After a short, 3 hours flight from Japan, I was in Taipei air port.
This was my first visit to Taiwan, odd for one of the neighbours of Japan.
It was same for the JACK OR JIVE members too, who was arguing about the
moisture in the air. Yeah, I came to Taiwan, not for sightseeing nor business.
I came here to watch the JACK OR JIVE live in TAIPEI, and to memorize all
incidents which might happen while their stay.
All of this started in year 2001, it was a miracle of the internet.
One of the JACK OR JIVE fan in Taipei left a message in JACK OR JIVE guest
book that they want to see JACK OR JIVE live in Taiwan. From then,
the story began to actualize, thanks to the work of enthusiastic fan in
Taiwan. Without the Internet, this could never happen. Thanks
to DARPA and the Cold War, which created the Internet.
In the evening of second day in Taipei, the people who started this story
came to meet JACK OR JIVE at the lobby of the hotel. All three of
them were JACK OR JIVE fan, God, they were so enthusiastic! JOJ and
the Taiwan friends moved to a coffee shop nearby and had a great time there.
Soon, the promoter of this live joined us. He runs the live house ZeitGeist
in Taipei. Tomorrow was the very day of the live. We had to take
some rest, but it was past am when we finally got to sleep.
This guy, who is writing this report is just one of the fan of JOJ. For
some unknown reason, I was travelling along with them. This did not happen
last year, when I went to see JOJ live in Germany. So I guessed out that
I have some mission given from JOJ. As a grown up adult, I compiled the
objective of mission by my self. The mission was to evade any threat against
JOJ which can abort this live in Taipei. But Taipei was such a peaceful
city, much peaceful than Osaka, so I remained useless. Taipei was very
nice place, except for the enormous number of scooter, and reckless taxi
drivers.
In the noon of D-Day, Q&A session took place at the book store at the
front of Taiwan university.
It was a authentic session with a real translator. The questions
thrown from audience were also serious, mainly about creation of music.
After the session, I had a time to look around in the book store, and found
out that there was a big poster of JOJ session at the entrance. Also I
found some JOJ albums in the store too. JOJ album was placed in a
very interesting genre. (The genre name was in Chinese, I can't put Chinese
characters here) The session lasted for more than 2 hours and ended 3 hours
before the live performance. Me and German guy was worried if Chako
was tired, but she seemed totally in condition. What an energy!
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The live house was medium sized, with capacity of 120. There was a local
gothic band playing before JOJ, and during that time, CHAKO prepared for
the live. The live house was crowded with many types of audiences.
In the live at Germany last year, most of the audience were dressed in
black.
But in Taipei, there were various fashions, and this point was very interesting
to me.
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Finally, it was the time for JOJ. I had a very important mission
to video tape the live, but stupidly, I forgot to save the seat for the
task. Some of the audience kindly let me cut in between the seats. Thanks
to them, I was able to record this live from the best angle.
As CHAKO appeared on the stage, audience stopped talking at once and got silent. I was scared a little this point.
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I could have ran away from the live house if JOJ was not accepted by the Taipei audience, but there was no worry for that. Nobody was running around nor fighting each other. Audience in Taipei were all sophisticated. After the intense former part, the second part started, after a short break. One of my favourite song "A MARCH FOR NEW EUROPEAN" was sung and that made me really excited. At last, JOJ received an encore, and performed few more songs. I was surprised that some of the audience were crying. The live was a big success.
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Even though one of the closest neighbours of Japan, I didn't know well
about Taiwan. In this live, putting myself among the audience of
Taipei, listening to the same music with them, I thought I got close
with them a little. People with different backgrounds and different
languages, listening and feel same music. This must be the essence
of the JOJ's music. And I felt that strongly in Taipei. I don't know
what JOJ themselves felt and achieved in this live, for I can't look
in other people's thoughts. But I can say that the fruit of this live will
be feed backed to their next work, and it will surely surprise us.
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