May’n Love and Joy Summer Tour 2009

Heya everyone,

In an effort to post more often, I’m going to make a post about what I did today :).  I attended a live concert starring May’n (メイン） or May Nakabayashi at Zepp Nagoya.  I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned having tickets for this concert on my blog, mainly because I forgot I had the tickets until the day before yesterday, oops :P.

Sorry Miku, I'm not listening to your songs this time.

She’s really not all that famous, so a quick introduction is probably in order.  May’n is the singing voice of Sheryl Nome, the Galactic Fairy, from the hit anime Macross Frontier.  The Macross series has always been about its music and its divas, and Macross Frontier is no different.  They poured a lot of focus into May’n and her singing, which is why I became a fan.  Coincidentally enough, she’s from Nagoya and speaks Nagoya-ben.  I also finally learned that she was only 19.  Made me feel old and feel sad that I haven’t done crap all with my life so far :(.

Sheryl Nome, who's singing voice belongs to May'n

The security at the event was super strict, they even confiscated my poor camera before I went in :(.  I wasn’t going to take any, but I don’t understand why concerts don’t allow cameras.  In any case, I bought the official booklet instead.  I’m such a sucker :(.

May’n started it off with several Macross Frontier tracks in a row, What about my star, Welcome to My Fan Club’s Night, Infinity, to name a few.  I think one of the Macross songs was a song called fairy something, but I can’t name it or place it.  At this point, the crowd was essentially screaming GALACTIC FAIRY, well in Japanese of course,　銀河の妖精 ginga no yousei. I felt as if I got my money’s worth in about 20 minutes.

The Macross tracks are composed by Yoko Kanno who’s work is super famous.  Then May’n diverged into her other tracks from her May’n street album, which are completely forgettable.  It didn’t take long before my mind was wandering.  I think she sang Kiss wo Chodai, Blue and some other songs, but I really can’t tell even though I own the album.  They all sound the same :(.

Then she got my attention back by announcing that she was going to sing her brand new song XYZ.  She even spent 10 minutes teaching everyone the new cheer for that song which was meant to be done with her special merchandise towel.  Unfortunately I didn’t have one :(.  That song was pretty good.

Then she put me to sleep again with her “acoustic corner”, where she sang Blue, Iya Iya, and Glorious Heart with only acoustic guitar, cello, and small amounts of keyboard accompaniment.  As much as I like acoustic mixes, making acoustic mixes of mediocre songs doesn’t make them better.

I think she got the hint at that point and woke the crowd up again with stunning renditions of Lion, Northern Cross, and Itezza Gogo 9ji Don’t be late.  The crowd was screaming for that last song.  Especially when she sang the words, MOTTEKE at the beginning of the chorus for Itezza Gogo 9ji Don’t be late.  I guess you’d have to have seen episode 1 of Macross Frontier to understand why people were so pumped by that song, despite the long winded title.

At which point May’n said bye and abruptly left.  So now, I’m all confused because she’s missing 3 of her most famous songs, Shangri’la OP (Kimi Shinitamou Koto Nakare), her main song on the May’n Street album (May’n Space), and Macross Frontier ED1 (Diamond Crevasse).  Then I remembered that for some reason, artists in Japan always leave early with the full expectation they’ll be called back for an encore.  The problem was that the crowd couldn’t decide on a cheer, haha.  We went from EN-KO-RU to MAY’N to all sorts of things before everyone finally settled on BUCHOU 部長 or club head and cheered loud enough for her to come out again.  She sang the Shangri’la song and May’n space, then left again!

Then we had to friggin cheer her out again, where she went on a teary act about how performing in Nagoya was her life goal and she was so grateful to us for showing up.  She had a performance in Osaka yesterday, who wants to bet me that her life goal yesterday was to perform live in Osaka? :P..  Her tears sort of ruined Diamond Crevasse but it was a nice end to a fairly good concert.