The Editorial Department Reports! sumika's 10th Anniversary Live, Overflowing with Tears and Blessings

My first rock festival was the "ROCK IN JAPAN FESTIVAL" in the summer of 2016, when I was a sophomore in college.

Although I had bought the ticket after being invited by a friend, my knowledge of rock bands at the time was limited to a few songs by BUMP OF CHICKEN, SCANDAL, RADWIMPS, and SHISHAMO, which the light music club had covered at my high school cultural festival.
Thinking I really should study up before going to the festival, I started by "learning about rock bands" on days when I didn't have a first-period class, lying in bed from the morning and letting YouTube play continuously.
Thanks to the fact that many bands were releasing "songs that get you excited and make you dance at festivals" back then, I remember enjoying listening to song after song and learning about various artists, thinking, "Oh, so there's a band like this."


Among them, there was one artist that was particularly pop-oriented,
and yet, they sang lyrics that seemed a bit strange, like <My thoughts for you are like that gas coming out of your mouth, soda> <Hey, cheat on me, hey, look away>...

—In the end, that band was performing at Rockin' the day after I went, so I couldn't see them that year, but I remember telling my friend next to me, while feeling a little nervous inside, "You know, there's this band called sumika I've been curious about lately, and they're playing here tomorrow."

"I was a little curious, but I couldn't see them."
Perhaps that memory made me even more interested, like the "one that got away," and from then on, I started listening to sumika's old recordings, and before I knew it, I was buying their new CDs and began to connect with sumika's music and lyrics.


So, when I was finally able to see sumika's act at Rockin' the following year, I was already able to enjoy them as a band I "liked" rather than one I was just "curious about," and
while it might be fine to just listen with your ears or watch on a screen, the first time you experience a sumika concert live,
you share emotions with everyone, you sing with everyone, and I felt every time the song changed, "Oh, how fun this is."
It is thanks to sumika's concerts that I was able to think, "The place where you can receive music most purely and have your heart shaken is at a live concert."

▼ This is an album I've loved ever since.

Time passed, and it was 2022.
It was announced that the 10th-anniversary solo concert "sumika 10th Anniversary Live 'Ten to Ten to 10'" would be held at Yokohama Stadium in Kanagawa Prefecture, sumika's home.

Because vocal participation had been restricted for the past few years, I hadn't been able to experience the true goodness of a sumika concert, so I was looking forward to finally experiencing a concert again now that the restrictions had been lifted.
I'm sure sumika themselves felt the same way.



—That is exactly why the news of his passing was so sudden.

I vividly remember my hands shaking and my mind going blank for a while when I saw that news.


Even during the period leading up to the concert, although I wanted to listen to sumika's music, that bottomlessly bright smile and the sight of him strumming his guitar with a short strap would always come to mind—because the place sumika had given me was so significant, I couldn't easily accept it, and I could only stare at the band's official social media, which was just calmly conveying the facts.


And then, the day of the concert.

Even though Yokohama Stadium is an outdoor stage without a roof, the weather was unfortunately rainy.
As the concert time approached, the color of the ground began to change little by little, and I hurriedly bought a raincoat at a shop.
By the time it was raining quite hard, the concert began.
The monitors showed fragmented scenes of the four members of sumika over the past 10 years.
Then, the three of them, Kataoka-san, Baron-san (Arai-san), and Ogarin (Ogawa-san), appeared and were enveloped in applause.

The first song was "Uten Kekko" (Rain or Shine), a title that seemed to represent that day's concert perfectly.
This song has a guitar solo at the end of the first verse, and as we watched to see what would happen,
there were 8 bars where the melody was absent, with no one playing it in his place and no recording playing.

But during that time—
In my heart, at full volume, Jun-chan's guitar was definitely playing.
Our guitar hero was no longer visible to the eye, and only Jun-chan's guitar was left on a stand where he should have been, but I felt that the music was still alive in our hearts.
I was happy about that, but at the same time sad, and I couldn't tell if what was wetting my cheeks was rain or tears anymore.

The setlist from there was a torrent.
Including the medley, it reached nearly 40 songs in total, and songs with sumika's characteristic variety of musicality were played in rapid succession, even with MC breaks in between.

There was a scene in the rock tune "Fukkatsu no Jumon" where Kataoka-san played the solo on Jun-chan's guitar instead, but basically, Jun-chan's parts were supplemented by guitar audio playback or support from guest members.


While it kept raining and we and sumika were all soaking wet, there were many words related to rain in the lyrics (which I was able to notice thanks to listening to them in this weather), and especially when listening to "Ashita Hareru sa," which was co-written by Kataoka-san and Jun-chan, I felt like this rain was a message from Jun-chan.

Thus, it seemed the performance would end with "Dengonka" and a chorus of 33,000 people... but at the very end, the three of them appeared on the center stage again.

"Uten Kekko," which was played as the first song of this concert—at which time the monitor was split into four and Jun-chan's guitar was shown, and the guitar solo was blank—was performed again in a session by just the three of them.


<I won't stop, I won't stop, my feet still want to keep moving>

—In the "Uten Kekko" performed by just the three of them,
there must have been a deep, deep sadness that we could never know, but I felt their resolve and determination that as long as there are people who want to say "I'm home" to sumika, and above all, as long as sumika themselves are fans of sumika, they will continue as three.


ーーーーーー

There is a message from an MC by Kataoka-san at a concert I went to 5 years ago that I have always loved.

"I thought I'd look back on my music life, including things before sumika, thinking about how much has happened in my music life.

I wrote down the schools I went to and the companies I joined on the left side, and the reasons for applying on the right side, but the left side is just terrible.
sumika has been a band for 5 years, but at the 5-year mark, it's kind of damaged goods, so to speak.
I've released a CD (with a previous band), and the band I was in before that lasted about 10 years, so if you look only at the history on the left, it's full of scars. If it were a company, I wouldn't sign a contract with this person, so it was quite a situation. It's relatively inferior no matter who looks at it... it's too rough a sea.

The members of sumika, and the staff team, are people who used to be salarymen, people who used to be hairdressers, or people who were betrayed by the artists they were in charge of; if you look only at the left side, they are all people full of scars, but
in the end, what's important is what's written on the right side, in that blank space; that's the most important thing, isn't it? Isn't it most important that the answer you give when asked 'What do you want to do now?' is attractive?

Because I've been able to do it with that feeling, even when we suspended activities, even when I lost my voice, even when people at live houses made a sour face when I said I wanted to perform, I've been able to walk for 5 years while saying 'haha'.

How about your resumes? I don't think it means anything if the right side is blank.

What do you want to do now?
What do you want to do when you go home today?
Is it work, study, housework, or childcare?
I think anything is fine, but no matter how much other people laugh at you, no matter how much they say it's meaningless, sumika has been laughed at, so there isn't a single member in our team who would laugh at whatever is written on the right side.

So, I have one request.
Please, don't leave the right side, which you can write freely on, empty.
Show me everything you want to do now. If you can't show it to anyone, show it to us. We've built a home like that and are always waiting.
Fill in a wonderful right side and come home anytime.
We are always waiting, prepared to say 'Welcome back'."

(Edited and posted from a live MC)
ーーーーーー


This time, it should have been the kind of thing that would make that "right side" go completely blank.
Even so, sumika was looking at the future. In fact, their concerts for this year and next year have already been decided.



"Continue to say 'Welcome back' as sumika."

I'm really glad they made that decision,
and that they created a place where we can say "I'm home."


I'm glad I like sumika, I thought,
and it was a concert where I could celebrate their 10th anniversary from the bottom of my heart.

sumika 10th Anniversary Live 'Ten to Ten to 10' Setlist

1. Uten Kekko
2. Lovers
3. Fiction
4. Fukkatsu no Jumon
5. 1.2.3..4.5.6
6. Soda
7. Porter
8. Dasei no March
9. Equal
10. enn
11. Wasuremono
12. New World
13. Strawberry Fields
14. No.5
15. Himitsu
16. Tomei
17. Shiranai Dareka / sumika [camp session]
18. Utopia / sumika [camp session]
19. Travelling / sumika [camp session]
20. IN THE FLIGHT / sumika [camp session]
21. Toketa Taion, Toketa Maho
22. Zekkyo Serenade
23. Flower
24. My Rich Summer Blues
25. Medley
(The Flag Song/Chester Copperpot/KOKYU/Lyla/Jasmine/Late Show/Lamp)
26. Fanfare
27. Ashita Hareru sa
28. Shake & Shake
29. Orange
<Encore>
30. Starting Over
31. Negai
32. "Dengonka"
33. Uten Kekko All Movements

The footage of this concert will be broadcast on WOWOW in June!

For other programs related to sumika, click here.

<SKY PerfecTV! note editorial department live report>

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