Puffy AmiYumi: The sounds of tv coming to you

Tonight, performing @ The House of Blues here in Cleveland are Puffy AmiYumi, who will be playing with openers Tally Hall. If you don't know anything about these bands I will tell you.

First off, the opener Tally Hall are five guys from Ann Arbor, Michigan. They play catchy and thoughtful pop music in the vein of The Beatles, Queen, and Phantom Planet. If you watch The O.C. you would recognize them from the episode called The Day After Tommorow. Apparently, in that episode you first hear their song "Good Day" when Seth and Summer are trying on winter clothes in preparation for attending college at Brown and then it is heard later in the episode as they get their college acceptance letters.

(mp3) Good Day - Tally Hall

Puffy AmiYumi aka Puffy (but for legal reasons they can't go by that name in the states) are a duo who hail from Japan. In Japan they have sold over 14 million album and are huge. Not only do they make music, they have had a weekly interview talk show, a cartoon series and their own gameboy, playstation and gamecube video games. Back in 2004, The Cartoon Network tried a version of their cartoon series here in the states. I first learned about this band back in '99 when I was in college, where I received not for sale compilations that Sony Japan used to do -- that series also featured the Polysics and DJ Krush, along with many others. Puffy's music in Japan is called J-Pop or Shibuya-kei which means it take elements of jazz, fusion and other styles and combines it with traditional Japanese music. Regardless of what it is called it is hard not to like. The show starts @ 7:45pm for more info go here.

Video: Puffy Ami Yumi - Boogie Woogie Number 5