NerdFest 2006

Hello all! As promised, here's a review of the Belle & Sebastian show on Sunday, 04 June 2006. My friend Paul and I attended the Sunday show since the Saturday show was sold out (to my dismay). The concert was like an early-bird special -- it started at 6pm promptly (in Japanese fashion) and was finished around 8pm. Probably a good thing, given that it was Sunday night. It was held at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel Stellar Ballroom - not a huge venue, but large enough for this show. We arrived at Shinagawa around 5:10pm and found a nearby Italian restaurant to have a quick dinner. I've heard that the Prince Hotel chain is going bankrupt so it makes me wonder how many more shows will be held at this location.

The performance was excellent. There were NINE (!) members total in this incarnation of Belle & Sebastian (I hear that there are always members leaving and joining the band). Their sound was very true to the albums - they sounded great. A very talented group of people. They were very hip, in a geeky, awkward, Weezer-kind of way. They're from Scotland, so it was a hoot to hear the accents during the between-song banter. Their set mostly came from "If You're Feeling Sinister", "Dear Catastrophe Waitress", and "The Life Pursuit" (the most recent album). They did not play any cover songs, but they did have an audience member come onstage to sing 'Happy Birthday' to one of their sound engineers. The girl they invited on stage was Japanese and claimed to have a band of her own, though you wouldn't know it from how shyly she behaved about singing. She gave a very breathy, Marilyn Monroe-esque rendition. The band gave one encore. I was only disappointed that they didn't perform "Act of the Apostle", "Dear Catastrophe Waitress", and "Wandering Along" (from the "Storytelling" EP).

This concert truly was NerdFest 2006. The crowd was mostly Japanese art school kids and a smathering of ultra-cool Eurotrash expats and English teachers. The audience was almost eerily quiet. Between songs, the only sounds were one or two comments by rambuncious gaijin. Other than that, you could literally hear a pin drop! I could actually hear the sound of the air conditioner running! I have never seen a more uncomfortable, unrelaxed looking audience. Nobody could seem to get into the mood of it! They looked as if they were hostages, forced into the room at gunpoint. I think a fart in church would have had a more receptive audience!

That's all for now! Stay tuned for more interesting nonsense later!