BABYMETAL Kami Band God Of Bass BOH wrote a new Blog post, this time to talk about his impressions of the BABYMETAL World Tour 2015 in Japan, the 8 tour dates of the nationwide tour in Japan which took place in September and October. BOH also shares what he thinks about BABYMETAL based on Su-Metal's comment and how much he grew as musician since he is part of the band. Read the full blog post translated below.
BABYMETAL Kami Band member BOH new blog post about BABYMETAL Japan Tour
Greetings,
I’m BOH, and I’m the type of guy that can tell the season by the skin of his head.
In Tokyo, too, the leaves have slowly begun to turn red, temperatures have been dropping and Autumn has started to set in. Autumn is my favorite season.
It’s a season that comes with delicious food, during which you need neither heating nor cooling and the air is fragrant.
That, and one of the girls I used to like was named Autumn. Wait, I guess you don’t care about such anecdotes.
The other day, BABYMETAL’s World Tour in JAPAN, Zepp Series came to an end.
It started with 2Days in Osaka, and with Sapporo, Fukuoka, Nagoya 2Days and Tokyo 2Days, there were a total of 8 performances. Now that it’s over it seems to have gone so fast.
After the Sapporo performance I personally went home to Asahikawa to talk and drink with my parents, talk and drink with my local friends… Oh, and after the performance we also drank, so I suppose I’ve been doing nothing but drinking. (Laughs).
More important is the main theme: my thoughts on the tour.
This was my first Japan national tour, and it was a Zepp performance where we get close to the audience to boot. This was something that I was really looking forward to!
For the fans it’s an opportunity to enjoy the development of BABYMETAL up-close, and I felt that the lucky people who were able to obtain tickets took part quite fervently.
I think that SU-METAL, YUIMETAL and MOAMETAL, too, did more than simply receive that energy, but returned it many times over.
I have been a part of Kami Band since the revolution of May, 2013. The stage at that time was the same as the last stage this time: ZeppDiverCity. Compared to that time, Kami Band’s performance has become more filled with emotion, and we’ve gained experience, so that the members’ abilities have improved remarkably as well.
I think that the reason that we are able to continue without wavering is exactly that we have unwavering conviction, even if the surroundings dizzyingly change.
As SU-METAL often says during interviews, “I want to spread BABYMETAL to more people, and make it its own genre.”
I sincerely feel the same way.
To achieve that, it is necessary that we constantly improve our quality, and to keep challenging ourselves.
BABYMETAL is what is different from all of the scenes that I have taken part in so far.
I have been active as a professional bassist for over 13 years, and all scenes have in common that you are constantly finding out what’s right for yourselves. But I am now exactly in the midst of experiencing this kind of progress in such a short time for the first time.
I think this is rare nowadays, but ever since I had just come to Tokyo, it was my dream to play bass in many settings as a first bassist, to be what you used to call a studio musician, rather than to make my début with a band and make sales.
Rather than wanting to stand out or be famous, I wanted to be a bassist that supported artists with an overwhelming performance ability that would be accepted no matter where I’d go, and that was able to excite the audience. That is what I thought as I kept going.
That is by no means something I can do by myself. It’s something that can be achieved exactly because of the allies that stand with me on stage, the staff members and the presence of all the fans.
And after one milestone comes another. There is no end.
It is thanks to BABYMETAL that I was able to play with Japanese top level musicians of my generation, and that I was able to receive feedback that makes me happy not only nationally, but also from people overseas.
It’s not like I am the most amazing player in the world, nor do I have special talent.
It was all thanks to an encounter.
That is all. How was I when we met?
It is the instrument called a bass that I can continue with without slacking, with my soul poured into it and without cutting corners.
I want to keep pursuing this and to play in many locations with BABYMETAL, with many people and many feelings in my heart.
This is of course true for the whole world, but I think that in Japan, too, the musical industry is right at a turning point.
Common knowledge and theories that have been cultivated for a long period in the past have started to come out of circulation. The entire industry is in the midst of a search for something new to try.
It is a miracle that I am able to live playing bass in the midst of that.
I am truly grateful to many people and for many encounters.
That is my main motivation.
I will continue to have faith and push forward.
This was a short reflection on an important tour, but we still have Ozzfest in November and Yokohama Arena in December, so…
For now, I’ll leave it at this…
Now for a tanka poem:
Having many of these
does not necessarily mean you’ve won
Bass strings
and hair strands.
Translation by: MC.
