News

The band has just announced that they will perform on an episode of Music Station, which is set to air on June 14th, 2013. Just one day prior to the band’s 25th anniversary tour B’z LIVE-GYM PLEASURE 2013 -ENDLESS SUMMER- kicking off, B’z will be on Music Station for an all night B’z special. Additionally, the top B’z songs viewers want B’z to sing will be announced. The program is conducting a survey for that purpose. The band will perform four songs on the show! Three of them will be fan requests!

You can take part in the survey here: http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/music/sec/opinion/130614.html

Click on 応募する and then fill out the form. The first input field is 曲名 (song name), the second field is 性別 (gender), so choose 男性(male) or 女性(female). The third and last input field is asking for your age. And then click the 確認する (confirm) button to submit your song! The deadline for submissions is June 14th, 2013 8PM JST.

News

The newest song by B’z, entitled “Q&A“, has started airing as the new opening to the anime series Detective Conan as of May 4th. “Q&A” is set to be released as part of B’z The Best XXV 1999-2012 — one of the two best-of compilations B’z is going to release on June 12th of this year. In addition to the song premiering on the anime series, B’z has also published a 90 second excerpt from their newest effort’s music video. (Be warned: It features a samurai warrior fighting multiple fierce ninjas. Brace yourselves!)

In addition, we also have the lyrics thus far, along with their accompanying translation, available on the B’z Wiki. For your viewing pleasure, we have taken the time to subtitle aforementioned music video made available by the band on their YouTube channel. Feel free to view it below and be sure to get in your pre-order for the two compilations due for release in just over a month!

News

The logo for the upcoming 25th Anniversary tour B’z LIVE-GYM Pleasure 2013 -ENDLESS SUMMER- has been posted on the band’s official website as well as the LIVE-GYM’s website. It conveys the “summer feeling” very well and raises hopes for a very heated tour! Additionally, the support members for this year’s tour have been announced. Unsurprisingly, the support members are the same as during last year’s tour!

Keyboards: Takanobu Masuda
Drums: Shane Gaalaas
Bass: Barry Sparks
Guitar: Ohga Yoshinobu

News

B’z have announced that they are going to perform live on stage with Aerosmith on August 8th, 2013 in Tokyo. The event is called Aerosonic and will be held at the famous QVC Marine Field, which is located within the Stadium of the Chiba Lotte Marines, a Japanese baseball team. Tickets are going to be on sale June 9th. Fanclub tickets are also said to be available through B’z PARTY.

This is not the first time for B’z to team up with Aerosmith. 11 years ago, during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Aerosmith was joined by B’z on stage to jam out to Train Kept A Rollin’. Check it out here if you missed it!

B’z & Aerosmith live! 「Aerosonic」
Date: August 8th, 2013
Doors: 16:00
Start: 17:30
Ticket price: 15,000 Yen (Arena standing & S seat); 12,000 Yen (A seat)

News

Shane is well-known as being practically the exclusive drummer for B’z since 2002, but what you may not know is that he is also a skilled guitarist and capable vocalist in his own right. Shane has released two previous solo albums (as well as working on a number of other projects as a drummer, including with Cosmosquad), one of which featured a Japanese cover of the B’z song “Hadashi no Megami”. You should definitely check that out here, which is available on his earlier album Primer!

Shane’s new solo album, Ascend, will be released on June 12th, which is also when the two XXV collections are launching. What immediately catches the eye here, though, is that the album features a cover of the English version of “Brotherhood”. The English version, which was initially unveiled during B’z LIVE-GYM 2011 -long time no see- in North America, was co-written by Shane with Koshi and has not yet been released in studio form by B’z.

Shane Gaalaas 「Ascend」
Release: 2013.06.12
Price: 1,500 Yen

Track listing:

1. Ascend
2. Wish You Well
3. Wonderful Midori
4. Rat Stew
5. Alive
6. Brotherhood (English B’z cover)

Pre-order at CDJapan!

News

Tak talking to Livejam students

In 2011, we reported about a music school for teenagers called Livejam. B’z guitarist and Grammy winner Tak Matsumoto attended one of the sessions to share his experiences as a musician with young aspiring teenage musicians, who want to be rock stars someday. On April 7th, 2013, Tak paid that school another visit to talk about the times when he started playing guitar to his success with B’z. Students gathered in the school’s lobby to listen to what Tak had to say. It was a very unique opportunity to see a star up close. Tak is usually seen in large venues such as Tokyo Dome, with over 70,000 people watching him on stage from afar.

Tak also received a range of questions from the students, such as “How do I become a professional?” or “How do I polish my feeling for rhythm?”. When he was asked “When you wanted to form a band, where would you look for band members?”, he replied “A long time ago, you would look for band members in music magazines and such. But today, when you look for band members on the internet, you won’t know what kind of person you are going to meet. And that might be dangerous for middle- and high-school students…”. Where should they look for band members, then? He added “I think Livejam is a great opportunity to meet musicians of the same age and form bands in a safe environment”.

He also elaborated on that a bit further, saying “Somebody who just started out to play an instrument is able to join a band and start performing. When I first heard about that, I thought ‘There’s no way that somebody could do that’, but when I saw what is done here at Livejam, I was really surprised. It doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s a system you don’t see anywhere else.”

Everybody thanked him for the wonderful time they had. They hope that Tak Matsumoto will attend one of their sessions again!

Source: http://livejam.jugem.jp/?eid=200