Understand that I have never heard of this band. So people like me can share my educational experience, and the fangirls can have a giggle on me. My thanks to the helpful young lady who patiently explained many of the facts of life to me after the show.

First off, these guys are visual. They represent a movement known as "Visual Kei", which is all about puffy bouffants, wild outfits, and effeminate behaviour. Very much like 80's glamrock, or was that the 70s? I forget.

They all sport a quite outlandish appearance, which I understand they change periodically. Bizarre multicolored hairstyles, lots of makeup, and shiny padded outfits. Words fail. Check it out on the net.

Next, they have ambivalent sexuality. Only after the blond girl took her headdress off and sat down at the drums did I decide that she was a boy. And the pink-haired girl was so beautiful that I never did figure out that she was a boy.

Thirdly, they practice an art form known as "para-para". This involves waving the arms around in patterns during the songs. It looks like Janet Jackson or Brittany Spears paralyzed from the waist down. I believe that each song has its own particular pattern of movements and that fans pride themselves on being able to do the appropriate movements along with the band, like singing along.

Daishi is the lead singer.
Lida is the orange haired guitar player.
Aya is the pink-haired guitar player and main "para-para" guy. Apparently, each group generally has one or two para-para experts.
seek is the totally bizarro bass player with by far the strangest outfits. All the boy bands have the one "weird" guy. seek is definitely it.
Yura-"sama" is the blonde drummer. Again good with the para-para.

Actually, hours before the show, I was wandering around behind the hotel and stopped to have a smoke with 3 guys in weird outfits in the alley. I thought they were just some anime fans in costume. They only spoke Japanese. I found out later they were Daishi, Aya, and seek. Eat your hearts out, girls!

Jeez, I even talked to the pink-haired girl and still didn't figure out she was a boy!

Anyway, before the show, a girl gave me 2 printed pages of poorly translated English song lyrics. Generally, the lyrics are romantic, passionate, and mythical. They may be the song list for what the band played, so I'll list them for you:

A Song of Love
Love Merry-Go-Round
With
Four Seasons
The Road of Sky
Excalibur
Prism
Kronos
Megatron
Remembrance

We were informed that the show was being filmed for the band's upcoming DVD of their American tour. So everyone liked that and was on their best "audience" behaviour in case they see themselves on Japanese TV sometime.

In fact, the next day, I was standing beside 2 guys when a Japanese woman with a film crew came up and starting interviewing them about their thoughts on the band's performance. They weren't too sure what she was talking about, but they were quite enthusiastic because they wanted to be on TV somewhere too.

So anyway, the show. They started out all singing to a prerecorded music track, standing in a row and doing the para-para thing. As the show progressed, more of them would start to play instruments, with less of the prerecorded stuff happening.

Daishi, being short and platinum-haired, a microphone in one hand, and swinging his other tiny fist around, reminded me of Billy Idol without the sneer. Also, for a while he put on this big plastic arm so that he looked like a post-spinach Popeye.

The crowd was enthusiastic, picking up and copying the para-para. It looked just like an aerobics class. A hard-core group of girls up front seemed to have it down better than the rest. One girl had on flourescent fingerlets. Groovy!

They stopped playing for a while and showed a weird little movie. It had no sound and featured the boys posing in their costumes with a number of giant black flowers. The point escaped me.

Then they performed a strange little play, mouthing the words to a prerecorded English script they had read. After a while, they gave up the mouthing, which wasn't working.

The story was about 1 of them finding a "psycho ball", then meeting another of them who also had a ball. They would fight or play baseball, I'm not sure which, and the winner would take the new ball and the new friend and move on to the next guy, until the last guy, Daishi, beats them all, but gives up his ball anyway. There were some lines about bats and who wanted to pitch and who wanted to catch. I don't know if there was humor intended, but the guy next to me thought it was a scream.

Then the guy with all the balls, seek, gets to make a wish. He wishes he could keep all his new friends and God's voice says, you already have that without the balls. It was like the gay 3 Stooges performing a live version of DragonBallZ. And then they played some more songs. No encore.

I liked the pink-haired girl, because she was so pretty. She even gave a little memorized English speech in a very sexy deep voice:

"Howdy! Zis is my first time in USA. Let's go!"

Howdy - get it? It was in Texas! Well, I was impressed. Just another sucker for a pretty face.