News

It has just been announced that upcoming single “Seimei/Still Alive” will be receiving another tie-in when “Still Alive” begins serving as the opening theme song to TBS’s entertainment news program Event GO! for the month of June. This is the second tie-in on the network for the song. From January to March of this year, it was utilized as the theme to the season’s 20th Nikkan Sports Drama Grand Prix winner for Best Drama A LIFE from January to March.

UPDATE (6/1/2017): It has also been revealed that “Still Alive” will be heard as the ending theme to variety show Arita Generation as well as during anime-ranking program Rank Oukoku for both June and July.

News

The second variant of the “Still Alive” commercial for the upcoming “Seimei/Still Alive” double A-side single is now airing on Japanese television. The four track single will be released on June 14th and also includes digital singles “Sekai wa Anata no Iro ni Naru” and “Fukiarenasai“.

News

Another update on the official B’z instagram has shown the band is now working at their usual studio in Tokyo. As surmised upon hearing of their recent work in Hawaii, the band typically return to Tokyo to round out albums and involve more of their core personnel. Longtime support member and keyboardist Takanobu Masuda also posted on Twitter that he is now in the studio contributing as well:

Takanobu Masuda’s gear for recording his part of the 2017 B’z project

The band have a busy summer ahead, with two announced festival appearances and a month-long SHOWCASE tour that will follow the June release of their 53rd single “Seimei/Still Alive“. As previously postulated in the aforementioned Hawaii write-up, it would be reasonable to expect the band to follow their activities in 2007 for 2017. Already we have our SHOWCASE single just as we did with “Eien no Tsubasa”, along with said SHOWCASE 2017 running concurrent with that of 2007’s which also began in June. That year, B’z would release a second single in October—”SUPER LOVE SONG“—before ending the year with the release of their massive seventeen-track effort ACTION.

News

The third wave of artists to perform at this year’s ROCK IN JAPAN FESTIVAL has just been announced. Among them is B’z, who will perform on August 5th. For the band, this marks the second festival appearance of the year, followed by the appearance at the RISING SUN ROCK FESTIVAL in EZO on August 11th. B’z is making an appearance at both festivals for the first time—possibly with the goal to expand their fanbase.

In the past, B’z has performed at festivals like SUMMER SONIC in 2007 and 2009. These two festivals gave fans pre-release glimpses at “SUPER LOVE SONG” and “MY LONELY TOWN” respectively, before they later became singles. In more recent years, the band has performed at the TV Asahi Dream Festival in 2011 and 2015. A special festival was also conducted together with American rock band Aerosmith in 2013, called AEROSONIC.

Site News

This long-overdue redux of the site was built from the ground up as a central hub of B’z information. We wanted to re-purpose the site to more resemble what we felt would be the ultimate B’z resource, and in combination with our continued efforts on the B’z Wiki, we hope you will agree! The all-new OFF THE LOCK intends to bring you more features, more videos, more translations, and more up-to-date, original B’z content than ever before. To begin, we would like to introduce you to a core feature on this new version of the site: Daily B’z.

Introducing Daily B’z

Daily B’z utilizes our repository of B’z information, photographs, translations, and more in order to provide new curated content every day from here on—in fact, you can see the first entry for May 24th, 2017, live on the sidebar right now! You may also rest assured that no combination of content will ever be repeated for Daily B’z. Not only will we be constantly adding new Daily Photos, Lyrics of the Day, Today’s Featured B’z Wiki Articles, and of course any releases and happenings in the B’z world to This Day in B’z History, we have already arranged thousands of entries that will cycle through independently each and every day from here on. That means, of course, that May 24th this year won’t in any way resemble May 24th of 2018, and never again will any of the current Daily Photo, Lyrics of the Day, This Day in B’z History, or Today’s Featured B’z Wiki Article share the same space again.

Daily B’z will automatically update every day at 12:00 noon CET for Europeans and 6 AM EST for the Eastern U.S. so be sure to check what all we have in store!

Navigation & Features

Foremost, you will see that we have greatly streamlined the general navigation of the site. The top-bar will now direct you to relevant pages on the B’z Wiki and we have plans to offer various media in a dedicated section in the future. Additionally, we have now added a specially-chosen Featured Article that will change roughly every week.

We have also overhauled our categorization and tagging systems. The entire past decade of reporting, articles, videos, and translations have all been re-organized to make navigating the archive of B’z news simpler and more efficient. You will see on the home page’s News Archive section that these are all now navigable by year and topic, which we hope is an improvement over past efforts. Likewise, you will see that we have added External Links to outside B’z sources and a Where To Buy section for the common question as to where B’z items may be purchased. This also includes an up-to-date listing of all the B’z and solo output available digitally worldwide on iTunes with direct links to each.

You will see that we have specially-designed icons for our different categories as well to help differentiate each:

Mobile Version & Optimization

Snapshot of OTL Mobile currently in development

One feature we have often neglected in the past is a mobile version of OFF THE LOCK. Mobile browsing has become increasingly important in the near-decade since the site was launched, and we have decided to make it a focus to create a mobile-centric version in the near future. You can view a preview to the right of its current state. We expect OTL Mobile to be available in the near future and will be sure to post an update when it is nearing completion. Similarly, we are still working on optimizing the current design for multiple browsers and setups. We of course welcome any feedback you may have already!

In addition to the many other changes and us migrating to a newer, faster server, we have also revitalized our back catalogue of uploaded content. Virtually every video we have translated for the site over the years has been restored in its original quality and for those few that are missing, we are aiming to have them back where they belong in a matter of days. We likewise will be enabling comments on all articles from 2008 to now as we once did, instead of closing them after a set time. This policy was originally adopted as an anti-spam measure, but if you now have thoughts on older posts or videos that you come across whilst exploring the archive, feel free to chime in as you see fit.

We are hopeful that this new version of OFF THE LOCK will be a valuable resource for B’z fans and one that you believe best exemplifies what you want from B’z coverage as a fellow fan. If you have any comments, suggestions, or questions, let us know in the comments! Stay tuned for further updates!

News

We now have the official cover to “Seimei/Still Alive” a few weeks ahead of its release, which is available for pre-order on CD Japan, YesAsia, and Amazon.co.jp in any of its three editions. The sleek black and purple cover plays up the motif of the second A-side:

Additionally, the logo for B’z SHOWCASE 2017 -B’z In Your Town- has been made available on the official website ahead of its July start:

Long-term fans may recognize that the logo shares elements with the 2009 SHOWCASE of the same moniker. This year’s SHOWCASE is the first of its kind not associated with an album or Pleasure tour in eight whole years. In the past, such SHOWCASES have led to the inclusion of numerous long-requested B-sides and fan-favorites in their setlists. The only full show of its kind released on home video is B’z SHOWCASE 2007 -19- which included performances of: “HOT FASHION -Ryuukoukata-“, “Naite Naite Nakiyandara“, “Gin no Tsubasa de Tobe“, “Haru“, “Nagai Ai“, “Out Of Control“, “ARIGATO” in its only live showing, and “Odekake Shimasho“.

The same year’s SHOWCASE 2007 -B’z In Your Town- tour that sadly was not similarly released also included “The Loose“, “ROCK man“, “HOME“, “Aikawarazu na Bokura“, “Magnolia“, and “GO★FIGHT★WIN“. The 2009 B’z In Your Town SHOWCASE even included “Crazy Rendezvous“, “VAMPIRE WOMAN“, “MY SAD LOVE“, “THE GAMBLER“, and “Kirei na Ai Jyanakutemo“.