Champ213

That's vk logic for you. XD

Eh, this is quite an overstatement. The number of foreigners willing to pay "whatever the price" (or anything at all, really) for vk releases is small. Very small. It's not like there haven't been a couple of bands/label/projects that specifically tried to cater to overseas fans, especially during the high days of the boom. They all weren't doing too hot, to be honest. Anyone remember that Xodiack/HearJapan fiasco? Yeah.

I dunno. It's true that a lot of older links died when Megaupload got shut and Mediafire began deleting a lot of stuff. But looking at the number of Blogspots that still exist it does't seem to be much more difficult to get new vk stuff today than it was, say, 2006, when the fad began. At that time you often had to go through Bittorrent. P2P like WinMX for less common files. Nowadays you just to google a release name, and the Blogspot Download is often the highest search result. I think we can only speculate why there was a fad and why it died again. As Ikna explained, in Germany the vk boom basically came piggybacked on the Manga fad. And as such it mostly attracted young people in their teens. During that age tastes and interests tend to change quickly, so it's no surprise that many of them left again soon. It wasn't always like that. When I began looking for vk-related stuff on the net around 2000/2001 most non-japanese information sites were run by slightly older folks, usually people in their early 20s, who had been to Japan for a few years during the late 90s and now shared their first-hand experience of the last years of the vk fad in Japan. I'm talking about sites like Rushed Blue, Paradoxical Reality, Japanese Channel and so on. It really was a different fandom. And the high days of 2007-2009 were just a fluke, really.

Well, it pretty much confirms what I was saying. There was a short-term fad between 2005-2011, give a year or two. The fad is over and we are nearing the pre-fad level of interest again. The fad actually took a bit longer to reach some central/south american countries, so it's still somewhat strong there, but it will wane as well.

Well, Youtube only exists since 2005, so obviously there won't be any channels from early to mid 00's bands. But in principle, you are right. 5 years ago hardly any indie vk band would bother with Youtube. Now it is very common for them to have channels or just some videos with samples. Rarely full PVs, because obviously selling PV-DVDs as an extra is still part of the vk business model. And yes, copyright has gotten much more strict and complicated on YT. I used to upload vk videos on YT once in a while. I had like a million views on Versailles' Ascendead Master (which wasn't even a DVD rip, but ripped from TV). I even had a few hundred subscribers, lol. But after like 2 years the Ascended Master video was taken down due to copyright, as were some of my other videos. I made all my remaining videos private, except for some Versailles comment video. It just wasn't worth the trouble. And as for the other question: why are foreigners in general less interested in vk than a few years ago? I will tell you why. It was only a fad to begin with. Nothing more, nothing less. When I got into vk about 14 years ago, there were very few foreigners interested in vk. Then from 2005/2006 onwards, it became a huge fad. A lot of bands, including smaller ones, started to tour overseas. Shops that were previously focused on Anime suddenly began stocking jrock. A lot of people jumped on the bandwaggon during that time. After a few years, I would say 2010/2011 onwards, the fad began to die down. People left the bandwaggon again. Apparently Kpop became the new fad, and I'm sure that one will die one day too. I'd say we are still above the 2005-level of overseas vk fandom, but not as much as during the height of the fad.

Ah, bei der unfreiwilligen Nacht in Hamm war auch eine Freundin dabei. Meistens finde ich jemanden, der mit mir zu Konzerten geht - macht einfach mehr Spaß so, vor allem, wenn man erst lange mit Bus und Bahn hinfahren muss. Vor ein paar Monaten habe ich alleine Turisas gesehen, weil ne Freundin dann doch nicht kommen konnte, aber das war hier in Köln, also quasi vor der Haustür. Wenn ein Konzert weit weg ist und ich niemanden finde, der mitkommt, bin ich meistens nicht motiviert genug zu fahren. Ich bin schon so genug am pendeln, weil ich in Köln und meine Familie in Bielefeld wohnt. Ach bestimmt. Ich glaube jeder große Bahnhof hat so etwas. In den in Köln darf man aber über Nacht nur rein, wenn man ein Fernverkehrsticket hat (wir wurden damals auch Nachts tatsächlich einmal kontrolliert) - die Räume sind eben nur für über Nacht gestrandete Reisende und nicht für sonstwen. Aber wenn du ein Ticket hast mit dem du am nächsten Tag weiterfahren willst sind die Räume auf jeden Fall angenehmer und sicherer als irgendwo auf dem Bahnstaeig zu warten.

Yup, hat sich absolut gelohnt. War immerhin meine Lieblingsband. Die Nacht war auch nicht soo schlimm, das Konzert war in Köln (inzwischen wohne ih hier, damals aber noch bei meinen Eltern in Bielefeld), und der Bahnhof Köln hat einen beheizten Warteraum für Fernreisende. Was auch nötig war, denn es war Dezember. Hab nach einem Konzert aber auch schonmal eine Nacht auf dem definitiv unbeheizten Bahnhof Hamm verbracht, weil es hier plötzlich keinen Anschluss mehr gab... o.O

That brings back memories. XD

Well, for what it's worth: the person that gave me the rip of 瑠璃の雫 also gave me 2 other demo tapes allegedly by SHEY=DE: 奴隷華 and Dark Side. Again, just rips, not physical tapes, so not really hard evidence. But the fake 瑠璃の雫 rip led me straight to the very real INSANITY tape which then showed some eerie parallels to the information on Kisaki's site. Maybe we can find something for the other ones as well. The "Dark Side" tape has already been partially identified. Gaz pointed me towards a band called 業, and upon searching a bit I actually found 2 YT vids by that band and . Those are the first 2 tracks on the tape. (Interestingly enough, the YT description says that 業 was the first band of ピエトロ and リエット, presumably the vocalist and guitarist of Da'vidノ使徒:aL - the band 業 is indeed mentioned as a previous band of リエット here. ) The alleged tape also has a 3rd track called 苦悩二果テニ which I'm unable to identify or match to any other band. However, this one doesn't really proof anything so far, since there doesn't seem to be any "official" tracklist for this particular Kisaki tape. In this case anyone could have made up a tracklist and mislabeled the files. Which would have been my normal guess, but in the light of all these discoveres.... who knows? Here are all 3 tracks from the the fake "Dark Side": https://www.mediafire.com/?0sjs1oq4w4vlwq4 Maybe someone recognizes the still unidentified 3rd track? Now, the other tape, 奴隷華. The tracklist I got matches the one from the scan above. Neither I or my contact recognized the songs from any other band. In theory, this rip could still be legit, but I'm not holding my breath. Again, I'm posting it here, maybe someone else can identify it: https://www.mediafire.com/?qg69423c4i5g72k So yeah, that's all I can offer for now. Good hunting.

I'm not even sure if it's about money.... yeah, you can sell the tapes at a decent price, but not really THAT much that it would warrant the effort and risks involved, since you can only sell a very small amount of them without it getting too suspiscious. So... I dunno... Anyway, in the interest of the "investigation", here's the files of the INSANITY demo tape: https://www.mediafire.com/?j318rj3m133l0t0 I talked to my japanese contact who identified it for me again, and he confirmed the information I found on the auction site. He also told me that the tape is called "瑠璃の雫", just like the alleged SHEY=DE tape. He owns a physical copy of the INSANITY tape, so there's really no doubt about it, the INSANITY tape exists, the cover art and tracklist are legit, although the cover art and parts of the names miraculously also turn up on Kisaki's site as a SHEY=DE release. There's also no doubt that the files linked above are from said INSANITY tape, although - again miraculously - they were circulated as that SHEY=DE release - what a coincidence! (Btw, I changed the tags to the proper ones, since I don't want to further spread mistagged files.) Now, for the rare chance that anyone ever got their hands on a physical release of the SHEY=DE tape, please compare them with the files I linked, so we can have full clarity. XD But I have a vague idea about the result already....

You know, usually when people sell their music to other people, they sell them rights to the music, ie. the composition/lyrics so that other people can record/perform them - I never heard of people selling actual fully recorded songs that they already released themselves to other people so that they can claim them as their own work without even re-recording them themselves. At least in case of Levia this seems to be the case, and there's some indication it's also the case for Shey=de. What are the chances that three different bands (VICE RISK, Nude of J, INSANITY) sold their already released demos to three consecutive bands of Kisaki, so that he could claim them as releases of his bands? And would it make it really any better if he did indeed pay money to use those recordings? It would still leave the fact that 3 of his 4 earliest works showcased on his own site don't actually seem to have been written, performed and recorded by any band that he was ever part of. At this point I wouldn't bet any money on the remaining vintage release - Levia's 滅序章 - being from one of KIsaki's bands either. If it was just one dubious release I would say, okay, coincidence, misunderstanding, mistake, whatever. But three releases? That can't be a coincidence. Why would he do that? I dunno. But we are talking about the person that took a photo of paper cranes from Google and claimed it was cranes sent to him by fans while he was in hospital. To be clear, I'm not a Kisaki-hater. I like many of his bands and his labels' bands. But I'm calling bullshit on this one.

But he was already pretty clear about it. It's not a cover, it's the same recordings he said. Normally I would suspect that some random seller on Yahoo wanted to make some money and just faked the tape. But Kisaki's official site confirms the cover and tracklist and it's pretty weird in itself that the tracklist is 2/3 of the Nude-of-J tape. Which is another thing, the Nude-of-J tape has 3 tracks, so it's not just that the tape somehow ended up in the wrong case, someone must have gone through the trouble to copy over those 2 songs specifically. Aaaaand there's more. I recently got the mp3s for another purported early Kisaki band, SHEY≠DE, via trade. It was later brought to my attention that they were probably fake. Fake files can happen in trades, although my source was usually a very realible one. One of the tapes I got is also on Kisaki's homepage, this one: http://kisaki-official.syncl.jp/?p=shop&id=530032&af= So, I showed my files to another japanese guy I know who's very knowledgable about old vk stuff, he said the tape I got was actually by a band called INSANITY. And here's where it gets interesting. Upon googling a bit I found this old auction where somebody was selling that old INSANITY tape: http://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/w80588066/ The tracklist is slightly different, but look at the cover! It's the same as on Kisakis page, except that one is red! For comparison: 瑠璃の雫 by SHEY≠DE 1. insanity 2. XXXXX 3. 夢遊病者 Unnamed tape by INSANITY 1. 恋模様 2. Desert Labyrinth 3. 瑠璃の雫 The first song on the SHEY≠DE tape has been altered with the name of the actual band (!), and the second one has been replaced with xxxxx (!!). The third song of the INSANITY tape was used as title for the SHEY≠DE tape (!!!). Now that's creative! But hey, at least he came up with a COMPLETLY NEW fake name for the 3rd song this time. And he re-colored the cover in Photoshop. That's gotta be worth something, right? The INSANITY tape was sold for 1000 Yen btw. The seller could have asked for a lot more for a SHEY≠DE tape, so there's no reason whatsoever for him to fake a SHEY≠DE tape into an INSANITY tape. At first I thought I was spoofed by a tricky trader. But there seems to be more to it. So after the dubious LAYBIAL and Levia tapes.... make it three.

Ich bin für mein erstes Konzert (also vor viele Äonen) 200km mit dem Zug gefahren und habe die Nacht zusammen mit einer Freundin im Wartesaal des Bahnhofs verbracht, weil die erste Verbindung zurück nach Hause erst um 5 Uhr morgens fuhr. Also: wo ein Wille ist, ist auch ein Weg.

I made a translation for Maiden a while ago (like, 5 years ago XD). It's not much and it's probably atroscious because I was still learning back then, but here you go.

Influenza kills more poeple each year in the US (or any country for that matter), than the current Ebola outbreak has killed in West Africa. Just saying. People tend to freak out about Ebola because they watched too many Hollywood action movies about deadly plagues and the gruesome imagery this disease evokes. The chances of a widespread Ebola outbreak in the US or any other industrialized nations are fairly small. The virus just isn't that infectious (Influenza is less deadly, but much more virulent, hence the high death toll each flue season). The reasons the virus spreads so fast in West Africa are several: 1. Bad healthcare system (few doctors, bad medical facilities). 2. Bad infrastructure (difficult to efficently distribute help) 3. Superstition, ignorance and mistrust (People don't know about/don't believe in virii, rather attributing the illness to some sort of magic; insistence to bury the dead in a traditional fashion which leads to many infections; mistrust of foreign doctors that come to help.) Suffice to say, the chances that you or anyone around you will die by Ebola are smaller than being struck by a lightning. People like Donald Trump that go all hysteric and demand that the sick doctors are not be treated in the US need to be punched in the face. What a compassionate way to treat your fellow countrymen.

Ordered!

You showed me some of you stuff before and I was as impressed back then as I am now. How can I buy that album?

Whow, that sucks. I really liked Time I and hoped that Time II would come any time soon, but.... ugh.

From what I can tell the charts seem to cover a decent range of different genres, it's always good to have some variety and not be stuck on one genre. http://www.last.fm/user/Champ213

Clearly even you are ashamed of your charts, why else would you desperately try to hide them by setting the number to top 5 only for both artists & tracks. On a site that is all about showing off your charts no less! Well, joke's on you, I still found out that Fall Out Boy is among your top overall artists. http://www.last.fm/user/Champ213

I played Final Fantasy VII on ePSXe years ago, and I shamelessly used it to cheat the Super Dunk minigame by quicksaving after every succesful throw. Since I never had a PS1 I can't really comment on how the graphics looked like in comparison, but back then it was quite a hassle to set up the emulator to properly play the game with sound, cut scenes etc... However that was like... 10 years ago. When FF7 was released on Steam recently I bought it anyway, even though I own the PS discs, just because I didn't really want to bother with setting up an emulator again. I do miss the quicksave button though. I also played a few SNES games on emulator, but that's a whole different story.

The last contest was about 3 years ago. We had 11 participants that time, which was okay. We had another karaoke contest a year or two before that, which had even more participants, I think. I will start making some plans regarding another contest. Also think about some possible prices. Then I will see if we get together enough people interested in participating.

Not so oblivious to the world after all, eh?