ficsci

^ not quite Edward Scissorhands, but you look nice anyway With a part of my Halloween costume ("Chicago Winter: the White Grim Reaper" lol wat) a couple of years ago. Oh man, I was so slim then.... *cry*

Honestly I'm not very in touch with the rest of the world. Maybe a part of it is because the college I'm going to tends to have a population that does not correctly represent the rest of the mainstream world (e.g. disproportionate number of hipsters). Anyways, I was wondering, what is "the" youth culture of the present day? Is it hipsters? It seems that the change in trends, at least from around the 90s, was something like: goth --> punk --> emo --> scene Of course it's not totally linear, but I feel like several years ago such trends seem so clear. Or... don't tell me that being a Jrock or anime or a Lolita fashion fan is the new "youth culture of the moment" (o__o) Or perhaps it's being a K-pop fan I'm just curious about these stuff in general, thinking of whether those almost-linear trends in the past may have been influenced more by television (which is probably dying along with MTV... even more so than it already did before), and perhaps the increasing popularity of East Asian culture may be partly because of the increased number of Korean students who study abroad, lol. What do you think?

yaaaay new mini coming out next month \(^^)/ seek zombie is excessively impressive, as expected

... and apparently someone just upped the full PV on youtube, yaaayy! ^^ cSkpkrJrDfE

So I've been thinking that, maybe, LIPHLICH's Kuga is Kiyoharu's illegitimate son since they look alike (although that's mostly just because of the fanboy pose/cosplay, duh), and yea, Kiyoharu is old enough to father a 20-something-year-old child and sexy enough to have the baby with a woman who's better-looking than him, lolololol. If that's true, it might explain Kuga's use of grammatically-correct English; perhaps it's a result of education from Kiyoharu's child support money. Hmm...... oh the shit I've been thinking about these days....

what the shit? D: it's just so weird when old bands break up...

I just randomly found this post when searching posts on NEXX.... and just had to laugh at "Orange Tandoori Chicken" XD XD XD I'd assume they would have the opposite concept of Yellow Fried Chickenz (^^; )

AYABIE's last 3 singles I'M SO HAPPY THEY'RE MAKING GOOD MUSIC AGAIN!!! AND I'M GOING TO A-KON TO SEE THEM LIVE!!!! XD XD XD

Sorry dudes, but as a bassist myself, I am obliged to disapprove of LUNA SEA's J. As much as I love LUNA SEA, J's stuff isn't good for learning new/advanced techniques AT ALL, and that's because he has NONE of it () I don't have much respect for him as a bassist because, aside from pretty consistent & precise fast picking (which I do appreciate, because you need that kind of stamina to play live), the rest of the stuff he plays are unimaginative and require pretty low-level skills. L'arc's Tetsu, I can appreciate because it does takes some skills, and his lines are colorful & interesting. But he mostly just runs up & down the same scale over & over again. cali=gari's Kenjirou, now that I can really agree with. This guy has his shit down, he's a frickin tapping, slapping, plucking, sliding, hammering machine down to the subtle stuff you can't even really catch with normal ears. Do I even need to describe it? I'm actually a Moran fan largely for being a fan of the bass (Zill). I might have overmentioned it, but I really think that his style is quite different and he plays unpredictable riffs with some pretty complex scale/harmony manipulation & modulations (of course based on the chord progression of the songs themselves, but hey, he composed many of them). Maybe you can't really call all of them solos (although they sound really loud during instrumental parts in the recordings), but the ornamentation he does are fricking smooth & creative. Listen carefully to「目下の泥濘」,「ハーメルン」, and 「カクタス亜科」 because they're pretty mind-blowing. True, he's a picker, and I'm a plucker, but I still can learn a lot even just from his choice of notes. Also, although I don't find him as original, I give major props to ex-Sugar's Shingo, because he's a really fast & precise at playing with fingers. Trying to play "afterglow" at the right tempo still gives me finger cramps. He's pretty much doing it by the Jaco Pastorius school of funk bass playing. But really a major reason why I listen to VK is because of the interesting bassists. There are a lot of bands with interesting bassists, or at least interesting bass moments, and often the best bassists are the ones who aren't as showy or obvious about riffing & soloing (because some obvious riffs are actually really simple). Like, how often do people rave about MALICE MIZER's Yuki being a good bassist? But even if you just listen to MM's pop stuff like "Gardenia" or "Au Revoir", his riffs are obviously melodic & awesome and are actually pretty challenging to play. Btw, since someone mentioned Dir en grey, I have to admit I don't know their whole discography, but "Ash" has the coolest bass lines of all the Diru songs that I know of.

Yeah, I would say it's because VK has bands like Psycho Le Cemu or MALICE MIZER or NoGod with people who dress as monsters/vampires/brides/princesses etc that they attract role-players into a part of their fanbase XD XD XD . But I think you can do role play with just about anything if the fanbase likes doing RP.

I agree One interesting thing when I watched Plastic Tree's Merry Go Around the World DVD, this one time when a black guy ran into Pura in the airport and asked "are you in a band? what kind of music do you play?" Tadashi answered "Japanese rock", not just "rock" or "alternative rock". I may be wrong, but I strongly feel that people from non-Western countries who are involved in their own local music scenes would want to not just copy exactly how the the Western bands sound like, but invent their own signature sound that is uniquely "Japanese", or "Filipino", or "Indian", etc. I think K-pop is still kinda failing at this because I think most of K-pop sounds like American pop/hip-hop/R&B, and don't even begin with their non-existent rock scene. But to me J-pop and J-rock actually do sound different from western pop & rock (you know, by adjusting to the Japanese sense of aesthetics). Hindi pop is also awesome at this fusing their own tastes with foreign influences (duh, last time I was in India, there was this long, repetitive hit "rock" song that sounds too much like Hindi pop and is a Bollywood soundtrack).

But hey, if I happened to be a huge fan of Scandinavian metal bands, I'd probably love to study their language too. Know what I mean? (I mean, I initially learned English from listening to songs in English). Besides pop-culture always have some ties to the greater picture of history & culture.

Wha I thought gyaru and gyaruo tend to be more into techno clubbing music lolololol (I mean that's what they seem to be most associated with, clubbing). Sure what music they listen to is their business, but you know, culture stereotype-wise. But I won't be surprised if there are crossovers Actually, I think gyaru & gyaruo are more associated with the yanki & host/hostess subculture, while visual rock scene is just another subculture that someone can be/not be into. I think in terms of demographics, visual kei musicians & fans are probably very diverse in background, compared to, for example, the gyaru subculture (which is mostly working class). Look it up, there are some online articles on studies of how the Japanese middle class is pretty off-ish with the gyaru fashion because it's associated with being yanki. Also "visual kei" literally just means "visual style", Japanese people just like labeling things with [insert name]-kei. I don't think Japanese subculture/scenes are as strictly coded as foreign fans might think. I have a strong feeling that "oshare kei" is really just because those bands happen to be more "oshare"(stylish) than other visual bands, but duh oshare bands are still visual bands. Or like some bands are "Nagoya kei" just because duh they're from Nagoya, and they have their trends in rock music style over there (so people can just stop effing debating stupidly about whether the studs or 9GOATS are "nagoya-kei" or not, because that's not the point of calling something "nagoya kei"). Another example, some foreign lolita fans don't want to call lolita "cosplay" and tend to identify themselves as "we are lolita (people)". But I think a lot of lolita fans in Japan might not actually define their identities as "I am a lolita", and don't mind calling it "cosplay" because "cosplay"="costume play", so if you put on these costumes and do a make belief "we are Victorian children today", then duh it's cosplay. From my observation, this latter attitude seems to be true at least for the bangya scene, because I think their attitude towards it is more like "I'm going to go see a visual band today, so I'm going to celebrate the cosplay/visual subculture & wear lolita". Also, back to visual kei, there are probably lots of crossover connections between musicians who play in visual bands and those who don't. It's just that the ones in visual bands are aware of that fans expect them to do "stuff visual bands do" in live shows & events, plus there are record labels & live venues that are more associated with visual kei obviously. @maiku about the whole people in Japan not really listening to visual bands. Not surprised because most of it is indies, minus the really big ones that are already major and chart-topping, like Nightmare and SID. Like everywhere else, most people only listen to the mainstream stuff. But then again, there are a lot of fans (especially guys) who don't come to the live shows & events because I think those events has the stigma of being "for bangya who want to squee about their favorite VK bands". I think for bands whose fanbase have less of this atmosphere (especially when the bands are bigger or are just known as "that badass band that is really good and rock fans can't help but love", maybe like deadman), then the male fans start coming out to live shows.

Drooling over Kei (Baroque, Kannivalism) Stupid hormones... but he's so impossibly cute and full of awesome skills despite his age and stuff!!! (and not having found anyone in the real world I like for a year is not helping this dangerous situation, I might end up delusional O_O) gahh I need to find me a hot philosophy/music/art nerd (.__.) *forever alone*

sigh I really want to respect their whole cover art decision, but damn, why aren't these available on iTunes for cheap *no moar money from all my art projects*

today? more like tonight. I slept 9am-4pm. Of course now I'm still awake at 4am, but gotta do something about this nocturnal lifestyle sooner or later

That's one of my old headphones!! It's pretty good but often hurt my head because it clamps too tightly for me. And then eventually the over head wire broke Aaand you just summarized my entire life age 12-16

I finally did laundry (yay!), but now the dishes are stacking up (darn it) Also, I was attempting to internet stalk Velo/Takumi again, but it seems he still doesn't have any twitter/blog, and no picture of him from live shows or any of his musician friends blogging about hanging out with him yet. I think the last time I heard of him before he joined DIMMDIVISION was when Jiminy Cricket's Shia blogged about meeting up & talking with him about guitar stuff. This guy is so private O_O

Around high school I also didn't bother getting really good headphones. And then I finally bought a pair a couple of years ago, AND I CAN'T GO BACK TO LISTENING TO MUSIC ON JUST ANY RANDOM EARPHONES. This is what I bought: Audio Technica Open-Air Dynamic Headphones (ATH-AD700) Also, since those are open cans and I can't listen to them in public places without pissing people off, I just got the closed cans counterpart of the same model, ATH-A700. The Air-Dynamic is about $100, and the A700 is $125. People who like to hear lots of bass tend to not be fans of either of the A700s, but they're amazing in creating a 3D sound experience, which totally suits me because I listen to rock with tons of reverb. They are on the cheaper ends of serious headphones, but supposedly sound a lot better than their price (as usually is with Audio Technica. I also have a pair of in-ear $40 AT phones, which sounded pretty darn good, but still nowhere close to the A700s). Also I love the cables of both my A700 headphones, 1 is super thick and the other is fabric-insulated, so basically unbreakable. I think most problems I had had with other headphones in the past is that their cables can't survive my heavy use. I still don't have the money to get the even better headphones, but I'm still totally happy with these. Perhaps, someday when I have a real job... (I might turn into one of those audiophiles). Yeah, so I know I'm going to sound like a jerkface poster girl, but if you don't listen to music on good headphones, you're missing out the amazing experience of hearing the intricacies of album mixing and near life-like sound re-creation *preaches down the crazy town*. Seriously guys, after that everything else sound pale in comparison. And I'm totally recommending the model I have (the A700 one, because it's closed back. Also, it has a bit more bass over the AD700, but not as much sound stage/3D experience. But all parts sound very clean and crisp.)

yay I found a goldmine, if anyone actually cares lol http://honmyou.jugem.jp/ Supposedly sources are from 2chan, but hasn't been updated since 2008 and doesn't have that many bands. Also it's in Japanese.

after squinting more at pages in Japanese, I have discovered Zill's real name! (or so what the fans who wrote in vkdb think is his real name based on an old BrandX comment DVD) It's Asakura Shingo (朝倉 信吾) Wait, he has the same name as Moran's support & Sugar's former bassist Shingo. Wow O_O

I'm reading Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's autobiography (translated to English) http://kyarychan.tumblr.com/tagged/Oh%2 ... ajuku-Girl Surprised about how sincere & childlike she sounds. I'm crying my eyes out reading about her relationship with her parents, it's just so real and reminds me of mine.

I'd rather do it with SID's Mao, heard he'd suddenly hug the girls he sleeps with in the middle of it, lulz

But seriously, even asking a staff member to do it? I know it's not just Satsuki, but people doing that in general is just so... gross, at least he could have asked the staff member to ask the girl to meet him first, then he can ask in person if she wants to sleep with him. I mean they aren't just some lump of meat that someone else can get for you.

Plastic Tree - Mirai Iro --> Yu Gi Oh theme Not my favorite Pura song, but WHY YUGI?? WHYYYYY?