The Other East

Crystal City is the weirdest city you’ve never heard of. In the 70s some businessmen bought up a whole bunch of cheap land across the highway from what is now Ronald Reagan International Airport and constructed an entire city more or less at once in their vision of the future. It features wide roads(with bizarre traffic patterns), neatly kept gardens everywhere, dozens of nearly identical, featureless, high-rises and not a spot of litter or graffiti. It’s all very modern.

Its also completely silent.

While apparently over 60,000 people work in Crystal City, only 6,000 live there. Add that to the fact that you can move between almost any building in the city in a labyrinth of underground passageways and you have pretty much a ghost town on weekends. The only people walking around were a few con goers, and there wasn’t even that many of them because most of the hotels are right next to each other in Crystal City. Also, with the convention being in a Hyatt, most people were actually staying in the same building as the con thus had no reason to leave.

I’m surprised no one has ever filmed a zombie movie here.

This isn’t about this odd city I’ve lived my whole life 50 minutes from and never knew about though. This is about Kaya. Prior to this Kaya had only played one show in the United States, this would be his very first appearance on the east coast. Kaya is one of the most unique performers visual kei has to offer at the moment, and he’s relatively popular as far as Visual Kei is concerned. He’s been on the cover of Cure magazine, opened for Versailles a multitude of times, gone on his own headlining tours, been signed to a major label, and let’s not forget his initial career boost of being mentored by Mana.

Yet for whatever reason Kanon Wakeshima, who is as much goth as Tatu were lesbians, gets to play Otakon in front of nearly 3,000 people on a real stage… While Kaya gets to play PMX and in front of just a few hundred people on a portable stage with crap sound in the basement of a hotel at AUSA. Nothing against AUSA, it was was a fun little convention. However they had 3,482 people show up in total attendance last year while Otakon had a couple thousand at Kanon’s concert alone. To put it bluntly: If you have to play at a convention, Anime USA isn’t really the Madison Square Garden of con concerts.

I don’t know what I expected but when we filed into the ballroom where the concert was being held I couldn’t help but being vastly unimpressed. The stage wasn’t a really stage, it was one of those portable stages you build out of segments. There was no backdrop, just a white wall. The speaker stacks looked weak. A guy next to me said something like “There’s no set. What instrument does this guy play, because this is a really boring set up.” I said to him “He’s an electronica vocalist”. He looked disappointed. All I could hope was that Kaya brought his full dance team because otherwise this was going to be an awkward concert.

Kaya finally started at about 10:20, gracefully entering stage in his black “Ophelia” outfit to very enthusiastic cheers. He started with “Kaleidoscope”, and luckily he had brought the important bits of the dance team including,yes, Yui. The sound system was woefully inadequate for the task at hand. While the sound was technically great, it wasn’t anywhere near loud enough and the bass was way too soft for a concert much less for electronica. Perhaps aware of this, Kaya and his dancers gave 110% or more effort. If you’ve seen Kaya live before, or watched his live videos, he doesn’t normally sound quite as good as his CDs. This night though, he was as good if not better. He made it through a nearly two hour set with only maybe one or two, barely noticeable, vocal imperfections. Rarely, if ever, have I heard a vocalist sound that good live. He was great when I saw him in Yokohama, but nothing like this. From the spine chilling scream to open “Kugutsu” to the deep vocals of “Carmilla” he was spot on.

I was curious what sort of approach Kaya was going to take towards addressing the crowd. Some Japanese artists have a pre-rehearsed message in English they read, some act like nothing is different and give their normal speeches in Japanese, and Tatsuro makes crowds yell random Japanese words. Normally this doesn’t matter but Kaya takes a very different approach to the MC. First of all, he talks way more then vocalists. Secondly he interacts with the crowd consistently, responding to people who yell things out from the crowd and adapting what he says on the fly.

Kaya didn’t talk nearly as much as normal but stuck to the same game plan. He spoke in simple Japanese sentences so that those who spoke a little could understand him, and even threw in a little English. For instance there was a very good team of Versailles cosplayers in the front row. Kaya stopped in the middle of a sentence and ran over to the side of the stage they were on and pointed “Ah! Hizaki! and Kamijo…darling”(Kaya has alluded to being in a relationship with Kamijo before). He also spotted someone in a Pikachu costume while talking about the con and said something to the effect of “Ah! Pokemon! Hello Pikachu! Pikachu, Pikachu!”. Also each time he would stop to speak, he’d go drag a mic stand to the front of the stage. I do mean drag, he would act like it was just too heavy for him and have “problems” setting it up. The crowd would scream “kawaii” and he would reply “I know, I know, I know” and wave his hand at the crowd as if to shoo us and tell us to hush.

It was rather hot in the hall even before the concert started and as more and more people showed up and the performance went on it only got hotter. Kaya commented on this and from the front row it was obvious he wasn’t just saying “Atsui” over and over because its a word lots of Americans know. Sweat was pouring down his face from early in the set, and his dancers who were putting in some very physical moves to the point that sweat would fly off them any time they spun. Even though everyone on stage must have been madly uncomfortable, especially Kaya, they performed with enthusiasm and big smiles throughout the set.

I think it would be fair to say that Kaya was really sharing the spot light with his dance team. During the two occasions on which he left stage to change outfits(he also performed in the Ouka Ryouran kimono, and two different stunning male Gothic Aristocrat outfits. He actually spent more of the show dressed as a guy) the dance team got to perform complex and physically demanding routines to hard-house remixes of “Chocolat” and “Silvery Dark”. The remix of Silvery Dark was amazing and I want a copy of it!. Kaya also rotated from song to song which of the dancers was his partner for the song.

While the Kaya-less dance numbers were awesome and got as much applause as you can ever hope to get while playing with the lead attraction off stage, the dance Kaya and his team performed during “Masquerade” was probably the pinnacle of the night for fan girls, and that’s not even one of his more popular songs. They put on an erotically charged dance with suggestive movements. They eventually threw suggestive out the window and just went for it. Yui dropped to his knees and appeared to be savoring being at crotch level with Kaya before Kaya grabbed him by the head and grinded his mouth against his crotch. Most of the audience loved it, the guy to my left stood there with his mouth open in amazement.

Kaya doesn’t have a great deal of material in his solo career yet, so in playing for nearly two hours almost every song you can think of was covered. The only two absences that really stuck out were “Paradise Lost” and “Last Snow”. He didn’t play any of his French Chanson covers either, but that was no surprise. I kind of thought that after he went off stage for the third time he’d return in the bright “Chocolat” dress, and sing “Chocolat” for the encore. In fact, though, he returned in another male Gothic Aristocrat outfit. He did sing “Chocolat” as part of the encore though so I was half right. Kaya had been smiling, peppy, and hyper the whole set but it was when he stuck the microphone out and let the crowd sing an entire stanza of “Chocolat”, and we all knew the words, his face lit up even more and you could see in his eyes that he really was happy.

I guess I can’t go without mentioning the pseudo-wardrobe error. At one point while dressed as a guy his pants started to come undone. He was wearing these high waisted, and really tight, black pants with three buttons. Slowly each button came open, when the last button was about to go Kaya caught on and turned around to fix himself.

Shitty stage and underwhelming sound removed, this was an incredible concert. One of the absolute best I’ve ever been to, perhaps second to only last December’s NYC Mucc concert. I only wish that I hadn’t stood in the front row. I was too squished to dance.

Tags: ausa, kaya