saw melt banana for the first time last night
 

Amazing. I've seen .. I dunno .. quick estimate, 500 bands live? And they have to be amongst the best, if not the best. So fucking tight. Jesus. I've been a fan since 8th grade, I remember hearing them and thinking they weren't even real -- like, how can music even be made like this? -- and then seeing them live made me realize that 7-8 years later, I'm still not quite sure: I can't believe how tight they were, with no mistakes, in the midst of these highly complex songs. Agata is obviously a guitar genius from the records, but seeing him live confirms he's probably one of the best guitarists of our generation. Any other guitarist playing like him would stand there and carefully pay attention to which effects pedal he was pressing, but Agata jumped around like a madman and was completely covered in sweat, running over to grab a slide off of his amp, using it for 2 seconds, running over, setting it back, stepping on a pedal for a second, stepping on two pedals simultaneously for a few seconds, then activating all 25 pedals for a few seconds. Just.. ridiculously amazing.. wow.

My mind was blown. And that's fucking hard to do.

unless you'er a jug of robo hahahahaa

kidding.
glad you had fun, hope i'll get to see them live one day.

they where as lous as 10,000 babies all crying through megaphones when i saw them and they where excellent.

I've seen like 50 bands live , and Melt Banana twice.
First time they were very good and second time very good too but just like the first time so it bored me a bit.
Each time I went to talk to the members of the group , before or after the show and they hardly understand/speak english ( except Dave from Burnt By The Sun , ha!).
I wander how they can work with american musicians or producers .
Anyway , that's a great band.

ditto

I've seen them three times and each time I've seen them they've gotten progressively more boring. Good live band, and definitely tight, but they seriously need to change up their set if they're going to tour the U.S. every couple of years.

Makes me even more bummed that my freind's car blew up on the way to the melt banana show

blew my mind the first time i saw them, too.

i'll be seeing them for the third at the end of the month and i'm super excited, b/c they haven't been back to louisiana since before katrina happened.

I missed them earlier in the year. I was so disappointed, now even more.

i've seen them 7 times too, btw, always fantastic

Regarding "changing up the set": They played every song off of Bambi's Dilemma, what appeared to be a new song, a Blondie cover, ONE cell-scape song, and.. uh.. definitely nothing earlier than teeny shiny.

ohh man i wish i could see them!!!!

yes, i have two bootlegs, different sets both of them.

I cannot wait to see them, and chances are they'll eventually come to England unless Agata gets run over by a bus. Seem brilliant still, though I'd love to hear them carry on performing their earlier songs too. Needless to say, Melt-Banana are one of my all-time favourites and I listen to them nearly every day.

I definitely think this band understands English more than they let on; from what I've heard, they have given interviews with perfect english, though they appear to not know it at all ("we alre ar uhhmm... mewlt... bernana... uh... toke.. yer ahhhhhh jawpan!!!"). I mean, ALL their lyrics in English. Not to mention that they met at a university of foreign studies, which means they probably studied English. Not to mention that (maybe not when they were in school but DEFINITELY now) English is a required class for kids in Japan. But either way, I saw a Number Girl documentary where they had a few translators and I'd say Melt Banana's a little more prolific than they are, so I'm sure Melt Banana has no problem with the language barrier.

My question is: Why can't Melt Banana keep a drummer? They've seriously had 5 drummers that I know of, maybe more, weird..

Just checking them out now, and they're fucking cool!

they definitely know more than a little english. i've sat down and chatted it up with rika before. now we didn't discuss german politics or anything of the sort, but we still had a decent little convo.

i think they ritually disembowel their drummers at the end of every tour. i've seen them with watchma and dave from discordance axis on drums. who do they have this time? i know the drums on cell-scape were actually just programmed...did they do the same for bambi's dilemma (i haven't heard it yet)

there's definitely someone drumming, it's not listed who it is, but dave gets credited for crontibuting ideas.

dave's actually been with them for a long time now, as far as the first cell-scape tour.

weird. i saw them right after cell-scape came out and he actually wasn't playing with them.

probably the second cellscapse tour; i've never had the fortune of seeing them live, you know?

yeah, it's odd, the cell scape drum programming/real drumming controversy is spoken of on their wiki..

i think the japanese drummers they have (there are 2 i think) can't tour and so they use dave witte for playing in the the rest of the world,
which is a shame because the japanese drummers i've seen them play with kick his arse.

cardinal rob, they've been coming to the UK every couple of years for the last 8 years, maybe longer, i reckon they'll come back next year.

when i saw 'em the other day, they had a japanese drummer. who was amazing.

melt banana hates touring japan, because it's expensive.

Brilliance. They last came in 2005 so they're due. As for the drummers, it seems to happen with quite a few groups, non? I've no idea if this is because drummers just burn out in certain bands, they're only getting paid 3% of what the rest of the band earn, they speak their mind and become ostracised within the group or what.

i fucking love melt bananna, japan has so much great extreme noisy music, boredoms obviously being the one everyone knows about, and im sure a fair amount listen to polysics.

But, anyone here listen to Fuck on The Beach? Thrash Noisy Punk Metal Spazz i duno, which means they kinda sound like the band Spazz, anyways theyre nuts, i love em.

I've gradually lost interest in their records since Cell-scape, and you've seen them twice more than me, y'bastard, but they're still one of the few bands I wouldn't like to miss for love nor money. Did you see the first British shows? I still find it hard to fathom quite how amazing their first drummer (or the first drummer I saw, at least) was.

the first time i saw them in the uk was probably 2001 or 2002, so i probably didn't see the first british shows. their recorded output i've always found somewhat lacklustre.

They were in the burgh last saturday, but I forgot about it.

o yeah, i forgot, im seein melt-bannana dec 4th at rialto theater in tucson. locust are opening. i fuckin despise the locust. i wish i was back home in boston cuz the daughets opened up for them. the daughters are an excellent band. i saw them in boston a couple years back and they were great. well the band was great but their lead singer has a severe drinking problem, he was heavily wasted.

FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!

i saw them last night and it's easily one of the best bands i've ever seen live, it was so amazing. agata is a fucking virtuoso, dude has like twice if not three times as many pedals as omar from the mars volta and you hardly see him tap dancing, it's amazing how he uses pure sound to make the rhythms. rika is just a little taller than her bass and she still can play those hard as fuck basslines, they had a japanese drummer that played just as awesome as dave witte and yako was amazing, at the start of the show, she took a banana, peeled it, took a bite and threw it into the crowd, during one song early, she went to the lip of the stage, and just when the song was about to kick into a blastbeat again, she tried to kiss a dude.

plus, this was easily one of the most intense slamdancing experiences i've ever had.

and also, i've seen and played many noise shows with very loud, distorted and extreme frequencies into play (just the night before i saw wolf eyes) and not once i had any trouble with my ears afterwards but today, they are ringing fucking loud.

fuck yeah, i love them!!!

Yeah, the Japanese drummer played when I saw them. He was amazing.

Agata is pretty easily in the top 10 best guitarists of all time.

Amazing band.

One of the only bands I've ever heard (besides hearing Dillinger Escape Plan when I was 13) that just completely reshaped the way I thought about music. Amazing.

the thing is that what they do is extremely complicated yet they have songs, with verses and choruses and weird parts but every single one of those parts is essential to the songs, even the microsongs and their earlier songs. and they make it all sound so natural, you really can't tell when they are playing actual notes or just noise unless you really pay attention.

and agata's fucked sg is the stuff of legends, he basically plays a broken guitar.

His tuning is really weird too, I don't see how he doesn't break more strings...

Something interesting about their last album is the more obvious use of power chords.. they've used power chords a ton but they really noticeably used them a lot on the last album. And it sounded great! He's not afraid to do something like that if it sounds good, even if it's a riff anyone can play. He's not technical for the sake of being technical... but still, no one could play like he does.

Does anyone here knows Agata's solo record ?

Yeah, "spike".

It's alright. Just a bunch of weird noises.

the most pivotal musical experience i've had was the first time i saw these guys play live, i only had a vague idea of who they were, they were opening for some other bands i was going to see, they changed my life, no joke

im seeing them in dublin in june.. cant fucking wait. supported by party wierdo, a dublin band that kicks ass!

ive seen them three times, once in december, once last year opening for tool, and once a few years ago.

everytime they blew my mind.

in december, i got to the club waaaaaay too early, and none of my friends were there. so i went up to the merchandise counter and started trying to talk to the japanese merch dude. soon enough, i was sellin shit with the dude. i was there for a couple hrs, and to show his gratitude he bowed and gave me a tshirt, agata's newest solo cd, and some pins.

i then got too go right in front of the stage, literally a foot away from agata banging his effects pedals like a madman, one of the best shows of my life.

maaaaan!!!! they were selling it at the merch table and i didn't bring enough money!!!

yako and rika were selling their merch.