Puffy on Downtown DX

Falling into a Venn diagram that looks like the Japanese flag is Puffy on Downtown DX.  Became an avid fan of Downtown over the past few years and cool to see Puffy on their (one of many) shows.



Sort of funny seating arrangement with Ami and Yumi in the back near Matsumoto and Hamada.  It illustrates how wee they both are.

Puffypipoyama Live TV Performance and PV

Here is a live version of Puffy's new song Puffypipoyama.

Using japanwebproxy.com you can view the PV here.

Not a great live performance, but given the nature of Puffypipoyama itself that does not really bother me.  Some songs, even great ones, do not translate well live.  The band being there to faux play along is even more rediculous than normal "live" Japanese TV show performances.

After watching the PV itself, it is fairly entertaining on a visual level.  Puffypipoyama is not good, at best it is derivative of Datsu Dystopia.  If an album of songs like either are on the docket for Puffy's next release it really makes me question the direction Puffy is taking.

Is Puffy trying to win new fans by changing their sound?

Is Puffy following a trend in the Japanese music scene?

The just following orders from the distributor?

Valid questions... but of course there are probably no good answers.

That said, Puffypipoyama is better than Wake Up, Make Up, which I realize is a low bar.

Very Early Puffy TV Appearance

Not a whole lot going on now that translates to blogging about Puffy. Which is only odd because they have a tour going on and new album out... that doesn't mean I didn't find anything...

I found this very early TV rendition of Asia No Junshin that I had never seen. It really hammers home what a great and lengthy career Ami and Yumi have had.



Doing some housekeeping for the site this week.... then I guess I will have to do some more album review features.

Happy Birthday Live

A live performance of Happy Birthday. Like with many Japanese TV appearances the instruments are previously recorded and Ami and Yumi are singing along with the track.

My take away is that Happy Birthday should be pretty good live.

A Very Lengthy Puffy Interview

From the show A-Studio in November of 2010, this is a really long interview with Puffy. Too bad my Japanese is not at all good enough to keep up. At any rate, enjoy!

A Flashback To The Past...

Sorry gang, other commitments have been eating away at writing time, but I came across this video today. Fairly dated but a version of Asia No Junshin one I have not seen....



I would probably describe this one as more fun than good, but it is for a TV spot so most of the problems stem from that. Hearing Glay and Ami do Asia No Junshin live, from roughly the same time was really great however.

Have a great weekend. Hopefully I will have more opportunity to write over Thanksgiving week. That also implies free time to listen to music, which is a major benefit!

Ami/Yumi solo, a newish interview, and a lost TV commercial

TofuUnion found some great recent Puffy videos on YouTube that I hadn't seen before. I admit I don't do daily Puffy searches there, but I do look around quite often, so I think these are probably worth re-posting - if I hadn't seen them, I doubt I'm the only one.

This is my favorite - Ami playing "Always Dreamin' About You" and Yumi playing "Watashi no Nozomi", both solo:


I'm a sucker for seeing them actually play their instruments. I know they can, they just either never seem to want to, or more likely are encouraged not to. And it's super-rare to actually see video of them playing solo like this. Apparently this is from the "2001: a halfway of space odyssey" concert.

Here's a recent interview from DokoGaTV, which is not something I'd heard of but is apparently a Hawaiian TV station that also now broadcasts in Japan:


It's not the greatest interview, honestly - it feels like something that should have happened in conjunction with the "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi" show launch. It feels like they're past all this. He does ask one question about honeycreeper, but it's a question any of their fans would already know the answer to. I really wonder who this interview is intended for.

But it's still interesting only in that it's subtitled for an American audience. It's not often these days that we get to see newly translated interviews with them.

And lastly, a 1 minute commercial for cooking oil. I know exactly when this is from - it was this campaign, so 2005/2006. But I've never seen this full-length ad - you don't see these a lot on Japanese TV, where the ads usually come at you rapid fire.


I'm amused at the fact that when Ami flips the food up in the air, it clearly comes down all over the place despite the editor's valiant attempt at obscuring it.

Blah!

I'm in a rut. Feel like I've got nothing to post. I'm gonna do a review of something, sometime this week. Know why? Because every time I spend a lot of time writing a review of something Puffy does, they make some major announcement that pushes my review down the page and out of everybody's consciousness and basically renders all my work moot. So hopefully by writing something long-form, I'll jinx myself again and bring on some news.

In the meantime, here's an episode of Hey! Hey! Hey! that I hadn't seen before to keep you entertained:


The hairstyles would put it in the "Illustrated History" era.

Puffy on the CDTV 15th Anniversary Special

Couple nights ago, Puffy appeared on the 15 year anniversary special of TBS's CDTV (aka Countdown TV) alongside other major names including Ayumi Hamasaki, a reunited Southern All Stars, Glay, Kumi Koda and others. The special itself was four hours long - it was a pretty major TV event. Puffy appeared both in a short interview segment and later for a "live" performance, although like all of their TV appearances lately, it's obvious the band isn't really playing.

Here they are, watch it while it's hot:


Higher quality version is here.

If you're wondering what everybody laughs at towards the end of the interview, Ami was talking about about how she wanted to be a flight attendant before joining Puffy. One of the guys asks her "well, aren't you glad you formed Puffy instead?" and she replies with something like "I'm not sure yet."

As for the performance, I wasn't sure whether it was them or the various TV shows apparently insisting on a pre-recorded backing band these days (Enapou's just playing air guitar back there), but I did notice that several of the other bands on this show seemed to be playing really, actually live. So, disappointingly, it seems like it may be Puffy themselves responsible for this.

Seems odd that they'd play "All Because of You" rather than their newer single, doesn't it?

Hi Hi Puffy Bu

Seems like I didn't miss much during my focus on the Olympics - at least, not much that seems worth writing about 2 weeks later, anyway. Things are pretty quiet while Puffy are in the recording studio, and they're really keeping everything close to the vest this time. They're not always quite so secretive. Wonder if that means anything.

Anyway, until there's something else to talk about, enjoy this episode of "Hi Hi Puffy Bu", Puffy's Asahi TV show from a year or two ago, if you haven't seen it already. These episodes are not easy to find online and haven't been really since the show was on - so I thought I'd post at least this one for those of you who missed it (it's nice quality too! The only episode I have like this). Watch it while it lasts. (Those reading via RSS, this is a Veoh video and they don't embed well in RSS readers. Come to the blog itself.)


By the way, my wife, who loves Yumi, tells me she sounds really "urban" in this video. Even moreso than she usually does. Actually, "urban" is not the word she used, but that's about the nicest way I can put it :) Like an American with a thick Brooklyn accent. Any of you native speakers agree?

Ami's Brian Setzer Hot Rod Guitar

I posted in the midst of a drunken stupor a while back about Puffy's guitars - they really can play, you know. (Who am I still trying to convince?) Well, I didn't even realize I had this video - this is Ami showing off her Gretsch Brian Setzer Hot Rod to Setzer himself. She says she bought it because it's so beautiful, even though it's too big for her.

And what the heck, even though it's not my favorite song, I've left their performance of "Tokyo I'm On My Way" tacked on afterwards.


I like how soft-spoken Setzer is; he even sounds a little nervous! The guy's a legend and he acts like that. Sounds like he's even trying his hand at a little Japanese at the beginning of the clip.

By the way, you too can own a purple Gretsch G6120SH Brian Setzer Hot Rod guitar, for the reasonable sum of just $2,450.

PUFFY on PopJam

Aaaand, we're back. Sorta. My house guests have moved on; hopefully I haven't missed any big Puffy news over the past few days. (I threw that single announcement up in about five minutes on my way out to Coney Island the other day.)

Anyway, here's a somewhat random video to celebrate my return. It's Puffy on PopJam from a year or so ago. The performance of "Hataraku Otoko" was posted previously on YouTube by somebody else, but they had cut the little interview that came afterwards for some reason. I've now restored it. And the commercials too! (Ok, you don't care about those, but I just didn't bother cutting them out.)

I know, it's not much, but it's something.

Here you go:

Puffy on Our Music 2

Not sure how old this is, but I'm gonna guess 2006. I looked around for it on the net before uploading, didn't see it. So my bet is not many of you have seen it either.

I haven't attempted to understand what they're talking about, so unfortunately I'm gonna be no help for my American readers. But be sure to stick around for the performance of Boogie Woogie #5 in full kimono towards the end. I'll say at least that my understanding is that on this show, a celebrity interviews their favorite musicians. This guy is not an interviewer; he's an actor and a dancer. And I believe he's friends with the girls, so he chose them. (I may have a detail or two wrong, but that's the basic gist.) (Update: I've got it backwards. See Cheshire Cat's comment below for more info.)

To anyone looking at this via RSS, come to the actual blog to watch the video - Veoh doesn't work in most RSS readers.

Papapapa Puffy!

If only this show were still on!

You've seen clips of it. You've read about its origins. But you've probably never seen a full episode. This show pre-dates ubiquitous broadband, it pre-dates Bittorrent, it pre-dates digital broadcasting (in Japan). It's never been released on DVD or home video of any kind, that I know of. Some of the later episodes were sort of on the edge of all that new technology, so earlier episode clips are even rarer than the later ones. But almost all of the clips you see are copies people made for themselves on their analog VCR's and then captured to their PC's. And there just aren't really all that many out there, considering how long the show ran (1997-2002).

Well, here you go - a full 28 minutes of Puffy being Puffy (complete with commercials). They really are hilarious hosts. This episode dates to probably mid-1998, in the show's heyday - how do I know? Watch the ads!

If you're wondering what's going on in the episode, well, most of it's pretty self-explanatory - but all the dress-up and photography (which is the best part of the episode) is for their then-upcoming calendar. Anyone have the calendar that they ended up making here?

Anyway, without further ado:


I'm not counting on this staying up forever. I wrestled with whether or not to post it at all. But it's a ten year old episode of a variety TV show that's otherwise lost to the ether. Is it really better if nobody ever sees this again?