seen one of the Rose Trims Again tour stops, care to share your experiences?