Buck-Tick Zone

Members

2004 album:
Toll Yagami - drums & vocal
The Blue Sky & Optical Surfers - bass, guitar, keyboards
voice: The Blue Sky, Suzu, Optical Surfers, Mike's Papa & Many Friends

The Blue Sky are Joss Tino PePe* & Mr. Big Dig
Optical Surfers are James Norwood & Alex Tamagi

2019 mini album:
Toll Yagami - drums
Kenta Harada - vocals and guitar
Kaname Ohta - vocals and bass
Masato Yagi - guitar

History & Live Members

The band reformed as New Blue Sky for Toll's 50th birthday concert entitled "It's A Now!" on August 19, 2012 at Club Citta, Tokyo. The band included 2 guitarists and a bassist (names unknown). After that, almost each year Toll has performed birthday gigs under the banner "It's A Now!" with different members as the New Blue Sky and later just Blue Sky.

2013 New Blue Sky members include Shime on vocals/guitar and Kaname Ohta on bass.

2015 Blue Sky members include Shime on vocals/guitar. The gig in Tokyo included guests Toshikatsu Uchiumi (Carol; 1 song) and Masafumi Minato (Dead End; 2 songs).

2016 Blue Sky members: Kenta Harada (guitar and vocals), Kaname Ohta (bass and vocals), and Masato Yagi (guitar and vocals). The gig in Tokyo included guest Shime (guitar and vocals) while the gig in Takasaki included guests Makoto Takahashi (drums) and U-ta Higuchi (bass).

2018 Blue Sky members: same as 2016. Guests included Shime (all songs), Keiichi Miyako (Rayflower, formerly of Sophia; 9 songs), and Tetsu (D'erlanger; 1 song).

2019 Blue Sky members: continue to be the same. The gig in Nagoya included guests Shime (guitar and vocals) and Keiichi Miyako (Rayflower, formerly of Sophia) again. Shime also performed at the Tokyo gig. The guest in Osaka was Charlie Kosei (guitar and vocals).

Titles Translated

Boukyaku No Kanata - "The Edge of Oblivion"

Chakumero (Love Forever) - "Ringtone (Love Forever)"

B.A.K.A.T.O.L.L - "S.T.U.P.I.D.T.O.L.L" or "D.U.M.B.T.O.L.L."

Concert Chronology

There were no live dates for the original band however the fanclub did sell a t-shirt.

Yagami Toll & New Blue Sky performed on August 19, 2012 at Club Citta in Tokyo. They performed 6 Carol cover songs, including "Funky Monkey Baby".

2012 live merchandise: t-shirt1, t-shirt2, muffler towel1, muffler towel2, Toll signature snare drum sticks

In 2013, Yagami Toll & New Blue Sky performed on August 17 at Live Square 2nd Line in Osaka and on August 20 at Shimokitazawa 251 in Tokyo. They performed 18 cover songs at both shows. The sets were divided into two parts and an encore. During one part, 8 songs by Carol were covered. Shime was the guest vocalist during the other part of the setlist along with 2 songs during the encore. He sang covers of The Beatles (6 songs), Creedence Clearwater Revival (1 song), Steppenwolf (1 song), and Elvis Presley (1 song). During the encore, Toll sang his version of "Funky Monkey Baby".

2013 live merchandise: t-shirt1, t-shirt2, bath towel, muffler towel1, muffler towel2

In 2015, Yagami Toll & Blue Sky performed on August 15 at Club Alive! in Osaka, August 19 at Shimokitazawa Garden in Tokyo, and on August 22 at Club Fleez in Takasaki, Gunma. They performed 20 cover songs in Tokyo and 19 cover songs in the other 2 cities. Same as in 2013, the setlist was divided into two parts with an encore, where one part was entirely Carol covers. The bands covered at all shows included Carol (9 songs), The Beatles (3 songs), Creedence Clearwater Revival (2 songs), Steppenwolf (1 song), Elvis Presley (1 song), Neil Young (1 song), and the Eagles (1 song). Again, Toll sang his version of "Funky Monkey Baby" during the encore. The extra song played in Tokyo was "Akuma No Okurimono" by Carol.

2015 live merchandise: t-shirt, hand towel, muffler towel, tumbler

In 2016, Yagami Toll & Blue Sky performed on August 19 at Shimokitazawa Garden in Tokyo and on August 21 at Club Fleez in Takasaki, Gunma.

2016 live merchandise: tote bag, towel, t-shirt1, t-shirt2

In 2018, Yagami Toll & Blue Sky performed on August 19 at Shimokitazawa Garden in Tokyo. Rather than start the gig with Carol covers, the first part was Toll talking about his recently released autobiography "1977". The second part of the gig was the actual live performance with 14 songs total played. The bands covered included The Beatles (4 songs), Carol (just "Funky Monkey Baby"), Cream (1 song), Creedence Clearwater Revival (1 song), The Eagles (1 song), Elvis Presley (1 song), Grand Funk Railroad (1 song which is itself a cover), Neil Young (1 song), Steppenwolf (1 song), T-Rex (1 song), and Kiyohiko Ozaki (1 song).

In 2019, Yagami Toll & Blue Sky performed on August 10 at Nagoya Apollo Base, August 19 at Shimokitazawa Garden in Tokyo, and on August 24 at Umeda Shangri-La in Osaka. As the group now had a mini album to promote, the setlist was a little different than usual but still divided into two parts with an encore. The setlists were slightly different at the Nagoya and Tokyo shows. Both shows included all 6 original songs from the Wonderful Home mini album as well as covers of Carol (4 songs), The Beatles (3 songs with an additional 2 songs in Nagoya), John Lennon (1 song), Creedence Clearwater Revival (1 song), The Eagles (1 song), Elvis Presley (1 song), Steppenwolf (1 song), T-Rex (1 song), Super Butter Dog (1 song), and Kiyohiko Ozaki (1 song with an additional song in Tokyo). The Tokyo show included covers of Grand Funk Railroad (1 song which is itself a cover) and Neil Young (1 song). I do not know the setlist for the Osaka show. At the Tokyo show, U-ta was the surprise guest who presented Toll his birthday cake.

Notes

1977/Blue Sky is a very personal album where Toll deals with the death of his older brother which sparked him to become a drummer.

1977/Blue Sky is one continuous long track. (For the ease of my own personal listening of the album, I have split the audio into the appropriate separate tracks in my computer's music player as noted in the tracklisting and lyrics. You may chose to do the same.)

*Joss Tino PePe is credited as being a member of The Blue Sky but this may be a typo in the booklet. A website was created for the project which had a story with drawings about how the band came together, mostly about drinking tequila with foreigners. In Japanese, Toll meets "Alex" and "Jose". It is likely that Joss is actually Jose, especially since Pepe is a common nickname for Jose.