Happy New Year, Blog-Tickers! Here's hoping your 2020 is off to a nice lazy, sensual start full of cat pics and chocolate-eating, and that you popped the champagne instead of letting it pop you. As promised, we bring you the updates from Buck-Tickistan, in chronological order, and boy (seven deadly sins) are there a lot of them!
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Ongaku to Hito
Messrs. Sakurai and Imai will appear on the cover of the February issue of Ongaku to Hito, to be released on January 7th. The magazine will feature a cover interview with the two, plus the usual monthly update from Yutaka. Those of you wishing to order this magazine through us, send us an email. In the meantime, enjoy the cover.
Fine lipstick, Mr. Sakurai! Very fine! (Won't you tell us the color, please? We promise we won't give it away...)
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Tower Records
Also on January 7th, the latest installment of the Tower Records Buck-Tick Cafe will open in the cafe space at Tower Records Shibuya, to be followed by Tower Records Buck-Tick Cafe events opening at the Tower Records Cafe Umeda NU Chayamachi in Osaka, and the Tower Records Cafe Sapporo Pivot in Sapporo, Hokkaido.
The Shibuya event will run for a whole month, from January 7th to February 7th, in two sessions: the first running from January 7th to January 20th, and the second from January 21st to February 7th. Just in time for the 14th anniversary of This is NOT Greatest Site, y'all! (Our anniversary is January 27th). Shucks, how cute! The Umeda and Sapporo events will also run in two sessions, the first from January 21st to January 29th, and the second from January 30th to February 7th. Not only that, but the menu has already been announced! Let's take a look at it, shall we?
First, we have the obligatory Buck-Tick beer, this time with two different labels, one featuring the Datenshi promo photo, and the other featuring the Datenshi single cover. At 1000 yen per bottle, this beer isn't cheap, but we've drunk it many times before and we can say that it tastes great. No loss here. If you drink the beer in the cafe, you get to take the bottle home with you, and it's also possible to purchase unopened bottles of the beer to take home with you for later.
Next, we have the band member cocktails, starting with Mr. Sakurai's "Fluff Fluff" Viennese coffee, "inspired by the warm, soft, fluffy belly of his beloved cat, Maru." Doesn't say whether this is alcoholic coffee but for 890 yen we sure hope it is.
Mr. Imai's offering is, surprisingly, also coffee, which Tower Records is calling "Irish Coffee," and yet they say it contains cognac, not Irish whiskey, so please Japan, study your Europe a little harder. 900 yen.
Mr. Hoshino, yearning as ever for tropical paradises full of surfing mermaids and boys in bikinis, brings us 980 yen worth of banana juice, which is supposedly going to be the Next Hot Shit in Japan once the bubble tea craze bubbles out (jeez, kids, bubble tea was sooo 2004!)
Yutaka, sticking to tradition, brings us a Serious Bear houji-cha latte for 850 yen. All we can say is that if you haven't tried houji-cha, you should try it. It's a very different flavor from green tea, extra warming in the winter.
And finally, Toll brings us the Bulldog, another sake cocktail from Musubi-bito, the sake brand behind his signature sake "Doramu," which, we hate to say it, tasted terrible. But this is mixed with grapefruit juice, so maybe not so bad? 900 yen.
Next, the food menu for the first round, inspired by tracks from Parade III.
"Lullaby III," inspired by the European bar vibe of the song, is Navarin, or French mutton ragout with turnips, for 1890 yen.
"Iconoclasm" is a prosciutto and burrata salad, featuring five ingredients (five for Japanese babies). Burrata, for those of you who don't know, is an Italian cheese that spills out cream when you cut into it, for that "clash and clash" vibe. Or Sexual XXXXX vibe. Your choice.
"Tenshi wa Dare da" is ringo apple Tarte Tatin with strawberry sauce, to evoke that "ai ai love love" feel of the song lyrics... but don't they know that Shiina Ringo covered Uta?
"Just One More Kiss" is a parfait that will "explode" in your mouth, just like that deep, heavy bass from Buck-Tick's Victor CDian commercial all those years ago! (Oh yeah, Tower, NOW we're talking. Explode in your mouth! This sounds more like the B-T we know! Keep going!) After you eat those "firecracker-shaped" Pocky sticks, mix in the "carbonated ice" (what carbonated ice say what??) with the jelly below to enjoy a wild diversity of taste sensation ;)
When you visit the cafe, you also get a free A3 sized place mat, with a different design for session one and session two.
Session 1:
Session 2:
You also get different business-card sized calendar cards for each order of food or drink. There are also a bunch of Datenshi-themed collaboration goods for sale, which you can check on the official site here (just scroll down below the menu). If anyone wants to order any of these goods through us, just let us know.
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Datenshi & Parade III
Buck-Tick's new single Datenshi and third tribute album Parade III will be released simultaneously on January 29th. If you'd like to order them through us, drop us a line. The third track on the limited edition of Datenshi will be the live version of the song the band performed in Takasaki on December 3rd at the opening show of The Day in Question 2019. This is the first time the band ever performed the song live. What a treasure!
Datenshi covers
Parade III cover
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Neko Kikaku
Small news, big news, who's to say? For some people, this may be the biggest news on the list: in spring of 2020, the animated film Neko Kikaku (The Cat Plan), in which Mr. Sakurai appeared as a voice actor, will be released on disc. Check the official site here for details.
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Fish Tanker's / Love & Media Portable Members Only Tour 2020
In a break from tradition, Buck-Tick are mounting a standalone standing tour in advance of the release of their new album! This time, the tour will be open to both Fish Tank members and Love & Media Portable members, but NOT to the general public. For overseas fans, that means that unless you're a Fish Tank member, you cannot buy a ticket to this tour. We cannot help you get tickets to this tour. If you want to attend this tour, you must join Fish Tank. Tickets to Fish Tank only tours are non-transferable, which means that you can't buy them for someone else. At the door, you are required to present both photo ID and your Fish Tank ID card, and the staff check carefully to make sure that the name on the ticket matches your Fish Tank ID and the name on your photo ID. Under the new ticket trade system, it may be possible to trade your ticket to another fan club member if you become unable to attend, but we've heard tell that overseas members aren't allowed to participate in ticket trades (please, someone, confirm or deny this. And if it's true, write to Fish Tank and complain!)
Anyhoo, the ticket lottery for this tour opens on January 18th at noon and closes on February 17th at 2PM Japan time. In order to attend the tour, you must join Fish Tank before that period. The tour schedule is as follows:
Saturday, May 23rd: Zepp Tokyo - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Sunday, May 24th: Zepp Tokyo - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Sunday, May 31st: Zepp Fukuoka - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Saturday, June 6th: Zepp Osaka Bayside - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Sunday, June 7th: Zepp Nagoya - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Saturday, June 13th: Sendai GIGS - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Sunday, June 14th: KT Zepp Yokohama - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Sunday, June 21st: Zepp Sapporo - open 17:00 / start 18:00
Please, kids. Come to this tour and dance up a storm. Dance your socks off. Dance your ass off. Dance the soles off your 30cm giant goth boots! Annoy the hell out of those prissy pursed-lipped "no dancing" fangirl biddies, just like Acchan-chan asked you to do. Because it's now the Roaring 20's again for the first time in a hundred years, and in the Roaring 20's, dancing is what they lived for. Dance like a flapper and flap your freak flag. Wear your Imai pajamas as regular clothes. Because that's the truth of life in Buck-Tickistan and no angry, jealous fangirl hatred can ever quench the firecrackers that crackle in your soul. Be like Sailor Moon, and crack up all the monsters with the fireracker of your love.
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Buck-Tick's New Album
It's coming in summer 2020. According to Imai, he wants it to be a clean break for the band, something "outside Buck-Tick's previous image." His keywords: "minimalism," "electronics." Our keywords: A lady-killing werecat with a fetish for red lipstick, a hyper-intelligent human-sized praying mantid from the Andromeda galaxy, and a Cosmic Surfer Dude in a Space Suit in the Nude pick up a pair of baseball-loving brothers from Planet Baseball in the Hanshin Star System for a tour of the Milky Way in their hyperdimensional interstellar zeppelin, lose a game of Truth or Dare, have to take the dare and descend to the little-known planet "Earth" disguised as rock stars and try to make it big... but nobody ever guessed how big they'd make it! Will anyone discover their true identities? And do they have an ulterior motive? And if so, what is it? And what are all these mysterious numbers we keep seeing everywhere? Two, Three, Five, Seven, Wake Up, It's 11:11 (Seven Eleven, oh thank Heaven!) Coming soon to a Tower of Babel Records near you. Bonus extra: random Egyptian hieroglyphs, because random Greek letters were so last-season. They're 500 yen each and you can't choose the hieroglyph so if you want the Eye of Ra, you have to just keep buying more till you get it.
Release date? We're guessing early July. But we could be wrong.
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The Mysterious New Album Tour
Buck-Tick (or the squad of aliens disguised as Buck-Tick) will be holding a hall tour to support their out-of-this-world new album in fall of 2020. We have to assume it won't start before September, and possibly not till October, because we're guessing that they, like us, don't want to touch the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with a hyperdimensional ten-foot pole. But what this really means is, y'all who prefer hall tours, or who want to hear the new album live, or who can't save up money in time for spring, or who don't want to join Fish Tank, will have a chance to see a Buck-Tick tour later in the year. They've given you the choice this time, to choose your tour. How nice of them!
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The Day in Question 2020
And finally, last but not least, Buck-Tick have confirmed that they will be playing The Day in Question 2020 at the Nippon Budoukan on December 29th. As the Budoukan was closed for refurbishment in 2019 in advance of the Tokyo Olympics, this will be a welcome homecoming. Fun as the Yoyogi National Gymnasium was, it just doesn't have that same Day in Question vibe. In fact, in all likelihood, Buck-Tick's December 29th 2020 show will likely be a final for their Mysterious New Album Tour, rather than a standalone DIQ. But no worries that they've given up their tradition of commemorating Imai's release from his not-quite-jail-sentence for doing a special kind of hugging with Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Aliens in disguise or not, the day Buck-Tick stop making drug jokes is the day they stop being Buck-Tick.
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And that concludes our news for now! To answer a last question, yes, we still provide our shopping service! If there's anything you like, feel free to contact us any time.
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