It's sunny in Tokyo, the plum blossoms are blooming, and ALL THE NEWS is pouring in from Buck-Tickistan in a great flood!
Many Festive Festivals!
First, for those of you who wondered why there were no Golden Week dates for the No. 0 tour - the answer is, because Buck-Tick are playing not one, but TWO rock festivals that weekend.
On Saturday, April 28th, Buck-Tick will be playing at the very awkwardly named festival hide 20th Memorial Super Live SPIRITS, commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of Hideto Matsumoto, who played guitar in X Japan before launching a much more impressive solo career that was tragically cut short by his untimely death. To be perfectly clear: hide is still dead and will not be performing at this festival. Instead, Pata from X Japan will be appearing as a special guest in his place, along with the other members of hide's former band Spread Beaver. In addition to Buck-Tick and Spread Beaver, Mucc, Oblivion Dust, D'erlanger, and Zeppet Store will be performing on the same day, so if your love lies at the nexus between early 90's visual kei and hard rock, the 13000 yen ticket price for a single day pass to this festival should seem like a bargain.
Don't expect to hang out and get drunk with the B-T members afterward, though. They'll be working for their money! On Sunday, April 29th, they'll be speeding off to Miyagi to play at the Arabaki Rock Festival, alongside a legion of other artists, so many we can't even begin to name them all, so if you're curious, check the list here on the Arabaki Rock Festival official site.
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Buy All The Things and Maybe Win Another Thing!
Next, whoever runs Buck-Tick's website is excessively pleased to announce that there's a lottery campaign on for Buck-Tick's new releases, whereby if you bought the Babel single and didn't throw away the special promo paper inside, you can take the proof or purchase from there and combine it with similar little tickets to be found in Moon -Sayonara wo Oshiete- and No. 0, paste them all on a postcard and send them in in hopes of winning a DVD with a "making of the Moon -Sayonara blah blah- music video" clip on it. If you're just dying to know how the made that model float through that ugly hotel furniture, this is your chance! However, if you're dying to know the name of the beautification software used to render Mr. Sakurai's face into an anime-worthy shade of "no wrinkles bc wrinkles are gross ew and old guys are also gross ewww," then we're pretty sure you'll be out of luck - Buck-Tick's management are determined to keep you believing that Mr. Sakurai is still an unnaturally smooth and shiny 25-year-old. If you actually believe this, we have a suggestion for you: switch to K-Pop and leave Buck-Tick alone. Tickets to the No. 0 tour have become as difficult to obtain as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory golden tickets, and frankly, we're too old to deal with this shit, so please, if what you're after are genetically altered vat-grown bishonen, go see yourself some plastic surgerified Korean boys instead. That's what they're there for.
Only 300 lucky fans will win this bonus DVD, but we're sure that at least one of them will rip it to the internet so we can watch it and amuse ourselves on its anti-climactic self-satisfaction. Entries into this lottery must be postmarked by March 28th.
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Moon Crystal Power Makeup!
For those of you who are fans of Buck-Tick and are also sexually aroused by the gently bouncing boobies of 3D-animated female video game characters, we've got the news of a lifetime for you: "Salome," the b-side to Moon -Sayonara wo Oshiete- written by Hoshino Hidehiko, will be used as the theme song for a new smartphone game called Crystal of Reunion, featuring a lot of anime characters with multicolored hair in futuristic costumes, and probably some giant robots/monsters too. According to the promo patter, it's an RPG strategy game with fantasy and coolness and stuff. If you know how it is that a smart phone game has a theme song just like a TV show, then you know more than we do already, but for those of you who just want to hear a clip of the song, check out the concept video below. Personally, we're betting that the actual song will turn out to be a lot cooler than the clip in this video, because somehow it seems that the people who choose these clips always choose the worst bits of otherwise wonderful songs... but that's just our opinion. The game will be released April 16th.
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Tower Buck-Tick Cafe Returns!
Last but not least, by popular demand, the Tower Records Buck-Tick Cafe has returned again, for a longer stint than ever before! The cafe will open on Tuesday, February 20th (that's two days from now!!!) and stay open until March 18th. Like last time, the opening period will be divided into two stints with different menus and bonus postcards. The first stint will run from February 20th till March 5th, and the second stint will run from March 6th to March 18th. The cafe is located on Omotesando and will open daily from 11AM till 10PM, with last orders at 9PM. As before, there will be special Tower Records x Buck-Tick goods for sale, but the details have yet to be announced. The menu also has yet to be announced, but we'll post about it when it is, so stay tuned.
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