The Concert

our extra long weekend in tokyo was first inspired by the news that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were doing a show at the Stellar Ball in Shinagawa. they were supposed to be at Fuji Rock Festival back in july but ended up cancelling at the last minute. this show was their second time to japan (they also first played last january).
laura also happened to know these guys from university...though she hadn't seen or heard from them since they became famous. over the past couple of weeks we've been joking about going to the show and hanging out with the band afterwards...by trying to get their attention.
they played at a packed-out venue at the Prince Albert. i had no idea that they had such a huge fan base in japan. although a good audience, the japanese tend to be rather quiet between sets compared to their american counterparts. before the show started kat, laura and i made our way all the way up to the front. between two of the songs, kat and i were encouraging laura to shout something out to them, but she wouldn't. so kat and i screamed something along the lines of "LAURA POLLACK!! CONNECTICUT COLLEGE! SHE KNOWS YOU!!!" until we got their attention, and they looked our way. the base player looked at laura and she waved, and he's like, "oh. hey." and the whole audience laughed. they did a few more songs, and after the show we saw the base player talking to the tour manager and pointing over at us. a few minutes later bill (the tour manager - yeah, we're on a first name basis now...!) came over and got us out of the crowd, and took us backstage. we went into their dressing room, and met all the guys. they were super nice and invited us to dinner with them. we had a beer in the dressing room then piled in a couple of vans and headed back to their hotel. had a drink there, and then went on to gompachi, the kill bill izakaya/izakaya koizumi took bush to. stayed there eating and drinking with the band till 3am. brilliant! surreal evening!