Bad boys of summer and good vibes of fests
The influx of hip-hop style and substance into white America's musical consciousness has given pop music a series of bad boys who, in another era, would be hanging out at the nearest fraternity keg party. For this, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band with ...
Twang with a twist strolls into Tokyo
The early days of country music are a catalog of demon yodelers, drunken banjo pickers and dreamy cowboy poets. It is difficult to find any hint of this raw beginning in country's current offerings. Nashville tends to look toward the Top 40 rather than ...
Indie supergroup likes it fun, dumb -- and loud
Walk into any "live house" in Tokyo, and unless you are still hitting your college textbooks or just exiting puberty, you are apt to be the oldest person there. Unlike New York or London, Tokyo's twenty- and thirtysomethings tend to shed their youthful enthusiasms the ...
Ascendancy of ska-core captured on compilation
With the latest releases by Kemuri, Snailramp and Potshot turning up in the record charts, ska-core has emerged from the underground. Ska-core has thrived through a network of small clubs and indie record labels across Japan much like its musical cousin, mellowcore. (Members of ...
Spoken word, the increasingly hip combination of poetry and music, has never really cut it in Tokyo. While New York, Chicago and London boast regular spoken-word club nights and poetry slams, one of Tokyo's few regular events is the Johnbull-sponsored event dubbed Bookworm. Among the ...
Salon Music goes back to basics, but still way ahead of the curve
One of the great curiosities of the Japanese music scene is the tendency to eat up the latest indie rock innovations from the U.K. or U.S., leaving home-grown talent unknown and uncelebrated. Since the early '80s, Zin Yoshida and Hitomi Takenaka, the duo known as ...
Tell JB to get a new bag -- this girl's got her own funk
Takako Minekawa is a sound nerd. She generates the same kind of vibe as her pal (and paramour) Keigo Oyamada, that enthusiasm, bordering on obsession, for weird noises, groovy cover art and obscure movies or musicians. You can hear it when she talks about sound. ...
The term legend is often used lightly in music journalism. Kaoru Inoue, known as Chari Chari, is one of the few Tokyo DJs who could reasonably be called legendary. There, at the genesis of Tokyo's ambient techno scene, he has kept a low profile, ...
Meanies: '10% weird,' 90 percent addictive
There are certain shambolic punk rock moments, usually involving beer or hard spirits, when an otherwise imbecilic song becomes an anthem. In a drunken haze, the driving force of the Buzzcocks' "Orgasm Addict," G.G. Allin's "Expose Yourself to Kids" or anything by the Ramones ...
If Tokyo's live houses have provided little in the way of new musical inspiration recently, the provinces have picked up the slack with a vengeance. Sapporo's burgeoning hip-hop scene has produced new rap heroes the Blue Herb, while Kyoto, with DJs 1945 and Nobukazu ...
Picture this: Two girls, cousins, growing up in the lush, tropical paradise of Hawaii, learn the ukulele at their father's knee. Singing the old, mournful island love songs with their mother, harmony and melody come as naturally as the hula. Or this: Two girls gigging ...
'Showa 64' puts reverse spin on club scene
With his goatee and finely pointed ears, James Vyner has a puckish quality that makes it difficult to imagine him, bewigged, in Her Majesty's court. In an alternative life, yes, Vyner was a barrister. Since moving to Japan nearly 10 years ago, Vyner has traded ...
