"Do you know what Polysics means?!"

"Polysics means.... ROCK AND FUCKING ROLL."

Truer words have never been spoken by a screaming japanese man.

Wow, what a concert. The Polysics were on fire last night. And despite a myriad of technical issues jumping up throughout the night, they rocked the goddamned house down.

We showed up at about 6:45, after a big rush to get ready and get to the venue. The line was wrapped around the little square but it wasn't too shabby. The people in line, however, were not so hot. Teenagers teenagers teenagers. Holy teenagers. All ages shows should be kissing my ass. I have never been to any event that had more of a "con" feeling to it, outside of cons obviously. Nerdy, socially awkward, young Japanophiles loudly discussing "obscure" things they know about while glancing around to see if anybody just heard how cool they are.

We got inside at about 7:30 and wandered over to the merch booth. They had some t-shirts and cd's and the drummer was hanging out. I said hi to him, then we went to the bar. A vodka tonic was $7 (thank LA) so we didn't drink. All in all, we didn't quite do enough drugs before the show last night, so the soberness was the only downer for the evening.

We crowded in, standard jostling the crowd bullshit. Asshat tall asian guy with spikey hair. All that jazz. The Outline opened up at 8:15-ish and they were okay. They had a cool washed guitar, electro side, but mostly they sounded like a Strokes-Cover-Band cover band. Really 3rd class. The vocals were baaaaad.

Then we waited...and waited. And for craps sake waited. And then they came. Hiro came out screaming, Kayo hit her keys, Fumi strutted with her bass, and Yano snuck back to his drums. They started off with Kaja Kaja Guu, one of my personal favorites, and the energy never stopped. I've got a ton of blurry pictures because they wouldn't stop moving (and no flash allowed). They continued to rock through about 15 songs. The My Sharona cover was a big hit, of course, as well as all their usual biggies. Coelakanth Is Android was a real me-pleaser.

Hiro and Kayo were an amazing pair. Hiro was all over the place, rocking and thrashing, licking his guitar during solos, hamming it up and screaming the whole time. Kayo, on the other hand, was a robot through the whole show. she never once smiled, never showed emotion. She just turned stoically towards the audience during her vocoder solos and belted out her little robot voice. Even her keyboard playing was robotic in appearance, whipping a hand up after every lick. We got a few headbangs out of her while she rocked that keyboard. It was rad.

So after a hail of "Sank Yiu Ros Angeres!" and some great crowd interaction, they left. And of course came back for the obligatory rocking the house encore.

After that, we hung around the joint for a bit, waiting for the band to come out. I picked up a tshirt from the merch booth. Yano showed up and I got him to sign our poster. Then the fucking Knitting Factory jerks kicked us out. Apparently the band didn't want to come out. Which was a bummer. But oh well, next time it is.

You can see the rest of the pictures over here. I could not recommend the Polysics more. It was, hands down, the most fun I've ever had at a concert.

Live or recorded, you should be rocking with them for the new electric revolution.