Saturday night I went to see Puffy AmiYumi play at the Park West theatre and was not disappointed. While I enjoyed last year’s show at the Vic, the change of venue definitely helped this year. The smaller Park West was a lot more comfortable and intimate than the ancient Vic. And we were lucky enough to have a great view. And since the crowd wasn’t as big as last year, it was pretty easy for anyone who wanted to, to go down on the floor to get closer.
The openers, Tally, played for about 30 minutes and were pretty good. You don’t find too many young bands these days who can really sing and have good voices! After Tally, Puffy took the stage and jumped right into a high powered set of songs featuring some new ones from Splurge. Like last year, I was greatly impressed by the energy of the band and how much fun they were having. And Ami and Yumi’s between sets antics with the audience were high camp. I especially liked the Japanese tutorial that included the Osakan dialect that Yumi speaks. Of the new songs, I think the one I liked best was Radio Tokyo. But most were old favorites like Jet Keisatsu and Puffy no Rule.
While there were plenty of young kids with their parents about, including a cute pair of little girls, one with bluish purple dyed hair and the other pinkish hair like the Puffy’s animated alter-egos, there weren’t as many kids as last year. That’s probably just because the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi show isn’t this year’s hot new property on Cartoon Network.
So on the whole, the show was as good as last year with bonus points for the venue change. I’m looking forward to the new album release on the 25th. You can get it on iTunes now, but the CD release will have two bonus tracks that I want, so I’m going to wait. I’m hoping that now that Puffy is with Tofu Records, they’ll include romaji lyrics to the songs. With so many catchy tunes, Puffy AmiYumi is one of those groups whose songs work their way into your brain and won’t let go! So I’d at least like to be able to sing them with greater accuracy! 😀