Shizuka Yo!

Last Thursday I went to the Paul Gilbert (guitarist from Mr. Big) concert in Hiroshima. I have been lucky because I have seen 2 good shows recently. Paul Gilbert's guitar playing was awesome. Dressed in an orange space suit and earphones (he is deaf in his left ear from rocking out for so long) he looked like he was in his own world jamming on the guitar. In the middle of the show the drummer did a sick solo. I was in awe the entire time. The music was rocking.

Unfortunately the audience was not. John and I were the only gaijin of about 200 people. Before the show we were scoping out the other people in the audience and had high hopes of these people getting into it. However, they did not. In between every song was utter silence. Paul Gilbert studies Japanese so he even attempted to speak to them in their own language. No response what-so-ever. John took it into his hands to try and get the audience to cheer, clap, yell or at least talk in a low voice. We yelled stuff to the musicians on stage, they would talk back to us a little. It was a shame. Then came the encore (which he played two of). I don't know why he played two because trying to get people to entice the musicians back on stage with cheering was so difficult. I have never, personally, worked so hard for an encore in my life. We started a chant of 'Pa-ru, Pa-ru'. We did what we could to get them back on stage. Most of the time a show can really be made exciting by the audience, as well as the music. The music of this show was great but the audience just stunk.