Pop Life Suicide 1

Okay, I am completely blown away by Judy and Mary's Pop Life Suicide 1 (and I'll be getting to part 2 soon enough). I mean, I've seen them perform live before, in music videos and TV appearances, but this...is just ridiculous. This is Judy and Mary unleashed, I guess. In top form, at a great venue, at the peak of their career.

It is a thing to behold, I'll tell you. The boundless energy that the band always had on stage is heightened here somehow, taken to levels I haven't seen from them before. Everyone is doing exactly what they always did, but just...more, I guess. Yuki commands the universe on stage, as always, but this might be the most pristine example of her mastery of performance that I've seen. Igarashi is both surgical and boisterous at the drums, merrily singing along with Yuki even when there's no mic on him. Again, that's pretty normal, but he seems to be just a little more powerful here somehow. Even the generally stone-faced Onda appears to be having more fun than he often does, and his inventive bass playing stands out a bit more than usual.

And then there's Takuya. I've really never given Takuya enough credit in the past. I know that he handled a lot of Judy and Mary's songwriting and that his energy on stage was always great. I knew that his guitar riffs were some of the most creative ever crafted in the pop/punk genre. I knew that he was always full of surprises when he performed, pulling out crazy solos and silly stunts to entertain the audience. However, I always got a sense of...I don't know...sloppiness from his live performances. He'd miss strings on the guitar during a solo or sing a few off-color notes, and it would just stand out as being unprofessional, especially when the other three band members were always so flawless.

Well, whether or not that perception of sloppiness I had was ever really accurate, it's gone now. Pop Life Suicide 1 shows everything that Takuya was capable of, and it turns out to be a lot more than I ever expected. The man is on fire here, with every riff right on, every vocal part nicely done, and pretty much every solo a jaw-dropper. He really does some amazing things here, and his performance has increased my level of respect for him by several orders of magnitude.

So yeah, Pop Life Suicide 1 is just like any other Judy and Mary performance, only more. It's Judy and Mary at 110%. It's a definite must-see for JAM fans, and might just turn around a few people who have never heard them or never liked them. Is it worth 50+ bucks (with shipping) when it only has about an hour of content on it? Well, yeah. To me it is. JAM fans might want to think of it this way: it's probably not a whole lot more than a ticket to the concert (plus transportation and food) would have cost (and that's if you were in Japan at the time), and this is an experience you can relive whenever you want.

Of course, if you do get this disc (and/or its partner, which chronicles a different show) you might end up in the situation I'm in right now, which is trying to figure out how to afford Judy and Mary's other concert videos.