2017
On January 11, Hide participated in the 12th annual Onsyuhai (Sound Kick Cup) soccer tournament, which has a mix of musicians and pro soccer players. He was again part of the entertainment team TFA. Other team members included Jiro (Glay), Ai Ishigaki (formerly of The Mad Capsule Market's), etc. Later in May, photos appeared where Hide was playing with the team but it may have just been for fun as it was not the date of a tournament.
The year began with a series of 6 fan club shows (Fish Tanker's Only 2017) starting on January 21 at Club Citta' Kawasaki and ending on February 5 at Osaka Namba Hatch.
The final date of the tour supporting the Atom Miraiha No.9 album held last year was released on April 26 as Tour Atom Miraiha No.9 -Final-. (Their official website has the wrong date in numerical format but the correct date written in Japanese.)
On March 8, U-ta appeared at the first "Ongaku To Hito" magazine sponsored talk event called Oretachi, Pro Yakyu Daisuki Musician Desu! (meaning We Are Musicians Who Love Pro Baseball!) held at Shinjuku Loft Plus One. The event consisted of pro musicians discussing their love of pro baseball. U-ta wore a yellow Tigers official fan club jersey. Other musicians who appeared include Atsushi Inoue (New Rote'ka; supporting Yokohama DeNA BayStars), Koji Ueno (The Hiatus supporting; Hiroshima Toyo Carp), Takuya "Moby" Okamoto (Scoobie Do; advertised as supporting the Chicago Cubs but wore a Chiba Lotte Marines jersey), Great Maekawa (Flower Companyz; supporting Chunichi Dragons), and Shin'ichirou Satou (The Pillows; supporting Yokohama DeNA BayStars). The Higuchi Brothers have long been known for their love of baseball and even being supporters of rival teams. U-ta supports the Hanshin Tigers, based out of Hyogo prefecture, formerly out of Osaka. While Toll supports the Yomiuri Giants, based out of Tokyo. Both Hanshin and Yomiuri are the name of corporations that own the baseball team because everything's a business. When a corporation's team wins the championship, their product may go on sale as a celebratory promotion. For example, when the Fighters won, my aunt said that ham will go on sale tomorrow so she better buy some and I was just sitting there watching the tv, looking for any signs of why ham would go on sale. I didn't realize the full team name was the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters, owned by Nippon Ham. (Trivia note: the Tigers' home field is Koshien Stadium, which is one of the most famous baseball stadiums in Japan as it is the largest by capacity and also where the national high school baseball championships are held. High school baseball is very important in Japan, so much so that the championships are nicknamed Koshien and players take home the dirt as a souvenir.)
On May 15, the 1992 concert Climax Together was finally released as a live album with the rather uninspired title of Climax Together -1992 Compact Disc-. Previously this 2 day concert was available as an edited live video and one could have extracted the audio from that. However, this proper audio release provided both dates in full, which is not available as a video. Additionally, the 3 Climax Together concerts were edited as one movie entitled Buck-Tick Climax Together On Screen 1992-2016 and was shown in select theaters for 2 weeks beginning June 24. Screenings of the movie expanded to more theaters as late as mid-November.
Though it's only been 5 years since the last "Catalogue" release, it's time for another! On August 8, the compilation album Catalogue 1987-2016 was released. The first two "Catalogue" releases were singles or best of type releases that would be something a more casual fan may be interested in purchasing, rather than the entire discography. The second two "Catalogue" releases had a bonus factor of video discs that the more serious fan would desire. This fifth "Catalogue" release is a mixture. It has 2 discs featuring best of songs as determined by fans who voted on which songs should be featured. It also has 2 discs of select live tracks 1989-2016. Finally, there is a video disc of select live performances from 2003-2015. Personally, I think that the artwork for this compilation is what makes it special. The background has so many items from the band's career that it's fun to try to figure out everything. At Hisashi's request, there are even some fake releases included for good measure.
The parody/party band Kishidan, being long time admirers of Buck-Tick, asked the band to write a song for them. Atsushi and Hisashi wrote "Koi Suru Christiane" and it was released on August 9 on Kishidan's album Manyoshu. Each song on that album was written by an artist that Kishidan admires. This marks the second time that two members of Buck-Tick wrote a song together for another artist. "Koi Suru Christiane" may appeal to Buck-Tick fans as it sounds like "Climax Together" and "Montage" had a baby.
In September, it was expected that Buck-Tick may hold again the Buck-Tick Fest On Parade concert as they had held it before in 2007 and 2012 with guest bands performing since it seemed to be on a 5 year cycle. However, this time the band chose to celebrate their major debut 30th anniversary with a solo show. The Parade ~30th Anniversary~ concerts were held on September 23 and 24 at Odaiba Yagai Tokusetsu Kaijo. The first date was called Fly Side and the second date was called High Side. This naming convention was taken from their 1987 song "Fly High," which is a great song when played live as the entire crowd sings along the chorus.
From September 12 through October 1, there was a collaboration with Tower Records Cafe Omotesando in Tokyo where the cafe was decorated with Buck-Tick photos, had Buck-Tick music playing in the background, and featured a special menu of food and drink with selections chosen by members. Original Buck-Tick label beer was also sold. The second run of the collaboration cafe took place October 2-15.
Buck-Tick finally won an MTV Japan award during the 2017 award ceremony held at Shinkiba Studio Coast on September 27. They won the Inspiration Award Japan. Perhaps it was one of those cases where a famous person/group has been overlooked for so long someone aims to make it right with a special award. MTV Japan launched as its own channel in 1993, renamed in 1998, and came back as MTV Japan in 2001 and held their first awards show in 2002.
In October, it was announced that Toll was collaborating to have his own sake to be released in 2018. More details on that in the following year section. On October 8, Atsushi and Hisashi appeared on the FM Cocolo radio show "The Majestic Saturday Night."
On November 8, U-ta once again appeared at the second "Ongaku To Hito" magazine sponsored talk event Oretachi, Pro Yakyu Daisuki Musician Desu! held at Shinjuku Loft Plus One. The event again consisted of pro musicians discussing their love of pro baseball. This time U-ta wore the pinstripe jersey. Other musicians who appeared include Atsushi Inoue (New Rote'ka), Kohshu Okamine (The Back Horn; supporting Hiroshima Toyo Carp), Takuya "Moby" Okamoto (Scoobie Do), Kyosuke (Bakudan Johnny; supporting Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters), Great Maekawa (Flower Companyz), and Makoto Takahashi (ex-Boøwy; supporting Hanshin Tigers).
Since it's been a whole year since a new studio album was released, the ever hard-working band went to work to prepare the next sonic world. The first release was the single "Babel" on November 15. The song's lyrics were written by Atsushi and music by Hisashi. The B-side was a remix of what would become their second single from the upcoming album. This was considered the first single from the 30th anniversary project. More was to follow in the following year, which would technically make it the 31st anniversary. To promote the new single, Nico Nico held a live stream special on November 14. Since the karuta in the previous special held in 2014 was so popular, they brought illustrator Mikaru Sera back to draw the karuta cards as the viewers were polled on what phrases would be drawn out to play karuta. Then the band was interviewed, they looked at some of the cards, and played a short one round game where Atsushi won.
Speaking of anniversaries, since the 30th anniversary is a major one, it is time once again to pose like it's 1987. They did this for their 15th and 25th anniversaries (in 2002 and 2012 respectively) so I suppose they could have waited until the 35th anniversary but what the hell.
On December 29, the second set of the remastered cardboard sleeve (paper jacket) series of Buck-Tick albums was released on Blu-Spec CD2 format covering years 2000-2010. There were 9 albums in total with 2 of them being live albums. All of these were remastered for the higher definition sound of the format. The first paper jacket set was released in 2007.
Instead of holding a handful of The Day In Question shows at the end of the year, Buck-Tick decided to make these shows into a proper tour. The Day In Question 2017 tour was held for 28 dates beginning on October 21 in Saitama and ending on December 29 at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, the traditional home of the DIQ shows on December 29. Previously the maximum amount of The Day In Question shows they held was 5. During the tour, they placed at Fukuoka Sun Palace, their first time since 1998. The band announced there will be some rare songs being played as well as the usual standards. It turns out those rare songs were likely 1980s songs that have been played here and there over the years, such as "Illusion" (released in 1987, last played in 2008) and "Oriental Love Story" (released in 1988, last played in 2008), but in particular, they played "Sapphire" (2000), which I don't think they have played live since 2005. They also played some 1990s songs that are not played that often, such as "Cosmos" (released in 1996, last played in 2011).
