Lantis Festival ~ Singapore 2015

I actually wanted to write a short post about the Lantis Festival live that I went to on 28th March, last Saturday.  But it was still within the seven days of mourning for Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and I wanted the blog to observe those seven days of mourning too.  I originally wanted to write an entire post on Sunday night, after his funeral procession but I spent most of the night watching and reading all the eulogies and different personal stories about him that I gave up on that idea.  Anyway, a lot of people wrote really good eulogies and tributes and I could not possibly write anything better so I decided just to read.

I want to say from the outset that it was very kind and sensitive of Lantis to also observe one minute of silence for Mr. Lee Yuan Yew right before they began the concert on Saturday night.  I don't know about the others in that hall but I thought it was very nice of them to do that.

Perfume in Singapore - got my tix :)

Yay!!!  We managed to secure our VIP tickets to Perfume's first live performance in Singapore. :)  This was by no means an easy feat as we actually started queuing on Saturday afternoon and two of my friends queued over-night at Scape to get us these tickets.  It was worth it in the end because the line kept building and building and sometime in the early part of the morning, some people in the queue were reporting on FB that there was something like 40 people in the queue.

Given that each person can only buy 3 tickets and only a limited number of tickets were available at the AFA shop at Scape itself, 40 people in the queue is quite a significant number for those who hope to be in the first group of 50 that will enter the Warehouse on the day of the concert.  The Warehouse at Scape is not a big venue at all.  The official maximum capacity for the Warehouse @Scape is 500 sitting and 700 standing.

J-Live announced weeks ago that only 50% of these tickets will be available for purchase on the 14th Oct at the AFA Shop.  The other 50% will go on sale online only on Monday 15th Oct at their website.  Hence, this would mean that only 350 tickets, at the very most, would have been available this morning, since the Perfume live is a standing only live.  Of that 350 or less tickets, no one really knows how many of them are VIP tickets and how many of them are GA tickets.

I think by 9am or so this morning, the queue reached the Gongcha bubble tea stall at Scape.  I'm not sure how many people that is but I figure maybe at least a 100 to 150 people by then?  In any case, J-Live announced that all the tickets available for sale were sold out in 2 hours and someone of the J-Live FB page said that VIP tix sold out by 1130am and GA tickets sold out a short time after that.

WOW!!!!  I'm really new to all this.  The first time I lined up for hours to get into a concert venue was for the J-Live A-Sketch Special Vol.2 live with Weaver and flumpool.  This is only the second time that I've queued for so long.  Lucky for me, I didn't have to stay overnight.  Luckily for me, only six of us wanted tickets so I didn't have to stay but I was in line for ages and ages too but this time, I had a little more experience and it wasn't as bad as the first time when we queued.  Of course, I wouldn't want to do this for every concert.  If Kajiura Yuki, FictionJunction and Kalafina should ever hold a solo concert in Singapore, I hope they would sing at the Esplanade concert hall or maybe at the new auditorium at Star Vista.  Those are bigger halls which means it'll be less crazy trying to get hold of those tickets because if they came down and I didn't manage to get a ticket... I think I'll cry... :*(

K... time to go to bed... tomorrow... or more likely the day after... I hope to talk a little bit about Kalfina's appearance on Niconico Live.  I couldn't watch the live stream because I was still on my way home from queuing for the Perfume tickets but I did make a booking to watch a delayed telecast which I finished watching tonight. :)

I rather like "Hikari Furu". :)  I would have tried to talk about it today but ended up discussing Kajiura Yuki, her OSTs and Keiko's "Kaze no Machi e" on FB with a friend so.... I've run out of time.... this whole week, I will be doing Prep shots at work so I will need to sleep at reasonably early times... at least reasonable for me. :D

I hope I have time to get to everything I want to do on the blog this week so that I can move on to some personal projects that are non-music, non-anime and non-blog related... for now tho'..... oyasumi :)

edit 16th Oct:

Hmmmm... Perfume's latest single is selling at a 20% discount at CDJapan... first press still available... comes with a B2 poster.... hmmmm.... I wonder if I should get it for a friend who's a big fan of Perfume.

JRock Showcase- a-sketch special - Weaver / Applicat Spectra

http://www.jlive.asia/
- Sgd48 VIP, Sgd18 general standing

What my positive experiences at Kalafina lives and at the anisong event at AFA11 last year has given me is a real taste for live music events. In general, I am quite crowd adverse and never really liked paying the crazy expensive prices many of the concert tickets in Singapore can sometimes go for.

But for some strange reason, after seeing the poster of the Kalafina "Red Moon" Live in Hong Kong and knowing that they were so close yet so far away, I was filled with this obsession to see them live.  And so it was, in 2010, I somehow managed to plan my second visit to Japan and my first Kalafina live experience at the "Kagayaku ...." live.  That positive experience led me to brave the crowds at the Anime Festival Asia, an event I avoided previously because I don't like crowds, and it was there that i really fell further in love with watching Kalafina live. And it was also then that I fell in love with watching Angela live and perhaps it was at the final night of the anisong events at AFA11 that I really grew to appreciate the live event.

Hence, admittedly, I have a secondary agenda for getting tickets to watch Weaver and Applicat Spectra live.  Yes, it is on a Tuesday which is very inconvenient for working folks like me and I suspect that even the VIP seating is free sitting which I hate, but still, I am going.

If I am not wrong, the organizers of this event are the same people or some of the same people that organized AFA and they have promised that their first J-Live event is only a taste of things to come. While I was less than satisfied with the scope and scale of the festival itself last year, I did think that the anisong events were really pretty good and the stage events were good too. My reasons for going to this event are less for Applicat Spectra, which I actually rather like, and more to support anisong, Japanese music, anime and Japanese entertainment in Singapore.

Japanese music has had a following in Singapore for as long as I can remember. The size of this following changes in size depending on what's in and what's not in Singapore. I do feel though that in the last 5 years, or maybe even more, Japanese music hasn't fared as well in Singapore as several other types of music. Singapore and South East Asia were just not major concert destinations for Japanese bands, musicians and singers. Japanese CDs, dvds etc were also quite expensive compared to music and media from virtually everywhere else.

Perhaps J-Live can change that. The times, they are a-changing, and Singapore and the region has become more prosperous and quite able and willing to pay for events like these. If my and my four other friends' Sgd48 can in some way encourage more acts to come down, then I am happy to spend that money.

Perhaps... just maybe.... if they could somehow bring down Kalafina, FictionJunction and Kajiura Yuki for a live that includes no other artists.... I know I and quite a few other friends would be over the moon with joy. So yeah... my agenda for going for this event is as a show of support, not just for Applicat Spectra but also for future events which I hope will include not just my favourite vocal units but also Angela and other bands and singers I have yet to discover and experience.

So here's hoping this live will also be a wonderful experience and a nice appetizer before my trip to Tokyo and my first FictionJunction live. :)