qotka

my most prized procession was actually caught by my partner at one of the dezermucc lives early this year, but i claimed it. 😛 it's satochi's drumstick, but sora was the one who threw it (it was at the encore session the bands did together). the only thing i ever caught myself was yukke's pick that tatsuro threw at us at a non-vkei festival in kabuki-cho. i think he aimed it at our group because it was obvious we were there for them.

yoshiki took to twitter to apologize (of course he's not going to miss an opportunity to mention he actually talked to the queen lmao)

Nero is amazing for uploading this video and speaking up. My friend and I experienced this recently and got called "ayashii" pretty much to our faces (they thought we couldn't understand Japanese). They asked us to show our resident cards, emptied our wallets and looked at the names on our credit cards. They also asked personal questions about my family. It was really humiliating but we complied because we didn't want to get in trouble. The real kicker was when they noticed my friend has a Yoshiki credit card and started talking to us about X Japan as if they were our friends. It took all the restraint in the world to not tell them to go fuck themselves.

Sorry for this being out of the blue, but in case you have it handy - could you please say which volume of Cure this is from? I really want to read the full interview but I can't seem to find it.

why does it sound like they recorded it in a karaoke room

this video is what i signed up for when i got into vkei. i hope this bands stays around forever.

It's kinda sad how it doesn't shock people. I'm sure many people found Chanty's blackface hilarious, the same way they associate black people with exaggerated gestures and funny intonations - pretty much the only representation they get in Japanese media. It's sad mostly because Japan is not as homogeneous as the mainstream narrative goes. The people they find so hilarious work with them, go to school with them (or with their children), teach them English and live in the same neighborhoods with them. Plus they're exposed to western culture through media. So while I understand why it's not shocking (the discourse on race in Japan is... different), I don't think it's a reason to shrug and say 'oh well that's just the way Japan is'. So did they mean anything by it? Not a big political statement, but using the same tired portrayal of black people for comedy is saying SOMETHING.

dat off-key harmony though <3 also wtf is CreAto? at least they blend right in with the rest of the acts that play there i guess lol

dude doesn't show up for work for 4 days and people are dumping on him like he ran away with all the band's money to buy crack (or pizza).

oh yeah that's definitely her. the shop is called yellow house and last time i went in the granny told me something along the lines of 'i don't go to yoshiki, he comes to me'.

Yes! A while back a friend sent me a couple of videos from a Radiohead concert back home and all I could hear was the audience. The whole thing sounded like a karaoke night at the local pub. Which means fun, but wouldn't pay for it as much as I would pay to see a band I actually care about. Just a couple of days ago I took a friend of mine to see a band she's been a fan of for nearly a decade, and I thought she'd be excited. She was just confused by the audience participation, the furi seemed 'fake' to her, the stage props and theatricality seemed to really put her off and all she could say by the end of the live was 'well that was... interesting'. Instead of getting defensive it made me think about how this live culture is unique and beautiful and yes, outsiders might just not get it and it's fine. It emphasized for me the dissonance people might feel when they don't just listen to the music, but for the first time experience the visual and 'performative'(?) aspects of the scene, and this is one of the things I love so much about vkei.

Addition: Miya: We've come up with 自己嫌悪 last minute on the 16th [of May] so we won't be able to include it in the single scheduled to be out in July. But since everyone seemed to like it [during the lives on the 21st and 22nd], we're thinking about releasing it as a limited edition CD for the Hokkaido tour. I wonder if we can do the press and design on time. I love this approach and how they're flexible, creative and responsive to their audience even though the way they work always seems very systematic.

bless these guys and their over-the-top yanki chic. especially satochi and his JE dropout shine.

Not very spring-inspired, but a theme I was thinking about is GOD - How would a god manifest him/herself through music? It can be any god or deity: the monotheistic one of Abrahamic religions, one (or more!) of the many gods of faiths and mythologies around the world, or a fictional one from a book/movie/comic/anime/game. It can be one you believe in, or just fascinated with (or just read about somewhere and thought was really cool). It can also just be your personal perception of god - cosmic energy or anything else you interpret the concept as.The songs can portray anything from the characteristics of said deity, to its story or just how you feel about it or think its soundtrack should sound like. tl;dr: choose a god or gods and build a soundtrack around them. I think this is general enough because most people have had some sort of contact with religion throughout their lives, weather they're people of faith or atheists. Gods play major role in everything from people's daily lives to major historic events to pop culture, so it could be interesting to see how people perceive them and what they mean for them.