Amid all the excitement, analysis and general horse-dancing hoo-haa over Korean musician Psy’s smash hit “Gangnam Style,” one story that has provoked a certain amount of head-scratching among fans is the song’s relative lack of success in Japan. Brian Ashcraft produced a good summary ...

The roundly despised pay-to-play system in place throughout most of Tokyo’s live-music scene, and to a slightly lesser extent in many other cities, is something I’ve written about in this column before. A typical complaint from a band might go, “Why should we have ...

The Fuji Rock Festival kicks off tomorrow with its dependable mixture of ageing rockers from abroad, a handful of predictably chosen Japanese acts, and just a smattering of blogged-about buzz bands. This year in particular, the joy I felt upon the demise of Oasis ...

It’s rare that a band whose most celebrated recordings were originally released almost 40 years ago can generate excitement among classic-rock fans, prog-hating punks and musicians whose parents were still in elementary school at the time — but then Can were no ordinary band. ...

As Japanese pop culture is increasingly dominated by insular subcultural groups with little interest in what’s happening outside Akihabara’s otaku haven or Shibuya’s gyaru mecca, the news that electro-pop trio Perfume had moved to major label Universal and made its music available online to ...

From mod rockers The Who covering the “Batman” theme, through punk pranksters The Dickies taking on The Banana Splits, to former Megadeth shredder-in-chief Marty Friedman’s transformation into J-pop svengali, there has always been a flirtation between the fiercer and heavier outposts of music and ...