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.

I think the comparison with the anime industry reveals one of the reasons why Jrock/vkei is not a thing in the west - Cool Japan has a top-down/soft power/blahblah approach that utilizes pop culture to draw people to Japanese culture and thus make Japanese endeavors outside of Japan (not just in the west) more profitable and attract more business and tourism. The Cool Japan fund will invest in any sort of content/media that will make Japanese culture stand out, but only if it sees the potential, ie organic interest in the content/subject matter, like big anime/cosplay conventions - quantifiable receipts that I don't think Jrock had even in the height of its hype overseas. Plus, I think music is more than about understanding lyrics. It's culture, it's being able to relate to ideas and sentiments expressed there and catch cultural cues that you'll miss if you don't spend hours digging around the internet for reference. If it takes a lot of work to actually 'get' a song, less people will wanna do it. This is why Kpop companies train their idols to speak and sing in Japanese and Mandarin, and why the AKB franchise 'translated' itself by forming local units across Asia instead of selling the Japanese content as is. I don't think Jrock can be localized the same way, nor that it should be. At the end of the day, as was already said here, Jrock had its 15 minutes of being an almost international thing thanks to anime, but it didn't hold because you can't translate and sell it as well as you can with anime.

Looking forward to this! The direction they took with 'Hello' worries me a little (doesn't it kinda sound like a One OK Rock track? Not shitting on OOR here, it's just... different), but fingers crossed.

omg the drag race Thailand finale

Yesss this look is so good heartheartheart

i'm a sucker for what he CAN do, but it's true that it hasn't changed much from their first single. plus when i saw them live i could barely hear his low notes, although it looked like he was really trying. could be the equipment going wonky though.

Hell yeah Kizu. I need that album asap. Also yas the new Ling Tosite Sigure!!! I'm still new to them - been schooling myself in their discography for the past couple months, which might be why to me their more polished sound is digestible. But yeah, totally dig it. Glad the new Plastic Tree was mentioned later down this thread. To me the most remarkable track on doorAdore is "search and destroy". It sounds like Ryutaro's been spending a lot of time with te' 's Hiro (I know he was in his session band when he toured solo). I wish they made a whole album that sounds like this - they know how to experiment and surprise when they put their mind to it.

I don't see how playing a small venue (capacity is up to 2,500 from what I see) justifies that price though. Many smaller acts perform there and charge 4000-7000~ per ticket, I assume without losing money if they sell well enough, which means X Japan's profit from this is going to be ridiculous. They already have a system that makes reselling practically impossible (it's a lottery, you can only apply for one ticket, it's gonna have your name on it and they'll be ID'ing people at the entrance), and since it's a lottery, everyone will get a fair chance to buy one. I really don't understand what kind of justification they could possibly have for this price, other than "but we're X Japan!!! (/I'm Mana?? lol)".