Sunday 1 July 2007

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (Live at Utrecht)

Last Night N., two friends and also former roommates and yours truly went to a concert of the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, a ten men formation from Tokyo (what a surprise), Japan. For those who are not familiair with their music you can describe their music as Madness meets The Pogues with a bit of punk-, jazz-, soul-, funk-, bigband- and even sometimes klezmerinfluences added to the overall mixture, creating a live performance that turns every musicevent into a partying, jumping and dancing whole.

N. and I saw the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra for the first time two years ago in 2005 at the Parkpop Festival, a free music festival at The Hague, which is always held at the last Sunday of June every year. Although they were playing early in the afternoon at the Parkpop Festival, they got the whole crowd jumping and dancing, including me and that's quite an achievement if you know that I'm not a big dancinglover. They have a great and very energetic live performance and they also proved that last night.

We had a wonderful and fun time last night N. and I manage to made a few pictures and I shot two videos that I uploaded at YouTube. I have embedded the videos in this posting. You'll find them together with some pictures below. The videos were shot with a compact digital photocamera, so the video- and sound quality is not extremely high, but good enough to get an impression of the live performance and the atmosphere. Because there was not enough light and because of the jumping and dancing crowd it was difficult to get sharp pictures, so some of the pics are a bit moved sometimes.

TSPO is touring through Europe now. You can check their schedule on their website (see below). If they are coming near you and you are in the mood for a great night with fun- and partymusic then don't hesitate and go. You won't regret it.

I also made a posting about the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra at my photoblog at BrownNoisePhotos.

Enjoy the videos!



They also do a great version of the thememusic from "The Godfather". They also played it last night, but this video was shot (not by me) in August 2006 at another concert of the TSPO in Barcelona.

Official website of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra

3 comments:

Jorasho said...

Gaaf verslag man, ook de foto's. Kan me niet herinneren je gezien te hebben, maar stond ook iets meer vooraan. Volgende maand weer?

B_ForeverYoung said...

Misschien, ik weet nog niet hoe mijn agenda rond de 21e eruit ziet.

Anon said...

You have a rather cool, very well-written blog. I'm very happy to have come across it. The Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra are pretty wild, I'll have to check out their website, more of their music, etc. Thanks for sharing.