i heard my first favorite pop music when i was a first grade, 1997 when we danced during our field demonstration in a soccer field and when i rode the school bus jeepney. my dad likes old rock music and my mom likes what she hears from tv or from her friends. when the first time watching anime on cable tv with opening and ending themes, i recorded some of rave master, gto, rurouni kenshin and other anime theme songs from animax and axn. in 2005, i explored more on contemporary music by listening and watching to western music and original pinoy music (opm) before i focused myself listening to more japanese music from anime in 2007 onwards deleting some of my recorded 20 second samples of mp3 and music video of contemporary music, anime theme songs, japanese music and opm in LG KU250 mobile phone. i received a newer phone in 2011 a Nokia C3-00, adding more western, japanese and opm music with voice samples of voice actors from internet, celebrities and politicians that i heard on radio and some 70 MB+ java games. i changed my taste in western music retaining only one pop group Backstreet Boys, one nu-metal changed to alternative-electronic rock band LINKIN PARK focusing more on 80's rock and heavy metal. in terms of opm i retain only two bands Eraserheads and Urbandub with the most percentage of it is japanese rock, heavy metal and pop due to my mobile phone only having 8 GIG memory external storage.
This goes as well for me. My mother was all about the classic rock. You could say that I grew up on Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, LLed Zeppelin, Metallica, Megadeth, Nirvana and Jimi Hendrix. My father was on the other side of the spectrum and he focused a lot on funk and Motown. So on his side, I got introduced to Michael Jackson, Kool & The Gang, etc. My grandmother was also different and loves soul and R&B, so things like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, etc. were commonly playing when I was in her house.
However, both mom and pops listened to a few artists in common that all leaned toward the rock side of the spectrum. So things like Metallica's Black Album and Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti were common in my upbringing. I can't count how many times I've heard Kashmir, haha. This is probably why I favor rock and metal so much.
A big problem with finding my own identity was two-fold: one, most of their music was on cassettes. Two, neither one of them listened to anything from the current music scene that I liked. My mom tried to remain relevant, listening to things like Epica, Pray for the Soul of Betty, and Evanescence but I didn't particularly like any of these bands. My dad and grandmother just hated all new music and won't follow anything at all, so they were no help either. When I tried turning on the radio or the TV, I was pretty much restricted to all things Disney-related because everyone was deathly afraid of my impressionable seven-year-old mind being warped by the "gangsta rap" trend that was booming in NYC. It didn't really help though because due to the neighborhood we lived in, it was omnipresent. I didn't have to watch TV to recognize the newest Biggie song, or to feel somewhat sad when 2pac got shot on my birthday (check it, he did!). So you can actually say that I listened to almost everything!
So one day when I was seven, I went into the cafeteria for breakfast and ran into one of my friend's older sisters. She was currently on her "all Japanese music is superior!!!11!1one" kick and shoved Dir en grey into my ears. It was love at first listen!
...
HAHA OK forget that bullshit. I laughed my ass off and asked who those faggy looking Japanese dudes were. She wasn't very happy at my remark but what I heard was so different than anything I'd ever seen before. When I finally got a computer to search for them, I found a few tracks from their Gauze album. That's when my exposure to VK began.
As I say often, finding VK music back in the 90's was hard. Yeah, you could run into the big bands like Malice Mizer and Dir en grey if you searched for a little bit. But my Internet-fu wasn't very good and I couldn't find much more. My short stint with VK ran into an abrupt end when my old Micron computer pooped from having too many viruses (wasn't Windows 95 SO FUN?) so I was out of the loop for about six years. In that time, I tried to get into rap and failed miserably. Attempting to discover more rock music got me ridiculed from people who would insist that anything that wasn't made by black people "wasn't black music". Combine that with pressure to fit in, Nickelback, Napster shutting down, and an inability to find more classic rock bands (didn't realize the whole "trend" was over) or any localized tunes I heard out of anime shows and I ended up cutting myself off from music entirely until high school.
In high school, I met up with a few people that loved Japanese music. Don't quite remember how that happened; I just know that one day we got to talking about it. Then I was introduced to VK again. That's when I went crazy. I had six years worth of music to catch up on, and the people I were around were indie-heads. So for about two to three years all I listened to was VK and I was proud of it. I borrowed CD's, was introduced to Limewire (which was pretty much Napster 2.0 at the time) and googled around about basically visual kei. Found a lot of bands that way, but nowhere near as many as I found here. I think I found Batsu once, clicked on two topics and saw how badly organized the site was and ran away. I didn't come across TW until late 2007 and early 2008. Signed up and was initially a lurker. What ended up making me a permanent part of the whole website was some dickweed named Brandon. It was around the time Jasmine You died and he said something along the lines of "well he died of nigger flu".
Needless to say I verbally shoved a foot up his ass. The people of TW supported me. I kinda felt bad because I made Ito delete six pages full of drama (sorry about that <.<;;; ) but after that happened I was all "FUCK YEAH TW" and I became a permanent fixture here.
And then THE CAT5 came along one day and was like "hey, you seem like a pretty open-minded fellow. Let's trade music!". And then the era of musical expansion began. He sent me tons of bands I'd never heard of before that were all Japanese. I had a HOLY FUCK moment. I always knew there was stuff outside of the visual kei scene but it wasn't like TW was a good place to find it. I devoured his mixtapes and then was hungry for more. The explosion was further fueled by Wind's uploads, who was responsible for introducing me to Touhou. I'll never understand to this day how I scrobbled 412 plays of Electric Red in one week.
And then I thought to myself: "Is there more music like this abroad?". That's really when I began exploring every single genre from every country I could think of.
And then about four years later (it's been four years already v____v) you have the eclectic mess that is Zess.
Nice to meet you Kevin/octoral/however you want me to call you I don't know too much about non-VK bands (apart from a few electronic exceptions + Boris and Arukara for example), but I hope you'll be one of those who can educate me on that Don't be afraid to drop by in the chat and have a talk with the regulars! Most of them are into non-VK as well And last but not least, enjoy the forum!
lol I opened your thread at the same time Kara's "octocoral" started playing here. I assume your nickname is based on that song?
Anyway, welcome! Nice to see other me-al art and Kara fans in the forum.
Well, they've been working on a new album for over a year by now. Too bad they're latest live-only single has never been properly leaked. You can listen to it here.
but yeah, there are some other me-al art fans over here too. They're scarce, but they're there =)
octoral got a reaction from Umi_Niwa in Pets and animals
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