HEY! HEY! HEY! MUSIC CHAMP 20周年大感謝祭 in Japanese. It was too much trouble to translate “Daikanshasai”, which means something like “big thank you party”. Basically a small live concert featuring some big names in the Japanese music industry celebrating 20 years since Hey! Hey! Hey! started… even though it was technically cancelled 2 years ago and had been in decline for a while before that.
Anyway it aired live in Japan on December 29th 2014 but I’m only just getting round to watching it. The performers on the show were:
aiko
AKB48
Ami Suzuki
Arashi
BoA
GACKT
Golden Bomber
Hideaki Tokunaga
Kiroro
MAX
Noriyuki Makihara
ORANGE RANGE
Porno Graffiti
PUFFY
Ryuichi Kawamura
SMAP
Tetsuro Komuro
T. M. Revolution
Tomomi Kahara
TRF
Ulfuls
I’m not going to do an act-by-act breakdown like I did (and will continue to do) with Kohaku Utagassen. It was a lot of fun for me as a fan of Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ because they showed lots of skits from the early days of the program. Some of them I had seen before, like the one with X Japan and the one with Amuro Namie. Others like SMAP’s first appearance and Arashi’s first appearance were new to me.
I went through a phase where I watched a lot of Hey Hey Hey clips on Youtube when I was learning Japanese, but I only focused on artistes I was interested in, so no wonder I didn’t see those.
The performers sang a number of hits from the 90’s, but the really interesting part of this for me was… seeing how they had aged between their first appearance and now! Without going into the gory details, I’m quite close in age to most of the acts like BoA and Ami Suzuki and even the ossans of Arashi mwahahaha, you can dress as young as you like but you’re still an ossan, mwahahahaaa… yeah, I enjoyed that.
Even better, when the current SMAP members came on live, they spent the time talking about grey hairs and balding heads. Apart from Goro Inagaki they all denied having any grey hair at all, but they’re not fooling anyone. Being in a “boy” band at the age of 42 must be suffering.
And of course Matsumoto couldn’t resist a little dig at Kusanagi for his drunken incident a few years ago. I was working with some Japanese people at the time and they were all shocked, shocked! to hear of Kusanagi’s little bender. I didn’t know much about SMAP back then and barely knew who was who, but it was still funny. Human beings are all the same, corrupt and wicked inside. Some just put on a better mask than others.
Actually I didn’t pay that much attention to the guys’s looks. Now the ladies, on the other hand… ^.^ IMO many of the ladies looked even better with a bit of maturity added on. MAX especially had a very nondescript ‘generic pretty girl band’ look in their youth, but with a little meat on their bones and roundness in their faces they looked great dancing on stage. Pretty sure they used to be 4 members, but only 3 performed. *shrug*
Ami Suzuki still can’t dance, but after what, 20 years as a performer I don’t think she cares any more. She’s doing more acting these days anyway, so it was nice of her to relive her idol days for one night.
Tomomi Kahara also looked good, especially considering all the ups and downs she has been through in her career (according to the gossip mags anyway). Wonderful clear voice.
I did wonder what BoA was up to these days, didn’t I? I suppose I could find out in five seconds by checking Wikipedia, but where would the fun be in that? It’s more exciting when people show up out of the blue and you’re like, Hey, it’s Gackt! (I had almost forgotten he existed). Hey it’s BoA!
The best thing about live shows is that every once in a while something goes wrong and there’s no way to do a second take, heh heh. That’s what happened to T. M. Revolution (who is definitely dyeing his grey hair, but at least no one asked him about it so he didn’t get the chance to lie). He totally lost his place while singing Hot Limit and had to pick up the song a little later, which prompted the hosts to respond like this:
Haha, they’re so mean. According to T.M. it was Matsumoto’s fault for distracting him by talking about his ex-wife right before he was scheduled to perform. Whatever you say, Takanori. Though it’s cute how performers will apologize to the audience when they make a mistake… as if watching them fluff lines wasn’t the whole point of live performances. …What?
Apart from that everyone sang and danced old hits and new, and then the show ended with all the performers singing H Jungle with T’s million-selling single “Wow War Tonight.” Looking forward to the 25th anniversary performance!
