Tour Pamphlet Extravaganza

For our first shopping service post in a long while, we're pleased to bring you a truly massive load of Buck-Tick tour pamphlets and other books, many of which we've never had the pleasure of offering on here before. As always, orders are on a first-come, first-served basis, so if you're interested in purchasing any of these items, send us an email at themadaristocrat at gmail right away! If you can't pay right away, don't worry - we're happy to put items on reserve for a up to a month. Now let's look at the goodies!

SOLD

HYPER Psychedelic Buck-Tick Mook

HYPER, a compendium of photos, interviews, and band history published around the time of the Taboo tour, is possibly the single weirdest book Buck-Tick have ever released, and boy, is that saying something! The first half of this book tells a trippy story in few words, with many bizarre photo collages. The second half includes interviews, more trippy collages, and some precious photos of the young band members goofing off behind the scenes. Not to be missed! Aside from a few bent pages at the bottom front corner, the book is in nearly perfect condition. Rare and out of print.

3500 yen.

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale) 

Hoshino Hidehiko's code of life!

Toll's spirit is leaving his body!!

 Now Acchan-chan is going to join him!

Ooh, flesh!

Zomg, stripping!

Hallelujah woo yeah!

There are a lot of jewel collages in this book. This is just one of them.

Cover you and smother you with ornaments of gold...

Like it says.

The band members in their feckless youth.

Omg long-lost Buck-Tick manga!

"Sex... Sex... R & Sex." Said Acchan-chan at age 22.

Shapeless Mini-Book

This miniature Buck-Tick book may be small, but it contains almost 100 pages of choice full-color photos from the band's early years through to around 1992. The second half contains interviews with each band member on a different topic, but if you can't read Japanese, this book is worth it for the photos alone. In perfect condition. Rare and out of print.

3000 yen.

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale)

Holy crap that's a big B-T!

Homo-eros with Hoshino Hidehiko!

Hipster guitar in the fallen leaves! Plus blue hair! (You gotta have blue hair!)

Yutaka with a Giant Bass!

Imai was doing it before Acchan-chan! Cat cat cat cat cat's!

Two Acchan-chans on the couch with a big Acchan-chan Eye in the Sky.

Sexy Beast Hide didn't start being a #sexybeast yesterday, you know!

RESERVED

Darker Than Darkness Tour Pamphlet

Very large, hardcover tour pamphlet from the Darker Than Darkness tour contains 40 full-color pages of gorgeous, uber-goth closeup sexy arty glamour shots of the band members, interspersed with uber-goth arty photos of various interesting objects on fire. If you are really goth and into arson, this is the pamphlet for you! If you're really into long-haired Acchan-chan, this is also for you! Unfortunately the binding is broken (too much drooling over Acchan-chan), but aside from that, the book is in great condition - no stains, tears, wrinkles, or scratches. Rare and out of print.

3500 yen.

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COSMOS Tour Pamphlet

Softcover, LP-sized tour pamphlet contains 32 full color pages of really trippy photos of the band members and various drug-related objects, such as ash trays full of cigarettes (but smoking is bad for you!)  It also contains 48 black-and-white pages full of candid photos of the band members goofing around backstage and on the road, including humorous commentary (written in Japanese, of course.) This is probably the largest collection of behind-the-scenes photography of Buck-Tick ever printed, so if you love your band members makeup-free, drunk and giggling unawares, you need this. For serious. Great condition, rare and out of print. 4500 yen.

This is what the color drug photos look like.

In the candids, Toll has a beard, and Sakurai has a smoke-beard (but smoking is bad for you!!!)

Sakurai and Imai brave the dangers of the convenience store to buy some pre-packaged underwear.

Imai says, "no photos, yo!"  Too late.

Hide makes goggle eyes at Acchan-chan.

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Kyokutou I Love You / Warp Days Tour Pamphlet

This glossy, LP-sized tour pamphlet features a shiny metallic silver cover and lots of large photos of the band members, including a whole series of making-of shots from the set of the Kyokutou Yori Ai wo Komete PV. Unfortunately, the previous owner of this pamphlet didn't keep it in a safe place, and it has suffered minor water damage and some ripped pages. Luckily, the rips don't really mar any of the photos inside, but given the damage, we have lowered the price accordingly. Aside from the rips, the rest of the pamphlet is in excellent shape. Rare and out of print.

1500 yen

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale)

Closeup on water damage.

Fire!

Check out that fishnet stocking he's wearing over his pants! Congrats, Acchan-chan. It may have taken you fifty years, but at least now you know that the stockings go under the pants and not the other way around.

Mona Lisa Overdrive Tour Pamphlet

This glossy, LP-sized tour pamphlet features lots of large photos of the band members in all their 2003 cyberpunk glory, plus a lot of live photos, and a few salacious black and white backstage shots. In perfect condition, and as big and shiny as any fan could desire. Rare and out of print.

3500 yen.

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale)

Smoking is bad for you!

Drinking is bad for you! (Eyeliner is not bad.)

Back bends are good for you!

 Cyberpunk AF. (Or should we say Cyberpunk AS?)

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Devil and Freud Climax Together Pamphlet

This pamphlet doesn't have that many pages, but what it lacks in page count, it makes up for in deep, stupendous color, and creative fold-outs featuring the band members and the factory nightscapes they love. Perfect condition, very rare and hard to find.

2500 yen.

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale)

Foldout of the band members

Factory nightscape foldout with tour credits

Acchan-chan lounges seductively in a cyberpunk interior, hoping to get some androids to dream of him instead of electric sheep for once...

Now Hide's trying it, too.

Imai doesn't want to be left out, either!

Tenshi no Revolver Tour Pamphlet

This artsy black-and-white tour pamphlet was all the rage on the internet when it was released, but has since been lost to time... until now! If you like your Buck-Tick dressed to the nines and lounging on artsy architecture, you'll never stop drooling over this one. Perfect condition. Rare and very difficult to find.

4000 yen.

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale)

Ever have those days where you put on a tuxedo and then just lie around doing nothing?

If not, you should try it sometime.

Ohh man remember how swanky Imai looked with this hair & beard combo?

Acchan-chan gears up to pull something out of his top hat. What do you think it will be?

Toll's thinking about how, if Hide were wearing a skirt on those stairs, he could look up Hide's skirt.

Toll: "I wish I knew how to play piano." Sakurai: "Not even my cats are as lazy as I am."

DIQ 2011 Pamphlet

For those of you who don't remember, the DIQ 2011 was the retrospective show in which Buck-Tick played one song from each album they had released to date, in preparation for their 25th anniversary and the founding of Lingua Sounda. Those of you who've seen the DVD of this show may be unable to recall anything besides Imai's ugly blue shirt, however, you should be pleased to learn that there are no ugly blue shirts whatever inside this magical little pamphlet full of photos of the Buck-Tick members inhabiting a gothic fairytale house! The textured paper made this one hard to photograph, but we assure you that it's in mint condition, and ever so much better looking in real life. Rare and out of print.

4500 yen.

Front cover (LP record not included - shown for scale)

Back cover.

Sabbat PV redux: Buck-Tick are back in the Gothic House.

The Czars of Buck-Tickistan are ready to take on the world!

Imai toys with a magical mushroom (as usual)

Hide: "Hey girl, come sit down with me!"

REAL Rozen Kreuzers have Rozen Wallpaper.

Mood: sideburns, brocade, and blue pants. #ootd

Mood: who told you I smile? Smile? Not me. Look at how goth this mug is! Don't you dare take my goth card away. Grrr... #scowl4life

Mood: my jacket matches the stained glass windows!

Mood: Hey girl, wanna come and touch my rose garden?

C'mon. You know you wanna.

But if Hide's offer didn't look appealing enough, Acchan-chan is ready to open your Magic Box.

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Again, all queries should be addressed to themadaristocrat at gmail.

RAINBOW ACCHAN!!1

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BRIGHTER

AND

 BRIGHTER

Guest Post: Gendjreng Aku Mas

Fun fact for those of you new to Buck-Tickistan: in the liner notes of Six/Nine, in addition to be being credited for vocals, Mr. Sakurai is credited as having played the saxophone. As to what song he played it on, since there's only one song on the album which includes a sax part, it's fairly obvious: "Itoshi no Rock Star"! While this is the only studio recording for which Mr. Sakurai played sax (that we know of), he was also seen to play it live during the Darker Than Darkness tour, on "Victims of Love."

Don't believe us?

Now you do.

Why doesn't Mr. Sakurai play the sax anymore, you ask? Well, to be honest... we have no proof that he doesn't. It's just that, even if you're Mr. Sakurai, sax isn't necessarily something you feel comfortable with doing in public all the time, you know?

Then there's the question of whether he plays the piano - in the Autumn 2012 issue of Bridge magazine, he posed with a cat and a piano for the photoshoot accompanying the 20,000 character interview he gave on the topic of his childhood musical influences (market translation price: 140,000 yen). Of course maybe that was just a pose and he was faking it, but at the same time... why bother fake posing at a piano when you have a live cat in the room? Maybe Mr. Sakurai plays, but not for other people.

We've spent many a sleepless night over the years pondering these deep and pressing questions, fearing that we might never know the truth. But then! Just when we'd all but given up hope, one of our dear readers showed up with the answer, lovingly illustrated in manga form, and we couldn't resist sharing it with y'all.

Therefore, we present to you our first guest post in a long while. Comic by Ms. J. Whether she's a relative of Mr. J, we cannot say.

So there you have it. That's the truth, and let no one dare speak otherwise.

Oh yeah, about the post title - if you don't know what it means, we're not going to tell you. Find out for yourselves.

Odes to the Cool Cats

What with all the kerfuffle and hoopla over the never-ending mismanagement of Fish Tank/EMTG, we wouldn't fault you for worrying that we, Blog-Tick, have forgotten our purpose, and relinquished ourselves into the prissy joylessness of what the 4channers like to call "moralfaggery". Fear not! All the corporate idiocy in the world will never let us forget that, first and foremost, NGS/Blog-Tick has always served a single purpose: relentless irreverence, derisive laughter, japes, jests, jokes, sarcasm, and mockery.

Now, with the EMTG huggermugger settling down, let us return wholeheartedly to our original mission. Maybe y'all have been hearing rumors of the No. 0 tour, involving Mr. Sakurai slinking and meowing across the stage in a kimono and Robert Smith lipstick while Mr. Imai teased the fans with a cat toy. While we can confirm that these rumors are 100% true, we would also like to call it to your attention that "Gustave" is far from the first ode to a dirty alley cat. In fact, "Gustave" arrives as only the latest in a long tradition of such songs... so let's listen to some of the others, shall we?

First of all, why did Sakurai put on Robert Smith lipstick just for "Gustave"? We can't be sure, but we have a good guess... after all, Robert Smith is the guy who once opined, "the sky looks perfect as cats." He and Mr. Sakurai have more in common the just being goths who fantasize about being tied up and fed to dommes or spider-men, as the case may be.



Another song Mr. Sakurai surely must have considered while penning the lyrics to "Gustave" is "Kuroneko no Tango" ("Black Cat Tango"), a Japanese cover of the Italian hit "Volevo un gatto nero," written by Francesco and Mario Pagano, Armando Soricillo, and Francesco Saverio Maresca, and recorded by Vincenza Pastorelli, who was four years old at the time. The Japanese version of the song was recorded at the initiative of none other than our good friends Victor Entertainment, who asked children's choir director Minagawa Kazuko to nominate a Japanese child to sing the song. Minagawa nominated her nephew Osamu, then six years old. When the record was released in October of 1969, it soon climbed to the top of the charts, selling more than a million copies, and making Minagawa Osamu the youngest artist ever to have achieved such success. 

Like the lyrics to "Gustave," the lyrics to "Kuroneko no Tango" can be read on two levels: on the surface, a charming story about a young boy's love for his cat (who he calls his "lover" in much the same way as our Mr. Sakurai dotes on his Kurumi), and beneath the surface, the story of a man who puts up with his lover's many infidelities because "the night belongs to her." The lyrics discuss how when the Black Cat (or should we say Black Pussycat) walks through the streets, sketchy alleycats hit on her, and she can't help but succumb to their charms and offers of tasty morsels. The narrator of the song rolls his eyes, knowing that soon they'll let her down and she'll run crying back to him. "Kuroneko no Tango" is now an enduring Japanese classic and has been covered by many Japanese artists over the years.

Another song in the same vein, but more goth, is London After Midnight's black cat. If Sakurai hasn't heard this one, we think he should - after all, the only thing better than goth black cats is domme goth black cats ready to role-play some healthy sexual cannibalism (as you do).


But if you're going to go for the quintessential alley-cat anthem, we'd hazard that there's only one song you could possibly choose: The Stray Cats' "Stray Cat Strut." Yeah, your heard right. Not only is the band named The Stray Cats, they also wrote a self-titled theme song. And just look at the video! This guy's out-Gustaving Gustave! We smell a cat fight brewing!

Finally, last but not least, we'd like to take you away from America and into Asia once more, to introduce you to this Indonesian dangdut hit thoughtfully shared with us by one of our very own faithful Blog-Tick readers! For those of you not fluent in Bahasa, we'll have you know that "Kuching Garong" translates to "Dirty Alley Cat," and the singer of this song wants you to know that dirty alley cats are bad, bad boys and intercourse interactions with them should be undertaken at your own peril. That is to say, "hati hati!" (Beware!) Or something like that. Her attitude says differently, but that's something all these songs have in common - much like cats themselves, there's more to them than meets the ear on first listen. All these songs seem to agree that dirty alley cats are bad, bad boys, yet why do they come off looking so cool in the end? Anyhow, we have been assured that "Kuching Garong" was a big hit in Indonesia when it came out, so if you think it's silly, well, you're on the wrong side of history. Dig that YMO-style Oriental keyboard!

Oh yeah, and one more thing - that Blog-Ticker who shared the song with us is proud to present to Blog-Tick Pikopiko, named for the ticking of Yutaka's bass-practice metronome and crowned with the Honor Crown of Buck-Tickistan, the baddest kuching gargong the South Pacific has ever seen. "Make him famous," we were bidden. Well, kids, here he is. Bear news of his fame far and wide.

Sing it with me: Cat Cat Cat Cat Cat's.

Tickets for International Fish Tank Members

Various Blog-Tick readers have brought it to our attention that the EMTG system requires international Fish Tank members to register a Japanese phone number in order to apply for Fish Tank Only tour tickets.

To reiterate: according to the announcement on the Japanese Fish Tank site, international Fish Tank members (that is to say, Fish Tank members with addresses outside Japan) are ONLY allowed to purchase digital tickets.

To purchase digital tickets, you first have to install the EMTG app on your smartphone.

However, according to what y'all have told us, installing the EMTG app requires an SMS-equipped Japanese phone number with an 070, 080, or 090 area code.

Of course, it's highly unlikely that international Fish Tank members possess Japanese phone numbers. In fact, so far as we know, Japanese phone numbers don't even work outside of Japan.

Since international Fish Tank members can't have access to Japanese phone numbers, but are only allowed to purchase digital tickets, but a Japanese phone number is required for digital ticket purchases, what this means is that effectively, under the current system, international Fish Tank members are physically unable to purchase tickets through Fish Tank.

This, despite the fact that the cost of an international Fish Tank membership is the same as the cost of a Japanese membership, and access to Fish Tank tickets is the main benefit of joining Fish Tank.

Obviously, this is a totally unfair situation and needs to be solved immediately.

We sincerely doubt that Fish Tank, Victor, and EMTG intended this situation to occur when they set up their new system. As we explained in our previous article, it's likely that the people making the decisions are so out of touch with the needs of foreign fans that they never even considered the phone number issue. Surely, they want y'all to be able to purchase tickets, because they want your money, so it's in their interest to fix this problem as soon as they can.

Luckily, the ticket applications are open until July 24th, so you still have time.

What should y'all do?

Write to Fish Tank IMMEDIATELY, and explain the problem. We encourage you to use your own words. Write in Japanese if you can speak Japanese, but if you can't speak Japanese, do NOT use Google Translate. Instead, write in simple English. Fish Tank needs to see just how many foreign fans are out there who want tickets and who require English-language service. Every single person who is affected by this problem needs to write - the more complaints they get, the better. The more English letters they receive, the better - we want to impress upon them that the Japanese-only service thing is not going to work for international fans. 

And do not think for a single hot minute that you aren't entitled to these tickets. This is the privilege you paid 6000 yen to join Fish Tank to receive. They are not giving you what you paid for, so you have every right to complain. If they weren't willing to do business with international fans, they should never have opened up Fish Tank to international membership, but the fact is that Fish Tank has accepted international members for as long as they've existed, and to stop now just because more people from overseas are joining would be crazy. Japanese companies are highly attentive to customer service and customer needs. If enough of you write to them, they will feel ashamed and they will fix the problem. Write immediately.

If this situation continues to develop, please keep us updated in the comments section. We can't check on international fan issues for ourselves because we are located in Japan.