Steve McClure - The Japan Times

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Steve McClure

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Steve McClure

Steve McClure has lived in Tokyo since 1985. Formerly Billboard magazine’s Asia Bureau Chief, he now publishes the online music-industry newsletter McClureMusic.com.

For Steve McClure's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE

May 2, 2001

Power Puffy girls

Is America ready for Puffy? The pop duo's record label, Sony Music Entertainment (Japan), apparently thinks so. Sony Music Imports released Puffy's most recent album, "Spike," in the U.S. on May 1, in the hope that Americans will go gaga over Ami and Yumi in the same way Japanese and other Asians have.

CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE

Apr 25, 2001

A stunningly beautiful work of Great 3 genius

One sure sign of the maturation of a pop-music culture is when artists start releasing albums that are organic, cohesive works of art, instead of collections of their latest hit singles with some B-grade tracks as filler. "May and December," the latest from Japanese pop/rock band the Great 3, is such an album. It's a stunningly beautiful collection of songs that stands head and shoulders above the rest of the J-pop pack.

CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE

Apr 18, 2001

Battle of the pop divas

Please sit down. There, are you comfortable? Perhaps you'd like a drink to calm your nerves, because what I'm about to say may come as somewhat of a shock.

CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE

Apr 11, 2001

Trans-Pacific partnership serves up universal sound

A few years back, the big news on the J-pop scene was the "independent producers boom." Following the lead of the then-ubiquitous Tetsuya Komuro, freelance producers such as Takeshi Kobayashi (Mr. Children, My Little Lover), and Hiromasa Ijichi (Speed) were supposed to usher in an era in which a new generation of Japanese Phil Spectors and George Martins would raise J-pop to new heights of creative brilliance.

CULTURE / Music / J-POPSICLE

Apr 4, 2001

And the Gold Disc goes to... well, what did you expect?

Show-biz awards ceremonies -- who needs 'em? They're formulaic, plastic, inane, banal, maudlin, crass . . . There's no end to the pejoratives one can use to describe them.

CULTURE / Music

Feb 25, 2001

Love Psychedelico hits the blue notes

It's every struggling musician's dream: One moment you're scrounging around for gigs and a record deal while trying to keep food on the table and pay the rent, and the next moment, you've got a hit record on your hands and suddenly the talk of the town.

CULTURE / Music

Oct 14, 2000

King's not dead, long live Crimson

Robert Fripp is rock 'n' roll's quintessential English eccentric. Not in a flamboyant, over-the-top way like the late Vivian Stanshall or Keith Moon, but in an offbeat, understated manner -- like a country vicar whose avocation is the study of reptile eggs or quill pens. Fripp's quirky, yet iron-willed sense of individualism has helped him pilot his band, King Crimson, through the choppy seas of pop music ever since the group's 1969 debut. Along with bands such as Yes, Genesis, Van Der Graaf Generator and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson was seen as one of the prime exponents of the now mercifully extinct musical genre known as progressive rock, which was neither progressive nor rock, when you get right down to it.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Rows of irises resemble a rice field at the Peter Walker-designed Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.

The 'outsiders' creating some of Japan's greenest spaces

By Stephen Mansfield

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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