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..