New Commercial, Old Song, New Song & Lazona Kawasaki Plaza

Puffy will be featured in the "Lazona Bargain!" campaign Lazona Kawasaki Plaza with a new song "Colorful Wave Surfers" starting 6/22/15.

"Colorful Wave Surfers" was composed by Okamoto Koki of The Okakmotos.  Not that I have a ton of exposure to The Okamotos (something I will correct), but they seem more rock than Rolly.  So that is good news.  Some chatter about more collaborations but nothing solid and hopefully not Rolly.

It is a little disappointing that Puffy seems to be kind of relegated.  Their opening for a Dutch Pop-Jazz singer Caro Emerald is something I'll chock up to a warm up for their own tour... but I cannot recall the last time Puffy was an opening act.  Now Puffy is shilling for a mall, albeit a fairly big mall but according to Trip Advisor not especially noteworthy.  Puffy keeps their hand in the game and it gives me something to write about.

Additionally this fall Puffy will appear in the film "Uchimura Summers THE MOVIE Angel" and contribute the song "Kore ga Watashi no Ikiru Michi" as the theme song.  Cool stuff, maybe I should have led with that.

(h/t to the Puffy page on Facebook)

Happy 19th Birthday to Puffy

A very happy 19th birthday to Puffy.  Who knows what the future holds, but lets hope for something awesome for the 20th!

Picture via @puffy

New Toyota Commercial Featuring Puffy

Along with a number of other artists on toyotown.jp, Puffy is now featured in a new ad for Toyota's Corolla Fielder Hybrid in Japan.  Check out the website version here.

Here is the TV spot:

Pretty much Puffy when singing is the dominant artist, which is cool.  Also they seem to be having fun with it, which is also nice to see.

Puffy's 2015 Tokyo Billboard Show

Puffy played on Thursday April 9th at the 2015 Billboard show in Tokyo (h/t natalie,mu).  It appears Ami and Yumi were more relaxed in this show than the prior year.   It is hard to tell if there is something going on with their dynamic or perhaps fallout from Yumi's second marriage ending at that time put a strain on things.  In either case it is nice to see (according to Google translate) that they seem looser and in a better place.

Picture via Natalie.mu

Several take away items from the article I pulled most of this information from.  Drums (Koichi Kawanshi) and bass (Kinoshita Hiroharu) are back in order.  A keyboardist is also present (Mikio Ito).  My best guess is the guitar player is new (Yusuka Fujita) and the only one.  The last is an interesting choice, as Puffy in in the past year went two guitars and no keyboardist.  From what I heard from the live performances that have been streamed, this is probably a better choice as keyboards are integral to Puffy's musical style.  How important we may debate, but they are.

Picture via Natalie.mu

The set list was a mix of what we would expect, no surprises:

     1. K2G
     2. Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi
     3. Daisuki (Cover)
     4. Boogie Woogie #5
     5. boom boom beat
     6. Puffy de Rumba
     7. Mother
     8. Jet Keisatsu
     9. Nagisa Ni Matsuwaru Etc
     10. Radio Tokyo
     11. Asia no Junshin (encore)

Not sure if this tells us anything about the next year, but Ami made mention last year about some things coming to the fore in the spring so what those are is as much a mystery to you as it is to me.  In either case Puffy continues to keep their hand in the game and that is good.

PUFFY NO NAZO NI KANTO KINKEN TOUR

Puffy announced today that they are doing a new mini-tour around the Kanto region.  The Kanto region is around Tokyo and this is a four date tour so it is pretty modest so far as tours go.

The shows start at 17:30, no information if there is an opening act.

• 7/11 (Sat) Chiba and Kashiwa PALOOZA 
• 7/12 (Sun) Gunma Takasaki club FLEE 
• 7/18 (Sat) Saitama · HEAVEN'S ROCK Saitama New Urban Center
• 7/19 (Sun) Ibaraki Mito LIGHT HOUSE

Great to see Puffy keeping their hand in the game. I am more curious to see if this is a precursor to something more ambitious.  The set list might give us some clues but I doubt we'll see that until near the time of the concerts.