GRANRODEO Live 2017 G12 Rock☆Show: Party of Clowns Concert Report

GRANRODEO is a rock band consisting of two musicians, Kishow (Kisho Taniyama, who is also active as a voice actor) on vocals and e-Zuka (Masaaki Iizuka) on guitar. The popular band held a concert titled GRANRODEO LIVE 2017 G12 ROCK☆SHOW: Douke-tachi no Utage (Party of Clowns), at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo on September 22 and 23, 2017.

GRANRODEO have been playing regular concerts since 2010, all titled ‘G Numbering Live’, named after the band’s name and the number of years since the band’s formation. This concert, G12, is their seventh one. The last time they performed at Nippon Budokan was at their new year countdown concert in 2015/2016, but it has been 7 years since they did their last G Numbering Live there.

After the stage darkened, the audience had their glow sticks turned on and the area was bathed in red. Red and yellow searchlights viciously beamed at the stage from above and we waited for GRANRODEO. Dancers wearing white masks appeared on stage. Their wicked dance made them look like clowns. Then the stage darkened once again and finally GRANRODEO was on stage! The audience broke into loud cheers once they showed up.

The concert started with ‘Pierrot Dancin” as Kishow started singing a capella at first. His great singing voice and e-Zuka’s resonant guitar sound echoed around the high-ceiling Budokan and embraced the whole venue. The two were clad in gold costumes and had a strong dominating presence in this huge venue.

During ‘Punky Funky Love’, they had a session with Fire Horns, a brass band consisting of saxophone, trumpet, and trombone. Kishow sang in an overwhelming high-pitched voice to the tense music and jammed together with the amazing brass sound of Fire Horns, getting fans excited as they held their fists up in the air. It was only the third song, but people were having a blast as if it were already the last tune of the concert.

For the very first comment of the show, Kishow screamed, ‘Welcome to the biggest music club in Japan, Nippon Budokan!’ Then he said ‘What’s with the rain, didn’t we have hot summer days till yesterday?’ provoking laughter from the audience. It’s no exaggeration to say that GRANRODEO’s concerts bring rain, and unfortunately it quite often rains on their big concert day. However, their concerts are always so energetic that it drives away the gloomy rain mood.

Kishow shouted, ‘Let’s have the last dance with us!’ and they played 4 songs in a row: ‘Glorious Days’, ‘Fake Lover’s True Heart’, ‘Namida-bana’, and ‘Fat Shaper’. The front half of the floor at the Budokan was standing-only on this particular day, and fans wanting to enjoy the lively air were gathered up front. They swung around their fists, banged their head, shook their upper-bodies, and danced to the music. Some people in the back of the arena and in the stands were doing similar movements, some were just holding glow sticks, some were staring at the stage while dancing a little; they were all enjoying the concert in their own unique way. It’s great that they allow you to enjoy the concert in your own way. You can stay who you are at GRANRODEO’s concerts.

While the fans were enjoying the concert freely, GRANRODEO too were enjoying their own stage. With ‘Not for Sale’, the two jumped out into the stage passage. Kishow sang, staring into fans’ eyes in the standing area, and e-Zuka played his guitar cheerfully, moving his long legs. In the middle of the concert, ‘Can Do’ got the audience the most hyped up, and huge calls of ‘Do It’ arose, making for a tremendous spectacle.

e-Zuka, Isamu Takita on bass, and ShiN on drums were now jamming in the second-half. They performed ‘move on! Ibara-michi’ and ‘Sea of Stars’ without stopping, and when they started playing ‘Endless Summer’, flamenco dancers in bright red skirts appeared on stage to get them all engaged in their passionate session.

‘Trash Candy’ made the stage descend into madness. They continued on with intense tunes in a row: ‘No Place Like a Stage’, ‘Rose Hip-Bullet’, and ‘modern strange cowboy’. There I saw Kishow grinning at the moshing fans. As the last talk section of the main show, he said ‘I am not talking much today, but I was really itching [to do the concert] for long!’ He thanked the fans, ‘We owe it all to you that we can have a concert at the Budokan after seven years. We will try and stay being GRANRODEO, so that you will always want to show up at our concerts.’ Then they started playing ‘We wanna R&R SHOW’. They gave us the highest quality rock on the toughest stage as many pillars of fires shot up.

The encore started with ‘Supernova’, with the second song being one of their earliest, ‘Go For It!’. They shouted the letters ‘I G P X’ with the audience. According to Kishow, ‘the letters have no meaning but they make you happy somehow’. After having only the male fans and then only the female fans sing along with the song, both the stage and the audience enjoyed exchanging 6 consecutive calls of ‘I G P X’. The extra encore was ‘Under The Sky’.

The two shouted ‘Thank you!’ and hugged each other very passionately before leaving the stage. No more words were needed to say how heated this concert was. Thus, the first day of this year’s G Numbering Live concert came to on end.

Set List

1 Pierrot Dancin’
2 Koi wa mirage
3 Punky Funky Love
4 Glorious days
5 Fake lover’s true heart
6 Namida-bana (Flowers of tears)
7 Fat Shaper
8 Not for Sale
9 Na mo naki hibi (Nameless days)
10 Can Do
11 move on! Ibara-michi
12 Sea of Stars
13 Endless Summer
14 Shounen no Hate (The boy’s end)
15 Trash Candy
16 No Place Like a Stage
17 Rose Hip-Bullet
18 modern strange cowboy
19 We wanna R&R Show