One Day in May…

The small “Born to Love” concert in Tokyo went off without a hitch. The 600 tickets sold out in a single day last March, and the fans were full of excitement and energy as Mayday took the stage. They apparently presented the band with so many gifts, it took the roadies 20 boxes to get them all wrapped up to send back to Taiwan.

One woman left a note for Monster, asking if by any chance he is interested in older women? She’s 50, and she really, really likes him. Monster has received a fair amount of teasing from the other guys, who said they didn’t realize that in Japan, someone so ordinary becomes a heart-breaker – Monster can now compete with all the handsome guys in the idol groups. (Incidentally, my mom – also in her 50s – has long thought Monster is the best-looking member of Mayday.)

Monster can speak the best Japanese, and he helped translate what the band said to the audience. Ashin stubbornly kept trying to speak Japanese, but he clearly wasn’t very confident, because he ended each sentence with “Did anyone actually understand that?” leading to bursts of laughter from the crowd. The audience had clearly been studying up on Chinese, because they could sing along with all of Mayday’s Mandarin and Hokkien songs, even the ones off the new album. (More likely, the audience was predominently Chinese, but whatever.) Ashin did give a few extra words of encouragement to the Taiwanese concert-goers who live in Tokyo.

Takuro of Glay attended the entire concert, and he brought a member of jealkb with him.

Finally, the article notes that the Taipei concerts are almost sold out – the second night is completely sold out, and sales for the first night are at 99% capacity.

Update: This article notes a bit more about the reunion between Takuro and Mayday.  Takuro and Monster chatted excitedly (presumably using Monster’s Japanese).  Takuro said that the two groups have only tracked each other over the internet for the past few years, but seeing Mayday constantly trying to do better and achieve new breakthroughs has led Glay to work harder.  (A pretty standard official statement, as these things go.)  But this is the cute part: Guanyou and Stone brought out pictures of “Little Rose” (Guanyou’s daughter) and “Little Stone” (Stone’s son, obviously) to share with Takuro.  Aw, the proud dads just can’t seem to help themselves, huh?

This weekend, Mayday is off to Tokyo. Stone (who speaks English) and Monster (who can speak some simple Japanese) will be presenting an award at the MTV Japan music awards. Mayday is nominated for “Best Chinese Act” as well.

Beyond that – and this is, by the way, precisely what I was complaining about – Mayday will hold its Born to Love concert in Tokyo on May 28. Fans in Japan must have heard about it (to be fair, there is an independent link to the information on the main Mayday web page, but it is not linked up anywhere else), because the concert is sold out. They don’t ever quite call it part of the Jump! Tour, but I imagine they are counting it on the list of stops, as it is pretty unusual for Mandarin acts to play big concerts in Tokyo. So I’m adding it to the list.

Update: I may have been premature, there. This is a small concert, but they plan to be back in Tokyo for a larger concert in October. They hope that on one or more of these trips they’ll get a chance to meet their good friends in Japanese band Glay; Takuro apparently plans to attend their performance and bring them “a surprise.”

Oh, and about that awards ceremony: Mayday won.

Update 2: Caroline put a link to an interview with Stone and Masa at the awards in the comments (thanks!!). How did Masa’s English get so good? (Ashin looks like he’s not quite sure what’s going on, as does Guanyou, though the latter lived in the U.S. and by all rights should have *some* English…)

Okay, let me just get this out of the way first. Memo to Mayday’s management/concert promoter: just publish the damn tour schedule already. Or at the very least, update the website every once in a while. Taipei – and now Shanghai – have not yet made the official tour listing on the website… instead, it is full of useless ticket information for Hong Kong and Xiamen. The only relevant information up is about the upcoming concert in Singapore, and that has been sold out forever. Piecing together Jump! tour information is like a multimedia scavenger hunt.

*whew* You know, I feel a bit better. Sorry for the outburst.

So on Sunday (May 27), the VIP ticketing starts for Mayday’s stop in Shanghai on the Jump! World Tour, which will apparently take place October 20th. Maybe they have been posting this information to Chinese fansites – or, I dunno, is there an official “fan club” on the mainland that gets the news first? But this is the first I’ve seen of it.

Mayday will be playing in Shanghai’s “80,000 People Stadium,” which (true concert VCD junkies will recall) was the stadium the band pointed to at their first Shanghai concert in 2004, when they promised to meet their fans there the next time they played in town. Well, a mere three years later, they’ve managed it.

Other than the full schedule, the other thing I’d really like to see right about now is an explanation for the tank graphic in the tour posters/logos, but I suppose in this, as in all things, patience.

I doubt anyone who has followed Mayday for any length of time put much stock in this story – it seemed too bizarre to be true – and now it seems like that is, in fact, the case. Both fans and the mainland media have joined the band’s representatives in expressing incredulity and disbelief at the idea that anyone who was at the Xiamen concert could think the Ashin was lip-syncing. (Annoyingly, however, I’ve seen the original claim questioning whether it was a true live performance tacked on to many of the concert reports. So it might be a complete fabrication, but it is being spread far and wide, and some will, inevitably, hear the accusation and not the exoneration.)

Aside from addressing the specific charges (lots of people coming out to say the band was indeed sweating, issues with the screens are normal, it is standard not to take breaks in a three hour concert), press have noted the sheer implausibility of managing to credibly mime drum and guitar performances, the fact that Ashin’s voice did get hoarse at the end, and the fact that many of the songs were played with new arrangements that differed from the recorded versions. Fans point to all the talking in the songs, times when the band let the fans carry the song, etc.

My favorite part, however, is the fan who noted (with, no doubt, a mind to defending Ashin against such ridiculous charges) that on the very first song, “No one else in my heart (心中無別人),” Ashin turned the whole of the first line around, and on numerous occasions forgot parts of the lyrics.

Recall that someone else said he forgot some of the lyrics to “Armstrong (阿姆斯壯).”

I really mean to be exasperated, but I find I just can’t quite manage it. Is it wrong that I actually find this sort of endearing? I mean, we learned recently that when it comes to this “singer who is always forgetting the words,” nothing is sacred. No song is too well-known or has been sung too often to be exempt, it seems. I’ve never actually heard reports of him forgetting the lyrics on “Peter and Mary (志明與春嬌),” but I’m sure it has happened, or will. And when it does, I’m afraid I will fail to criticize, but instead be among those laughing, shaking my head, and muttering, “超可愛, 超可愛 (too cute, too cute).”