The B'z Hype Topic! (New Album DINOSAUR Out Now!!!)

[Folka]

My current collection

[Dopamine]

Hey everyone. I've never posted in here but have talked to JD privately. I just got into B'z this past year and have become a huge fan. I have a question and am curious if anyone can help.

So I stumbled upon several "bootlegs" of old tours on daily motion. For example: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5w2kd3

This uploader on dailymotion has full sets from #00 Off the lock, risky, in the life, pleasure 92 time, and pleasure 93 jap the ripper (the songs not included on the "live ripper" release). All this footage has never been released officially by B'z and is pro shot footage. I would assume that this footage is being held by the b'z themselves but they just haven't released any of it.

I'm curious if anyone knows how this footage was actually acquired? Did someone working for the B'z leak it? Also, is there any other footage out there that I haven't mentioned?

Thanks.

Edit: I was just looking through XX8 and noticed there is a performance of "The Gambler" from this RUN '93 footage. There's also a white snake cover from the Z'b tour they did. The footage I have from Z'b is partial and doesn't even have the whitesnake song.

[Jd-]

My current collection

Epic stuff! I never got a copy of DEVIL... I should do that for sure sometime.

Hey Jd, glad to see you guys are still alive and kicking.
I really miss your subs, even though I haven't watched a single episode of kaizou, or dctp. Still hung in the 200 range.
I guess the only subs available now are the horriblefansubs ones.


Just wanted to say a quick hi.
I hope you guys are doing well.

Karitaru! Awesome to hear from you after so long! All's well! Hope you're doing great all the same. For the old projects, we had a great run, got to meet a lot of great folks and hopefully spread a lil hype along the way.

Hey everyone. I've never posted in here but have talked to JD privately. I just got into B'z this past year and have become a huge fan. I have a question and am curious if anyone can help.

So I stumbled upon several "bootlegs" of old tours on daily motion. For example: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5w2kd3

This uploader on dailymotion has full sets from #00 Off the lock, risky, in the life, pleasure 92 time, and pleasure 93 jap the ripper (the songs not included on the "live ripper" release). All this footage has never been released officially by B'z and is pro shot footage. I would assume that this footage is being held by the b'z themselves but they just haven't released any of it.

I'm curious if anyone knows how this footage was actually acquired? Did someone working for the B'z leak it? Also, is there any other footage out there that I haven't mentioned?

Thanks.

Edit: I was just looking through XX8 and noticed there is a performance of "The Gambler" from this RUN '93 footage. There's also a white snake cover from the Z'b tour they did. The footage I have from Z'b is partial and doesn't even have the whitesnake song.

Hey Dopamine! This is a really interesting question and one I've wanted to dive into a bit more for a while.

For starters, these bootlegs are a great record of a rarely-showcased period of B'z history given the lack of an official release. Their origins are unclear but they first started circulating in the mid 1990s from what I can recall. Of course, they were all preserved on VHS tapes and all are pro-edited, meaning they were given at least a prefatory edit to make way for a release. Alas, they were very selective in what went out at the time, so all the way until those that followed GLORY DAYS, we weren't sure if the tours would hit home video or not. Some truly stellar showings like CIRCLE OF ROCK went only sampled in live form for so many years, yet it's undoubtedly one of their best live videos. It is my hope (and hype!) that we'll see these released in full someday...

One thought on the bootlegs that I always wondered: Did they originate from the same party that leaked the English demos of songs from that era?

[CrimsonDragon]

Hey everyone. I've never posted in here but have talked to JD privately. I just got into B'z this past year and have become a huge fan. I have a question and am curious if anyone can help.

So I stumbled upon several "bootlegs" of old tours on daily motion. For example: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5w2kd3

This uploader on dailymotion has full sets from #00 Off the lock, risky, in the life, pleasure 92 time, and pleasure 93 jap the ripper (the songs not included on the "live ripper" release). All this footage has never been released officially by B'z and is pro shot footage. I would assume that this footage is being held by the b'z themselves but they just haven't released any of it.

I'm curious if anyone knows how this footage was actually acquired? Did someone working for the B'z leak it? Also, is there any other footage out there that I haven't mentioned?

Thanks.

Edit: I was just looking through XX8 and noticed there is a performance of "The Gambler" from this RUN '93 footage. There's also a white snake cover from the Z'b tour they did. The footage I have from Z'b is partial and doesn't even have the whitesnake song.

Whoa! That's some truly rare stuff! (It seems some videos have already been deleted though...)

One thing I notice is Ai no Mama ni~ from the Hidden Pleasure release is a different date to the one in the RUN bootleg. The clothes are the same, but the way Koshi moves is different. It seems even back then they were probably planning additional footage for a potential home video release, much like what they did for the recent LIVE DINOSAUR recording.

Hopefully some of these recordings will resurface as official DVD releases in the near future! There's still hope... since in 2013 they finally released LIVE-GYM 2001 -ELEVEN-, 2005 -CIRCLE OF ROCK- and 2008 -ACTION-. Personally, I would to see LIVE-GYM '94 "The 9th Blues" -Part 1- and -Part 2-, as well as LIVE-GYM 2003 "BIG MACHINE".

[Dopamine]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Yeah, I really hope that this footage is released at some point. The quality is not very good on these bootlegs. They must be sitting on even more footage than these. They have included selected performances from almost every tour and even some showcases on home releases. I would love to see the 9th blues, spirit loose, fireball, and survive tours as well. I think a compilation of tv performances would be cool too but it may be difficult for them to get the rights to that footage.

I wonder if they just think these releases wouldn't be profitable?

[CrimsonDragon]

I wonder if they just think these releases wouldn't be profitable?

A B'z release that's not profitable? That's impossible!

In fact, going through some of these videos, I'm surprised why they didn't release them on home video! Hopefully, there are some surprise announcements planned later this year. B'z footage of any kind is so precious, that I have never seen old B'z concerts shown in full on TV before.

As for TV broadcasts, I think some music channels occasionally show old episodes. On the other hand, getting a hold on old TV performances is quite difficult for the average viewer.

[k11chi]

The worst expected sales from B'z should be assumed to be better than the best assumed sales from many other very popular artists...

[shinichi'sapprentice]

B'z PLEASURE IN HAWAII ON SEPTEMBER! :O

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMmGwzB27Lo

[Jd-]

As SA posted above: Pleasure 2018 is already announced! The shows begin in July and go through September 21 & 22... but not at Nissan Stadium this time(!?). Nissan Stadium will already be played earlier in the tour, once they move to domes/stadiums. Instead, the finale will take place as Tokyo Stadium/Ajinomoto Stadium, which is where they performed for the FIFA World Cup International Day Concert with Aerosmith in 2002. The capacity at Tokyo Stadium is 50,000 for sports, but will be much larger for a LIVE-GYM.

And, most intriguingly: B'z PARTY Presents Pleasure 2018 in Hawaii!? This is designed as a fanclub-exclusive mega tour in which B'z will participate in various activities with attendees. They will perform two concerts specifically filled with fanclub-requested songs, too. Because this is happening just a week after Pleasure 2018, I imagine it will be filmed and included on the eventual home video in January/February of 2019.

Annnd below are some pics of the action at B'z LIVE-GYM 2017-2018 "LIVE DINOSAUR".








Plus...



Remember seeing the Canary Yellow signature Gibson Les Paul making a return this year? Turns out: This isn't the old one! This is a reissue prototype being prepared for a highly likely release sometime this year. Whether it will get a limited run or not isn't clear, but I'm personally happy to see it back!

Thanks for the replies guys.

Yeah, I really hope that this footage is released at some point. The quality is not very good on these bootlegs. They must be sitting on even more footage than these. They have included selected performances from almost every tour and even some showcases on home releases. I would love to see the 9th blues, spirit loose, fireball, and survive tours as well. I think a compilation of tv performances would be cool too but it may be difficult for them to get the rights to that footage.

I wonder if they just think these releases wouldn't be profitable?

My theory on this has been that B'z were just selective back then—in my opinion, too selective! Even going into the release of their first best-of album, they weren't so sure about it. As mentioned on the B'z The Best "Pleasure" page on the B'z Wiki: "For us, the idea of a 'best album' is a retrospective one because they are usually issued by those who are finished with their activities." Even when their staff recommended it over and over, they vetoed it until they had no choice (when their former record label released Flash Back -B'z Early Special Titles- to preempt them). After that unauthorized compilation was released, they felt pressured to finally do it, which just so happened to coincide with the tenth anniversary. A long-form article on this subject written a few months ago will be published at the end of next month for those interested!

The Best "Pleasure" became the best-selling album in history at that time, so it'd be hard to think of it as anything but a success despite the circumstances. Tak later said: "It's been five years since then, and it's true that a lot of people came to discover our music from those best albums, so I've come to think it was never wrong to release those albums when we did."

More on topic, we've seen this sort of thing before. So many tours went unreleased despite demand from fans, because at the time there was this mentality of "We only want to release what we know is our best." That's why many of those earlier album tours went unseen, but shows like Pleasure'95 went out as BUZZ!! THE MOVIE and were ridiculous successes. Brotherhood's live tour got released in 1999, but then we didn't get another one until 2002's GREEN tour. And despite the quality show put on for CIRCLE OF ROCK, we didn't get that in full until eight years later! I remember Tak saying in an interview that when they previewed the full release then, he thought it was great and had no justification for why they didn't release it sooner. Luckily for us, the home video market has changed for the better and there's good reason to release all of their live shows—which, so far, they are! I expect LIVE DINOSAUR to be out just before Pleasure 2018 for sure, so around May-June.

The worst expected sales from B'z should be assumed to be better than the best assumed sales from many other very popular artists...

It's kind of crazy how many albums/singles B'z have sold over the years, really. For those curious: B'z are about #36 in records sold, worldwide, in history. This is despite being the only entrant on the best-selling list to that point to have one market tracked. All others have the US, Europe, Japan, etc. combined. B'z albums and singles, past and present, result in about $50,000,000 in revenue each year. now As with most artists, touring is where much of the money is made (for which numbers aren't reported).

[Folka]

Just wondering. Do you have any information about Koshi's vocal coach during the 90's? Because I feel he did an impressive quality jump from the beginning of 1990 to the 1998 (the Fireball and Survive tour)

[Jd-]

Just wondering. Do you have any information about Koshi's vocal coach during the 90's? Because I feel he did an impressive quality jump from the beginning of 1990 to the 1998 (the Fireball and Survive tour)

Very good question indeed. More recently, the person credited for the recordings' "Voice Direction" has been Hideyuki Terachi who also participates in the arrangement process. He's featured behind the controls of almost all of the modern B'z documentaries. He joined Being in, I think, 1995 or so (around the time B'z made the same jump). He first started being credited on 2002's KI single from Koshi's solo output and eventually came over to do B'z stuff.

My guess is much of it was just natural development given how many albums and songs they produced during that era. By the time Brotherhood hit, he'd really his stride. Notably, there is an otolaryngologist that travels with him during tours that at least ensures everything goes well on that front.

[Folka]

Oooh. Thank you. The timing seems perfect. So I guess it's really him who coached Koshi, since he started going all-out with the album Loose (especially the first track full of screams). However, Koshi's potential has always been there: just remember Out of Control from the RUN album, Kairaku no Heya from In the Life, and also Night of the Beast, when he was called Mr. Crazy Tiger.

[Raiden]

What better way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of DCTP than with a good cup of B'z latté?
https://twitter.com/Icafe14/status/977516878183583744

[Folka]

I read Koshi's harmonica will be reissued. Is there any way for me to have it first-hand?? I have 2 of 3 proxy accounts, but I'm not a B'z club member.

[JBLars]

I was wondering, what's everyone else's experience with turning other friends/music fans on to B'z? I've got a horrible track record with it. All but one or two people kinda shrug their shoulders, and even my Japanophile friends usually have no idea who they even are (despite their mind-blowing success). Now, I have a pet hypothesis on this you're welcome to take or leave: B'z music (and their appearance) might skew a little too close to known Western acts. They've expressed great admiration for Mr. Big in the past, and that's a great starting point considering how vanilla that band's reputation is with a great deal of American fans.

So with that in mind, am I the only one that thinks there's a perception of "oh, that weird and wacky Japan", and since B'z isn't as outlandish as your Gackt/X Japan/Babymetal - all of whom I adore, BTW - they get filed into a column that's just kinda bland? I mean, other musicians get it, witness Slash, Steve Vai, Larry Carlton, et cetera. But to Joe Sixpack? I can't quite get a read on why I get apathy from these great songs, or if it's an experience unique to the circles I run in?

Thoughts?