"Adults are stupid," says Shinji Okoda, who is better known in Hiroshima as "Guy," the vocalist for hardcore punk band Origin of M and owner of Disk Shop Misery and Bloodsucker Records. At 52, he certainly appears to have some authority in the matter. Just ...
At her first test shoot in Los Angeles, Tsubasa Watanabe was surprised by the outfit the photographer was asking her to wear: Hanging from the fingers of his outstretched hand was a pair of thong underwear. "This is the outfit?" she asked. "Yup," he answered. "Ok," she ...
Once upon a time, Hollywood was good at co-opting and selling youth culture. When rock 'n' roll and biker gangs came along in the 1950s, the studios came up with generational totems like "Blackboard Jungle" and "The Wild Ones." Beatlemania spawned "A Hard Days ...
In the shadow of Hiroshima's Atomic Bomb Dome, where dimly-lit music venues sit atop the ashes of a former atomic wasteland, the spirit of punk clings like stale smoke after a bar show. One of its champions is Never Again which, on Jan. 28, celebrated ...
Mao Live House, a legendary live rock music venue in Beijing, shut its doors on the weekend, the latest closure to hit China's music scene. Owner Li Chi said the club, popular among fans of punk, metal and alternative rock since it opened nine years ...
The Sex Pistols played their final gig at San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978. About a year later, Sid Vicious died from an overdose, and so did punk rock — according to the music magazines. The Pistols' chaotic tour of America, however, had dropped ...
Even as a child, Phew realized she was a bit different. "When I was at school, if the teacher told a joke and everyone else in the class laughed, I was always the one who couldn't see what was funny," she says. "I've always ...
Organized each fall by Fuji Rock promoter Smash, Asagiri Jam is a much more laidback affair than its famed older sister. It features two stages and the music wraps up early each night. And while Fuji Rock has some 200 plus bands, Asagiri Jam ...
In the 2000s, Gumx was one of South Korea's top-tier punk acts. With that band on indefinite hiatus, though, Gumx drummer Gun Choi is now looking to achieve similar success with Startline, a punk trio he formed in March of last year. "With Startline I ...
One new act who has been creating a buzz in music-industry circles this year is quirky singer-songwriter Seiko Oomori. The music video for her song "Midnight Seijun Isei Koyu" ("Midnight's Pure Relationship Between the Sexes") depicted a possibly murderous tale of lesbian obsession. Her new ...
You wouldn't expect a punk musician to write decent novels, any more than you'd expect a boxer to be good at darning. The talents prized by the former vocation — restlessness, insouciance, hard-wired disregard for authority — don't lend themselves to the rigors of ...
Finding music in Japan can be a nightmare, and the live-music scene in particular is notoriously difficult to penetrate. Tucked away in the basements and upper floors of anonymous buildings, often in seedy parts of town, where the neighbors will be less likely to ...
