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Is it a sign of a full-fledged economic recovery or a looming catastrophe in the monetary making? Recent spikes in Japan’s long-term interest rate, represented by the 10-year government bond, have created a stir and roused a deep sense of alarm among investors and ...
Tonkatsu is comfort food, gourmand grub — not a gourmet delicacy. So what are those hearty, unpretentious deep-fried breaded pork cutlets doing in an elegant little bar-style restaurant above one of Ginza’s temples to high-end consumption? Katsuzen has come a long way from its ...
Life in Japan just seems tailor-made for certain foreign residents, who slip into the fabric of this society as smoothly as a hand slides into a glove. American Curtis Patterson, a professional koto player and music teacher, is a case in point. Not only ...
Disgusted by corrupt local leaders, an angry miner picks up a shotgun. A migrant worker returning home looks to armed robbery to escape a life of relentless bleakness. A pretty receptionist at a sauna is driven to the limit when a gangster tries to ...
David Beckham, whose curling free kicks, rugged good looks and celebrity marriage made him one of the most famous athletes in the world, is retiring from soccer. Whether striding on the grass, the red carpet or the fashion catwalks, Beckham transcended his sport and ...
It’s been a busy few years since DJ Kentaro won the 2002 DMC World DJ Championship and became the first Japanese to bring back the prize — a golden pair of Technics record decks (the turntable of choice in clubs around the world) — ...
Few artists could have struggled through a career as thoroughly frustrating as that of American soul singer Bettye LaVette and still continue to display the strength and good humor that she does. After four decades of disappointments and obscurity in the music business, her ...
Although The Album Leaf started in 1998 as a side project to Jimmy LaValle’s work in another band (San Diego’s Tristeza), his postrock power-pop solo venture has since evolved into his main gig. The band’s lineup often changes — multi-instrumentalist LaValle even performed as ...
Variously described as a jazz-folk mystic, a singer-songwriter, a soul man and a reluctant musician, Terry Callier is in many ways the genius that slipped through the net, fluent in a variety of styles but destined not for mainstream acceptance. Callier himself has always ...
There are plenty of things you might expect to find a jazz legend such as Herbie Hancock doing with his time — flying to concerts in Europe perhaps, or preparing for a jazz festival in North America, composing new songs, maybe even catching a ...
At most live gigs, all eyes are on the band while the mixing desk is tucked out of sight with some guy in a T-shirt standing behind it simply making sure each instrument comes out at the right level. But indicating how far our ...
‘The most talented producers in Britain. . . . the Sly and Robbie of 2006″ is how rapper Tricky has described the rhythm unit of Perry Mellus and Wayne Nunes, better known as Warrior Charge. In addition to collaborations with Tricky, the pair, who ...
Spawned by the energy of punk, a new crowd of British bands known collectively as the ska revival, or the two-tone movement, emerged in the late 1970s around the Midlands area. Unlike the mainly white punk groups, bands such as The Specials, The Selecter ...
Producer Brian Eno has been variously quoted as saying Nigerian drummer and songwriter Tony Allen is “the most important musician,” or “the best drummer” of the last 50 years. Whatever Eno actually said there is no doubt of the high regard Allen is held ...
“Wake the town and tell the people” rings the trademark battle cry of Jamaican deejay extraordinaire U-Roy, who plays three live dates in Japan this weekend. When the 63-year-old started out as a “DJ” in the early 1960s, he used to play his own ...
By naming itself after the soft-porn mondo director Russ Mayer, and his erstwhile cameraman, Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band seem to set themselves up as purveyors of the kind of low-fi, freaked-out lounge music that graces soundtracks. On their second album, “Your ...
During a break in a Tokyo recording session, Rico Rodriguez puts down his trombone to lark around on the roof with the teenage members of Oreskaband, the all-girl ska band he’s been working with. That, at 72 years old, he is now old enough ...