MR.VOCALIST ~A Special Night In Tokyo~

On 4 March 2009, the day MR.VOCALIST 2 came out, Eric Martin gave a one-night MR.VOCALIST special concert at Shibuya duo in Tokyo. Five thousand people applied for 250 places, and in front of the fans drawn by lottery he sang nine songs, five from MR.VOCALIST and four from MR.VOCALIST 2, and then, as the encore, his own version of the Mr. Big hit "To Be With You". The band had TATOO on keyboards and programming, Toru Meki on guitar, Hiroshi Ueda on bass, Tomoyuki Yamada on percussion and Takeshi Hatae on drums, with Ria, Norishige and Ayako singing backing vocals. Sony Music Japan International released the concert on DVD on 3 June 2009 as MR.VOCALIST ~A Special Night In Tokyo~. The DVD holds eight songs, the music video of "PRIDE" and a history interview in which Martin talks about his upbringing, his solo debut, Mr. Big in the 1990s, his solo years after the band split, TMG and the MR.VOCALIST records. The limited first pressing, SIBP-147/148 at 4,500 yen including tax, added a live CD with nine songs from the night, while the regular edition, SIBP-149 at 3,990 yen, was the DVD alone. "HERO" is on the CD but not on the DVD, and "I believe", the seventh song of the set, on which its original singer Ayaka joined Martin unannounced, appears on neither disc. The release was timed to Mr. Big's tour of Japan, the band having reunited in the twentieth year since its debut, and in December 2009 Martin made his first solo tour of Japan in seven years. "You've Got A Friend" and "To Be With You" from this night appeared again on the DVD of the limited edition of MR.VOCALIST Best in April 2011. In November 2024 the limited edition of MR.VOCALIST Complete Best carried the concert on Blu-ray, and the label described the original release at that time as a video that had become hard to find.