Tetora

Oh my god Go Ahead is so fucking good I can't even...
 
All these tracks are excellent. I cannot wait to have the full versions and play them ad nauseum.

Fatal Error Race will be getting a release after all; D.I.D. is back!!

Here's their pic:

 

Thanks!
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOll3zYx-Gw
 
^ Nicer than ABC's cover of it.
 
I also like ZARD but kurenaishineek has already posted a great ZARD song. Still terribly upset at her death (even today I refuse to believe it was suicide).
 
And finally, kinda cheating with this cuz it was released at the turn of the century (2000 I believe) and it's only a ballad within a rather liberal definition of rock ballads. Nonetheless, it's hands down one of my all-time favorite songs so pardon me for sticking it here:
 


 
^ Btw this was written when they were 16 or 17 (can't rmb offhand). Which was just as well cuz it captures coming-of-age in such a beautiful way that if it were written at any other age it would never have been so emblematic of late adolescence and all of its attendant nostalgic motifs.

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Let's utilize this topic to discuss re-recordings in Japanese music.  No, I'm not talking about those "remastered" or ~album ver.~ tracks that aren't any different from the original, but legitimate re-recordings.

I'll wait to post my thoughts, but for now, here's a few questions to get you going:
-How do you generally view the concept of re-recording old music?
-Should there be a certain amount of time that passes before a track is re-recorded?
-Do you find yourself preferring originals or re-recorded tracks, or is it always on a case-by-case basis?  Does major vs. indie play a role?
-What do you look for in a re-recording? What makes for a good/bad rerecording?
-Do you ever fear that an artist may "desecrate" the original track with a re-recording?
-On youtube (or however), share some notable re-recordings (whether wonderful or god-awful) in Japanese music.  It would help if you post the original song for comparison!

I created account some time ago, but I forgot to put the topic in this thread xD
I am akiko from Poland.
 
My biggest love is J-Rock, since July 2008.
My favorite band is 宇宙戦隊NOIZ, what is uncommon. Because no one listens to them ;_;
The rest of my most favorite bands is PIERROT, SIAM SHADE, Angelo, LM.C, SuG and LUCHe.
 
In 90% of cases lead guitarist is my favorite member in the band xD
So I will not exchange them all xD
I will mention my three favorite vocalists:
- キリト [PIERROT, Angelo, solo career]
- 栄喜 [sIAM SHADE, DETROX, solo career]
- ANGEL-TAKA [宇宙戦隊NOIZ]
 
That's all, so I give a link to my last.fm and tumblr.
On my last.fm page you can see small list of concerts at which I was xD
 
 

OVERFLOWING WITH THOSE VK VIBES

would be cool if some gurls also have an allergy on shirts ehuehue :>

I'm not so good in writing reviews.
But today I gonna give it a try for this album!
 
Album released at August 13th!
 
I already did hear a few of the songs at their LIVE and they truly blew me away, so amazing cool music. but then you still need to wait how it will sound on a CD.
So today, I finally received my CD in my mailbox.
 
dieS is a more dark image visual kei band. No happy unreal fun shit. It's music truly pure from the heart. Music which is made with real fun and feeling.
Once again dieS did it again and they delivered a way more perfect ALBUM.
You can hear the guitar influences of Calmando Qual TAK a lot. He didn't recored all songs which are on this album only [track, 2,3,6,8&9]. But you can clearly hear that his ideas are inside this album too.
 
This album has the perfect heaviness of rock music need to have. Everything fits in every song.
Vocal is really beautiful and fits the music so perfectly.
No idiotic scream or something you have a lot now in visual kei music. 
It's really easy to let the music inside your head that that you kinda fly dream inside the music.
 
 
TRACKLIST & RAITING
01 the night | A nice song for a first song of an album. But still it lacks something a bit. a 2min version would maybe have fit better.
02 SA・VA・GE-night slave- | Lovely song to play all night!
03 innocent taboo | Live version is way more fun, it's not really a CD song, I guess. at least not for me.
04 mirror | to much sameness with innocent taboo.
05 VICTIM | lovely Engrish! It has a nice beat
06 blind dance | a beautiful rock ballad!
07 dry | Also a more slow song. really beautiful. To bad that Tak didn't join this song. otherwise it would been more perfect.
08 smell | more heavy song in between.
09 パブリックセックス | First part of this song is... nyaaaaa... but it gets more fun and better.
10 太陽 | Also slowly song, so much perfectness. However they should have asked Tak to join this song recording.  
 
END RAITING

Even if the individual songs aren't always that great (track, 3,4,5), yet to play them all in this order it makes them fun and nicely to listen too, so I won't skip any of them!! 
Also the more slow songs are the best for dieS, Then "Dai's" voice is also so beautiful.
 
 
You won't regret spening 2500yen for this album (^o^)/

Japanese make music for the japanese music market. Why should they change that, when they still earn through it.Why go into a market that is dying off, and works completely different from what they are used to. The appeal of visual kei and jrock will never get really huge in the western world, in all the years I have listened to visual kei 90% of the people that I introduced to jrock disregarded the music, as it was not fitting their western taste and was too exotic (and I am only talking music wise, if I would have added photos or videos it wouldn't have only been disregard but rather I would have been bitched for it. Who of you hasn't heard the sentence "ieeek why are they dressing as girls,how disgusting.") It was a fad but it was only a fad for a certain niche of people.
Anyway I am still using youtube heavily, and it still works, i am finding the stuff I want to find (even though I am from Germany and half the stuff is blocked through my own country and not through japanes copyright restrictions)
 
Considering the question in the beginning why there is no fan community of youtube anymore;with all the changing of the music scene and the record labels, didn't youtube also change? Does youtube even want to be a platform which serves as a replacement for a music channel? I don't think so, youtube had too many problems with copyright restrictions. So what is the current trend on youtube? it is vblogging. And this is damn successful if you take for example  the Green brothers (or the german le floid channel) And the Kpop fans are actually using that successfully. There is for example Eat your Kimchi (highly reccommend channel on korean culture) It is that successful that people even can earn money through it. And they DO discuss stuff there in the comments and have a strong community.
And here is the deal, was there EVER a decent channel on visual kei or jrock music? Like music reviews, in depth discussions about artists and trends or anything? As far as i know there wasn't/isn't. But i strongly believe if there would be something similiar to this people would gather again, the music would get promoted and everyone would be happy (i can even imagine that the negative comments wouldn't be that obvious) Youtube wants fan-created content and promotes that fan-created content, they don't want people to upload stuff that leads to problems with copyright and issues and for the music stuff they give room to the record labels and big corporations so they can deal with what they upload or don't want upload (vevo i.e.)
so here is the thing. Go with the trend, start vblogging and you get a jrock community on youtube again (this also could be a nice mh heaven project XD) 

Going to give my two cents in numerical fashion, hopefully it doesn`t come off as too `as a matter of fact...`.

1: PV, even if not used on Youtube in their full length are still used in a very promotional way. Television, live-streams, Nico, at live events, or to sell cd`s.

2: They are different way artists and labels run things. Personally I prefer the way some labels such as Danger Crue, and Bandsaid do it ( my favorites promotional-wise) where they put tons of artists comments, goofy videos to build connection with the band, the short PV only until they give you the full PV which they almost always do unless a promotional company asks to pay for the rights to use on their channel, or the artists want it on their channel, and so on. DC and Bandsaid make the sure you know all of the labels bands, and see all you can. Then there is PSC, which you may know I dislike management wise. They restrict access to almost all interesting content and the labels they work with make many copyright claims for any other content ( I have a position in favor of labels putting up content, as for others putting up copyrighted content, no comment).
For PSC, take Kra for example... pretty much no way to know what is going on with them besides fan content and news updates, even though they are a major band and one of the most technically talented bands period. You have to follow Kra Chile, a fan channel or other channels to even know what they look like.
Then there is Resistar, another of my favorite labels, and they put up videos of tons of goofy stuff, and previews, they build good awareness but do not post PV`s in full length 99% of the time.

3: So, then we have buying LE cd`s for the PV, and making of. I see many people who do not buy the LE with the PV if it is posted by the label on Youtube, or even regret buying it. Mostly a foreign thing from my experience, as digital is more acceptable outside of Japan as opposed to physical items in culture. I will admit, I never buy LE`s unless I really want to collect. For example, I only have DIV`s new single preordered for the regular edition, because I know DC will have the PV in high quality. Even if there is an issue, like when JUSTICE was put up with bad audio sync, DC listened to fan comments and fixed it... BUT, I buy all DOG in the PWO cd`s because I know Resistar will only post a PV if the stars align, and even fans will only upload it three lunar cycles later, probably in 90p resolution.

4: Yes I agree with VK interest being in trends. IMO it ebbs and flows, so it will keep coming back, same as things change culturally. For example, we went through the Hair Metal movement, then Grunge, then 90`s Alt Rock, then Pop-Punk, then Emo / Screamo etc to name a few, and now we live in an age where the popular styles are either Hipster, EDM brah`s, or the prevalent rap scene, everything else is a niche which is almost always frowned upon. Look at what is popular and viral now in the US, due to a post 9/11 culture. Not the right time for VK, but you will see KPOP and stuff like Gangnam style going viral. Feel-Good stuff is more in, watch some commercials on tv, and hear the cheerful poppy music, etc... The bands that have the biggest chance now are in the Oshare range, but that is too far out there, and people will eventually shift from current trends, and old stuff will be back along with some new.
As for a comment I saw on South America etc... I think it is different, they always had a very strong fanbase for many kinds of rock, and some ties to Japan as well. Some bands will always be popular there, esp. Hyde, and that will spur more interest in all Japanese rock. Random example of Rock`s history there, but a huge cultural phenomenon there decades ago was the song Hotel California, and so many bands would learn it, even if they didnt understand the words, so in a place like Peru, you would hear it everywhere you went. Even today, many fans I see on Youtube of lots of Rock, even VK, are from South America.

5: Cd Sales in Japan again, this kinda relates to the issue, and I see it mentioned above. So far Japan still has the strongest physical music industry in the world. 2012 was very strong due to many major releases and interest. 2013 was estimated to be the year Japan became no.1 worldwide, but there was a dip in major cd releases, and dip in interest in digital side-markets like ring-tones etc... We shall see how 2014 goes. IMO it is better as a physical market, and I think it will suffer from moving to digital, as the culture has not went there, and other markets have not successfully made that shift. If 2014 is good, Japan will def. become no.1 in the world.

6: Toxic fanbases. IMO the negativity has grown largely from just a first impression kind of view of any forum or comment line. I usually dont even read comments on Youtube, as there is always negativity, and always a comment that says `they used to be better, what is this?`. As for forums, they are also very negative. Things were much more positive from what I saw years ago, when talking about anime, manga, etc... was full of wildly enthusiastic kids and older people who felt free to post about their love in many ways. What I saw was a gradual and natural reaction to this, where people didn`t want to be like that, and wanted to distance themselves from those fanbases and `fan-boys` or `fan-girls` and be cooler, edgier people who began even saying negative things just for the sake of being negative and not looking like those `other` fans. Now on many places it is popular to say negative things, put down bands, act like VK sucks, like they are second-rate, etc... And it is not fun to participate in, and not fun to read a thread or comment section for a video you just watched and loved, while people just pop-in to say `this sucks`, or `this is a rip-off of something else`. So I would rather just buy my cds, and either not read comments, or just ignore them and say positive things, but being positive makes you a `fan-boy` and your opinion isn`t relevant now because you are supposedly one...


7: A million-plus views with minimal ad clicks would be about $500 dollars, so, not that much, but profit margin on an LE is usually $5 or less, so about 100 sales they would have to lose, and it is a strong possibility. Abingdon Boys Howling reached 10mill plus before being taken down, so $5000-$10,000 estimated based off revenues I have seen (but they didn`t even post that video, and their Youtube channels are pretty much never used) So if they posted that vid, and had a cd LE with PV, there is hypothetically a count of 1000 cd sales they would have to lose. So we can either take that into account for popular videos, or estimate revenues based off less popular PV`s plus other vids posted like comments or goofy nonsense. But then you have to take into acccount sales of a PV colection DVD, etc... How much would these sales suffer? Very `if and maybe` reasoning here that is not scientific, but it puts some-what of a perspective on things.

8: And lastly, just to throw this in, Youtube is not used as much by Japanese as foreigners, and foreigners have never shown concrete measure of large sales or impact for most bands, so why should labels care? (Just a question, not necessarily my views, I always want VK to grow, etc..)


And I bolded that part in `6` as I know this post is a lot to read, so many will skim, and that is one more partisan feeling of mine that I wanted to express.
Thanks for reading.

What fields are Japan notoriously bad in?
They dominated the automobile, motorcycle, electronics, gaming industries for either extensive periods or to date, as well as strong flows in distribution of consumables, cultural exports, pop-culture exports, as well as taking a cut of the sale of most tapes, cds and blu-ray discs (actually a cut off all blu rays printed).
As for cd prices, goods have different values in different areas, not just Japan, and money flow as well as exchange rates play big factors, which is why iTunes is seperated throughout the World, and why we have import-export laws, duties, taxes etc..
Music has become severely devalued in USA, Japanese music not so much, which is why even though Japan faces a huge language barrier, it is the number 2 market in the world and is constantly predicted to overtake America.
As for Japanese managers being clueless, or stupid, how so? They are using their specific experience and business methods, which may not match those expected by areas with a devalued market, but even though I myself would not run my business that way, I can see why they do, when many of the labels that use the short PV method seem to be doing very well in sales, and are making revenue regardless.
I think that there is always room for improvement, and change, but even though I have my own ideas, I cant simply bash companies when they are making their business model work, and there is no concrete data to show they are losing any potential sales or have reason to change it.

B'z and LUNA SEA have the best ballads. Le ciel and Last Letter are also big favorites of mine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KH6RsqMQlE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_bpOyzyeBM

Full PV
 

Apparently most of my favourite GLAY ballads are from the early '00s. However is a classic, though.

Okay guys lets keep this simple , post the best ballads of japanese music relesed in the 90's be it rock , pop or whatever you have there . Post the links to youtube or other places where you can listen to that particular song . Keep it clean and dont post more than 2-3 songs at a time . Also feel free to say why do you like that song .
Here is my contribution 
 
ZARD - Good-bye my loneliness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMGhRP_cL2U
Why i like it ? Well , cause its ZARD . Izumi Sakai's voice is just so beautiful and fits ballads so good . So end of story .

The instrumental and vocals are nice.

Ok, this can seem an unusual choice, but it was the first one i had on mind...
Why i love it? Maybe the wonderful instrumentals that made this band unique in its genre or His Excellency Demon Kogure's incredible voice (noticing that he sings a ballad with a sword in his hand )

It's arcade only because that just how it is in Japan with fighting games, Arcades are still extremely popular in Japan to the point where most new fighting games always come out in arcades there before consoles. One of the biggest advantages of releasing in arcades first is to allow them do what is called location tests and other things that gather data, so when they finally do release a console version they will have a lot of the bugs and problems ironed out. But yes since this is tekken and pokemon it's safe to assume we will eventually see a console version released here, sorry to break it to you though, because this definitely won't be coming to 3DS.

Mirin' floral shirt and Sitting Bull in the background.

I never done this before so here I go,
 
It's a pleasure to meet everyone! my name is periwinkle I have been a have of jrock for four years now I have a long list of favorite bands but I'll just post my top ones UNiTE , 2nd Dyz , Daizy Stripper , LM.C & LOST ASH I don't like heavy metal etc. it's just not my cup of tea but those bands do have my respects the song that got me into jrock was LM.C's Punky Heart which my friend let me listen to while I was over at her house one weekend I been hooked since I love learning and experiencing new things so recommendations are welcome well I'll leave it at that best wishes to all ^.^