Major foreign acts such as the Arctic Monkeys, Megadeth, and Pixies will be performing at this year's SUMMER SONIC festival. TOKIO will be drawing in the attention, but how good really are they as a band? Music writer Fuyu Shogun writes:
"TOKIO has had a long career as a band, and I think that they have already exceeded the level of [idols holding instruments just because it was the 'in' thing] long ago. Drummer Masahiro Matsuoka has established a reputation for being stable and consistent, especially singer/guitarist Tomoya Nagase, who is also known for being a guitarist with great taste as his gear has even been featured in Guitar Magazine. He has in his possession a lot of vintage guitars from Fender, Gibson, Gretsch, and even has the top-of-the-line 'private stock' models from the brand PRS -- limited edition guitars that real guitar players would kill for, and enough to impress any guitar collector and enthusiast. There's even an anecdote that he placed a personal order to Fender's master builder, the person who creates Eric Clapton's guitars. And what's amazing about him is that he just doesn't keep these guitars for his collection, but actually uses them at concerts. When he plays the guitar, he doesn't lengthen the strap to lower his guitar, but actually plays it pretty high up his body, and actually looks cool doing so. Every time I see him on TV, I'm impressed at how he can play such difficult riffs while singing at the same time. Even Kobukuro's Kentaro Kobuchi-san vouches for Nagase's playing skills, after getting to know him through a vintage guitar shop."
"As for their song pieces, TOKIO have been collaborating with a lot of big-named artists since 2006. Miyuki Nakajima provided them with "Sorafune" in the same year, Yoshihiro Kai gave them the song "Hikari no machi" and "Run free (Swan dance wo kimi to)", while Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi provided them with the song "SEISYuN". They're essentially a rock band who eagerly challenges and incorporates Japanese folk song elements into their sound, which also adds to the "passion" and "manliness" of their songs. If people can just do away with the prejudice that TOKIO is from Johnny's, then I think that they do deserve to be recognized as a band."
This is a huge challenge for TOKIO. It will be very interesting to see how the people will be receiving them among all the other big-named acts at the festival.
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