Traxan

There is a very amusing new show on Fox called "Lucifer." The Devil gets bored and decides to take a vacation in Los Angeles, because where else? He winds up owning a nightclub, because why not, and teaming with a detective to help solve crimes. And because everyone in LA has a shrink, so does he. Except he's sleeping with her. The actor playing Lucifer is clearly having the time of his life with the role. It's kinda generic as a cop show but Lucifer is so much fun. In one scene when he busted into a wedding ceremony, the priest backed away and made the sign of the cross. Lucifer responded "Yeah good luck with that." LOL moment there. I was watching "The Shannara Chronicles" on MTV because I've read virtually every Shannara book since I was back in high school, but the adaptation is terrible and I gave up.

Currently playing World of Warcraft, but getting disenchanted. Waiting on a sale for Rise of Tomb Raider. On my iPad I play Megapolis and Nibblers. Don't judge me on that latter one.

Curious to know the viewpoint here on the GITS movie featuring Scarlet Johansson. If you haven't heard, it's based on the Stand Alone Complex TV series and not the Oshii film, which kind of relieves me a little. Oshii's movie was a think piece about Major Kusanagi struggling with her own existence. I didn't have much confidence in Hollywood to get her existential crisis right. But, if they base it around The Laughing Man series, that'll work. I hope. And if there are no Tachikomas, I'm not going.

I would like to see this if only to honor the memory of Armmy. As for mine: I wish Shadow could release one last album. I wish YouTube would stop blocking Japanese music. I wish Rami was putting more effort into Raglaia. She's played maybe 8 gigs since coming back in late 2014. It makes me wonder if her health is still bad. I wish Cyntia would reverse course off that pop nonsense. Ditto Exist Trace Ditto Aldious I wish the American guitar magazines would discover K-A-Z and Syu. I wish Bass Player magazine discovered Kiyoshi, Sawa and F Chopper Koga. I wish Modern Drummer would discover Senri Kawaguchi I wish some JRock bands other than Babymetal tried to reach out to a foreign audience. (in short I want these artists to become a worldwide success and not just be our little secret because they deserve it, especially with all the mediocrity out there) And I wish this quartet would get back together on a regular basis instead of this one-off show.

Hm. Gonna be all over the map here: 1) Pink Floyd - the Dark Side of the Moon 2) Rush - Snakes & Arrows 3) Motorhead - No Sleep till Hammersmith 4) Testament - The Gathering 5) Slayer - World Painted Blood 6) Shadow (JP) - s/t 7) Aldious - Deep Exceed Acroma - Orbitals (what happened to this band makes me sick) 9) Nevermore - Dreaming Neon Black

I've never judged a band by its fans. That's just plain not fair.

You have to generate a ridiculous amount of YouTube traffic to make money off it. And with YouTube banning Japanese artists, that's not going to help. Also hindering Japanese artists of every genre is the copyright law that forces many bands to only show a partial music video on Youtube. Partial videos are a major turnoff to a lot of fans.

Is it safe to say Mari Hamada speaks English, since she sings the entire intro here in English? And Amber of f(x). She's American born but of Chinese descent.

Well I've seen the bands discuss it, often in documentaries. Chuck Billy of Testament credited his wife's insurance through work with saving his life when he came down with cancer in 2000. As for the dollar figure, I just threw that out there because recently Devin Townshend said he makes $60k a year, and that's before the expenses of being on the road. But you are right in that the older bands with a few decades under their belts have grown up and learned to treat this as a job, don't blow all their money on booze and drugs, etc. That's the inherent contradiction of the rock and roll life: it's rebelling against being careerist and being a responsible adult, yet if you want your band to survive you have to treat it like any other job and take it very seriously.

Do you understand Japanese? If so, what did they say? BTW, here's the dirty little secret behind why so many American metal bands are still functioning despite the members being in their 40s and 50s and playing the same clubs they played back in the 80s: the guys are all married and their wives carry the household load. They have good day jobs with health insurance benefits. That allows their husbands to work full time on a band when he might be lucky if he makes $50,000 a year. That won't fly in Japan at all. Women are all but shoved out of the workforce once they get married, to say nothing of the notion of them supporting the household while hubby chases rock and roll dreams.

True there. That's because all the action is centered around Tokyo. I read somewhere that 1/4 of the Japanese population is in Tokyo. And I saw a video on YouTube from a show or something called Future Standard, on the preparation behind an Aldious show. Yoshi, Reno and Aruto arrived in a van with their gear. Two others came by cab. The club's staff unloaded their gear and set it up for them. They need no road crew and no trucks of gear or a tour bus, just the van with their modest collection of gear. The girls all helped each other with their hair and makeup. No road crew at all. At the end of the show, the band went home, not to a hotel. That would be impossible in the US. They would need a tour bus and a separate truck for their gear (or two the way Marina's drum kit has grown) and then a hotel every night. Ah, found it. That said, can Japanese bands survive just in Japan? I still think Japanese bands as a whole, not just VK, need to push outside their borders. Europe and South America are very good markets where metal is thriving and Australia is a popular destination as well. I mean, has any Japanese band performed at Wacken? It's THE metal show in Europe. Five days, multiple stages. I would much rather see X Japan, Anthem, Galneryus, Maximum the Hormone, or Mary's Blood play Wacken before Babymetal does, and BM strikes me as the only band with the gumption to try. EDIT: Forgot to add one point: Japanese bands need to take risk. I think that may be what stops them is the financial risk involved. The fact is a young band trying to make it will incur debt. It's unavoidable. They lose money as an opening act on the hope and promise of making it back as they grow in popularity. And it can take years to pay off the debt even when they are a headliner. The Japanese bands have to be willing to take the risk of running into debt as they build a foreign base, which can't be done by appearing at individual anime festivals here and there.

Can bands make a living on touring? With the decline in CD sales in the US and elsewhere, bands are now spending years on the road touring. The days of a new album every year are gone and my favorite bands are going 4 years in between records because they tour until they are half dead and then need time to recover. With Japanese bands, though, they are covering a country the size of California and very few ever leave the country. Look at Arch Enemy. In the past year they toured America, then Europe, then Asia, then back to Europe, and now South America. They have been on the road for I believe 18 months now. Japanese bands rarely ever leave the country. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Babymetal spent the most time outside Japan, which is funny because they should still be in school. Anyway, can bands survive just inside Japan? And if not, is it high time for them to make an attempt to become popular elsewhere? Don't let language be an excuse. Rammstein are huge and sing all their songs in German.

Saki of Mary's Blood speaks excellent English. She responds to English speakers on Twitter. I'm pretty sure Marina of Aldious speaks English. Let's not forget Yoshiki, he speaks very good English. Since I've seen Kpop references, add CL from 2NE1. You can hear it in Psy's "Daddy" song and she's in the video (which is hysterical, btw). And 3 members of SNSD are American-born, so yeah, they speak the language.

I do kinda like the uniquely Japanese trend of running two words into one band name. The girls seem to be the ones who do it. Bridear - Bride & Dear Aldious - Ultimate & Melodious BandMaid - Band & Maid Destrose - Destroy & Rose And let's face it, there's a screwball new band name in the News section almost every day.

Because you don't release an album and then not tour to support it. That's a great way to let it die. You release an album and hit the road to tour. Seriously. If you don't like Yoshiki, fine, but Pata has a serious health problem and people are acting like Yoshiki poisoned him. WTF is wrong with some of you?

Damn it, I searched for this before posting.

Japanese Visual Kei and Styling Magazine, Cure Magazine, will be holding its first World Visual Festival on April 30th 2016 (Japan Time). The festival will be welcoming a total of 30 bands including the best of the best Visual Kei bands in the recent days, including KIRYU whom recently successfully completed its show at Nippon Budokan, A9, MEJIBRAY, DIAURA, DaizyStripper, ARELQUIN, and DEZERT. What makes this festival unique is that the Festival will be welcoming Visual Kei, Jrock influenced bands from around the world. These bands includes, Lolita Dark from Los Angeles (Nameless), Phoenix Ash from San Fransisco (Nameless), Kerbera from Sweden, MEA from Indonesia, and MaleRose from Thailand. http://jrock247.com/2016/01/cure-magazine-to-present-first-ever-world-visual-festival/

http://jrock247.com/2016/02/band-maid-to-make-usa-debut-at-sakura-con-2016/ Red-hot Japanese girls rock band BAND-MAID will make their American live performance debut at Seattle’s Sakura-Con in March 2016. The five-member group has made waves over the past few months for their cute, authentic maid outfits combined with their impressive musical skills. BAND-MAID’s music videos “Thrill” and “Real Existence” have each surpassed 1 million views on YouTube and gained the attention of fans worldwide, including mainstream magazines Guitar World and Metal Injection. BAND-MAID will perform a live concert, participate in a Q&A session, and sign autographs for fans during the three-day event, March 25-27, at the Washington State Convention Center. Event and registration information can be found at Sakura-Con’s website: http://sakuracon.org

Someone on another board found these three clips of the LoVendoR guitarists playing some instrumental tracks: That's certainly more metal than their usual style. Is a change like Band-Maid did coming? That would be a welcomed departure from all the bands that started heavy and went soft.

This article: http://nihongogo.com/2016/01/band-maid-fans-mount-drumstick-campaign-for-injured-drummer/ Says drummer Akane has been out of action with an injury for two months, but the writer was sloppy because he did not say what kind of injury would keep her out of commission for two months. Just how badly was she hurt?

And she celebrated her 23rd birthday just as you'd expect.

So here is the news. Kyary revealed on her LINE LIVE stream earlier today that she will be launching a five-part plan to celebrate her upcoming 5th anniversary as an artist! The stream explained away the mysterious video uploaded to her official YouTube channel on her 23rd birthday, where the singer was carted away in an ambulance for some “emergency surgery”. The 1st part of her anniversary celebration was the Universal Studios Japan attraction “Kyary Pamyu Pamyu XR Ride”, which opened to the public in the “Cool Japan” area of the park just earlier this month. The 2nd part will be Kyary’s first best-of album (title TBA), which will include everything from her debut song “PONPONPON” to her recent, yet to be released tie-up songs. The album will be released on May 25th, with a limited edition version shaped like Kyary’s own face. The 3rd portion of Kyary’s 5th anniversary celebration will be her long-awaited 3rd world tour, which will begin in Singapore this May. KPP has promised to make stops in the UK, Australia, America, and Taiwan before bringing the tour to a close at the famous Budoukan performance hall with 2 performances on August 19th and 20th. Further details about each date will be revealed later on this year. Lastly, Kyary has announced that she will be collaborating with several artists (both foreign and Japanese) on new music in addition to hosting her first artwork exhibition. 3rd world tour (TBA) & Budoukan concerts (August 19 & 20, 2016) Collaborations with other artists (TBA) 1st best album (May 25, 2016) 1st artwork exhibition (TBA) USJ Kyary Pamyu Pamyu XR Ride (January 15, 2016) A special website has also been opened to celebrate her 5th anniversary, where fans will be able to find more details about each new project while looking back on her career thus far. Currently, there are plans to post interviews with KPP, a logo contest, and more on this website, so make sure to keep checking it (and this blog) for updates! There is an English version for international fans! Comment from Kyary: The past 5 years since my debut in 2011 have really just flown by. It’s been my motto to challenge myself to interesting and new things in career thus far, but since this year is my [fifth] anniversary, I hope to be a little ambitious and show the world more of just how genki Japan can be! And flashier than ever! I’d like to make the year of my 5th anniversary and thrilling one, and would be so glad if you could please look kindly over me!!

When is KPP NOT flashy? She sure has been taking her time on new music. No new album in over a year.

I expect Fate Gear to lost members on a regular basis. And I will run around the house screaming happily like Kevin in "Home Alone" when Re:no leaves Aldious.

I know they meant well but that was kinda painful. Seeing VK guys cover Motorhead, though, is pretty funny.