Hey Hyde lovers another article I found
http://www.nichibeitimes.com/issues/articles/071306/hyde.html
HYDE Me
From the Nichi Bei Times Weekly July 13-19, 2006
By GREG YANO
Nichi Bei Times
Why are Japanese guys so hot? A 15-year-old girl named Pia assured me that I was in good company after a voice from the crowd posed that rhetorical question for the ages. It was last Wednesday, and I was among hundreds of Japanese rock fans, most of them female, who gathered at Slimfs in San Francisco to see one of Japanfs biggest stars, a 5-foot-2 androgynous pop icon named HYDE.
Despite his boyish charm, HYDE, whose real name is Hideto Takarai, plays hard rock and metal, fueled by perpetually distorted guitar riffs. He sings in English, but at the concert that night his lyrics were second to his mere presence.
Appreciating his music seemed to be a matter of head-banging or doe-eyed swooning. Some were attracted to the enigmatic personality behind the music. Some just liked his dandy ways. If you asked a fan from the audience, you might have also heard something about emotional depth or onstage intensity.
HYDE has sold more than 34 million recordings in the past 10 years as the lead singer for the wildly popular J-rock group LfArc~en~Ciel. While more well-known in Japan than in the U.S., LfArc drew an impressive audience of 12,000 at a 2004 Japanese pop culture convention in Baltimore, Maryland.
For HYDEfs tour of the U.S. last week, he performed four sold-out shows in California, including appearances at Slimfs and the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.
At the July 5 Slimfs concert, filled to capacity at 430, I talked to people from as far as New York, Connecticut and Miami. Pia, who flew in from New Jersey just to see HYDE, met up with Claire, 18, a friend she made on the Internet. Like true die-hards, Claire and Pia jockeyed for position in the front row, and while the group around them grew in size, they wondered why gHaido,h as hefs affectionately called, wasnft headlining a bigger venue. gHe should be playing at a stadium,h said Pia, smiling, but looking a little hurt.
Å 20-year-old college student named Kei was also in the front row, standing slightly closer to the stage than the others. Unlike Pia, who had arrived early that morning for the 9 p.m. concert, Kei drove from Sacramento the night before and slept on the curb with her friends to secure a spot in line. She was proud to show off her tattoo, a pair of angel wings on her shoulders similar to HYDEfs.
Out of either boredom or devotion, fans in the crowd drew angel wings on their shoulders with markers and ballpoint pens, as they waited for the show to start.
They were ready for HYDE.
Like a ragged gang of thugs who happened into a supply of designer duds, the musicians filed out from the wings looking stylish yet rugged, in a studied kind of way. HYDE reminded me of a Japanese David Bowie with his stage makeup and teased hair. The keyboardist, a shadowy figure who talked to the audience through a computerized voice scrambler, sported a white mask and blonde dreadlocks.
HYDE played songs from his latest album gFaithh (Tofu Records), but not before putting a recording of Beethovenfs 9th Symphony on the overhead system. It was a Kubrickian touch, something totally unexpected, stirring a giddy sense of anticipation in the air. A bit of the old Ludwig Van to get us in the mood.
It was a night full of binaries: glam and grunge, soft and hard. There were moments of repose, but for the most part the energy in the room was overwhelming, with the crowd at its most feral as HYDE flirted with the audience. gLetfs make love,h he said, in kind of a slow bedroom voice. gWill you sing along with me?h
While my shirt and pants were soaked and smelling of sweat, there was also a whiff of religion in the corporeal stink. With gJesus Christ,h the fourth song of the night, HYDE played iconoclast-in-training to the crowdfs devotional chanting. Keep in mind that his last album was called gFaith,h featuring an artistfs rendering of HYDE, with downcast eyes, wearing a crown of thorns like Jesus. If the religious overtones werenft clear enough from the Christian-themed lyrics and iconography, the clutching and screaming and gasping for air brought out a palpable religious fervor from the crowd.
Then came the best part.
As if to recreate the screaming hysteria inspired by that most popular of boy bands, HYDE played a hard-rock cover of the Beatles classic gLucy in the Sky with Diamondsh halfway into his set. A different crowd might have crucified him for Beatles sacrilege. But HYDEfs performance was a smash, with hundreds of jumping fans turning solid ground into a trampoline.
Closing with gCountdownh and gMidnight Celebration,h fans screamed gan-ko-reh as they awaited the bandfs return to the stage for two more songs.
At this point, I was subsumed by the power of the crowd. Moving to the beat was no longer in my control. The crowd moved for me, pushing my body in different directions like a rip current. There was no use fighting it. If you fell, said Pia, there would be 100 people standing behind you to hold you up.