Written
by Barbara Conrady Club Quattro is a small live club without
seats, for about 300 people, so the atmosphere was rather private and personal.
The club was packed with people, and they were all enthusiastically celebrating
Yoko. The concert began with "Turned the Corner",
"Wouldn't it" and "I'm Dying". Yoko greeted us by saying,
"This is my first Japan tour in 22 years!"
Before
doing "Kurushi", Yoko told the story about the little girl in Hiroshima
trying to fold a thousand paper cranes before she died of leukaemia, which is
mentioned in the "Rising" booklet.
I
liked the live version of "Will I?" because of the special instruments
IMA played here: One was a bell used at Buddhist ceremonies. It suited that piece
very well. In "Are You Looking For Me?", it was great to see Yoko jump
and dance all over the stage. She climbed up imaginary walls and, most fascinating,
performed a bit of Butoh dance. Butoh is a modern experimental way of dance made
famous by the Japanese artist Kazuo Ohno. The characteristic thing about Butoh
is that the dancers bend and twist their bodies in a kind of "distorted"
way to express a certain feeling. She also imitated some Karate positions. It
all looked very funny and exciting. Yoko showed so much temperament, wit, and
cheerfulness. The last song before the encores, "Rising",
was my favourite one. As she had done in the concert at Itsukushima Shrine, Hiroshima,
eight months before, she added some Japanese lyrics to the song: "We are
stained with blood… Our bones lie beneath the new buildings, our blood is
still flowing beneath the new highways!" And, repeatedly, she sang, "Tachi-agarou
yo!", which means "Let's rise!" The song started very softly, became
gradually louder and harder, and finally again soft and sweet, with Sean's background
voice too beautiful to describe. There were two encores:
"How do you feel" - a rocky, speedy song - and "Like the Wind",
a song that Yoko and Sean had written during the tour. "It's the first Ono/Lennon
song," Yoko said. The Akasaka Blitz is a rather big
concert hall, so the atmosphere was different this time, but the audience was
just as enthusiastic. Sean took some photos of the audience. At
this concert, there was another encore: Mind Train, which was incredibly fantastic.
Sean imitated Yoko's scream-singing so magnificently I forgot to breathe. It
is always a special experience to see Yoko perform live on stage. I hope there
will be many more chances like that in the future…
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