Omodaka

Anime Boston has been going on all weekend—it started on Friday and today, Saturday, is the biggest day with all the headline events. I was there to take pictures of my friend Ger in her costume (she was Tifa from the video game Final Fantasy 7) and to attend the EXTREMELY awesome concert by The Pillows. But more on that later.

At 2pm sharp on a clear afternoon, an airhorn sounded on Copley Square and hundreds of people of all ages started thwacking each other on the head with fluffy pillows. It was a beautiful sight. And there were tons of people to see it since the event was thoroughly hyped in local media and, at times, it seemed the number of gawkers and photographers far outnumbered the actual pillow-fighters. But that didn’t really matter since it was still a real hoot.

Fair warning! Oodles of photos to follow:

Turnout was really amazing. The last pillow fight was at most 100 people, this time it was easily 500 or so with about the same number of onlookers. Many of the costumed kids at Anime Boston made their way to this event, so the pillow fighters were definitely a colorful crowd.

My favorite scene at the pillow fight was one of the costumed Banditos running around the crowd, waving the state flag of Massachusetts. A standard-bearer and a target! To my surprise, he ran up to me a few minutes into the event and called my name. Ends up, under the mask, it was a friend of mine who had recently joined the ranks of the Banditos Misteriosos. He was so kind to oblige me by posing with the flag—now that’s Massachusetts pride!

Many people saw me talking to one of the Banditos and asked me what political cause this rally was for. What’s sad is that nobody seemed convinced when I told them this was just for fun. I’m not sure if it speaks to the level of cynicism in our society or just the extreme silliness of the event. Probably both, huh?

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay very long, and I heard the event lasted until about 3pm, which sounds about right. The pillow fight on the Common last December went for about a half hour, but the crowd was a lot smaller and we got tired only 15 minutes into it or so.

I’m really, really glad that the Banditos Misteriosos are around. Anything to help Boston shake its stodgy reputation is most welcome in my book.

So yes, as I mentioned earlier, my friend Ger and I were at Anime Boston for the day. The highlight was definitely the concert by THE PILLOWS. This is an awesome punk/rock group hailing from Hokkaido that has earned a lot of international acclaim: They’ve played SXSW and have toured in the U.S. several times at major music halls like the Knitting Factory in NYC. Basically The Pillows is one of the few groups from Japan that pretty much anyone who listens to rock nowadays has heard of, and for good reason, because they are freakin’ fantastic.

Almost all of the attendees of Anime Boston lined up to hear them and we filled the Hynes Convention Center main event hall to near-capacity—that’s almost 4,000 people. For a good hour they had everyone on their feet, cheering, hopping and singing along with brand-new tunes as well as classic crowd-pleasers, like “Ride on Shooting Star.” If you’ve never heard it, you really should.

Unfortunately photos were not allowed, so I don’t have any pictures of the concert. Ger and I were also at the very far back of the balcony so photos would have turned out quite poorly anyway. All that mattered was the music, and believe me, it reached us loud and clear even way in back!

Rock on, Pillows. \m/

It was PACKED to capacity. Most people were there as hardcore fans, but there were a lot of stragglers that wandered in, curious about the weird variety of acts–a ukelele duo, garage rock, reggae-inspired punk.

My absolute favorite group of the night was garage rockers Detroit7. Totally high energy throughout their set, Detroit7 tore up the stage. I think they only played a half hour but they were all completely drenched in sweat by the end of it. Intense, intense, intense! Needless to say when they finished I ran over to their merch table and bought their album “Great Romantic,” which I’ve been listening to non-stop for several days now. Keep an eye on these guys, I think they’re only going to get bigger and better.

The band in the header photo? That’s Scandal, four Osaka schoolgirls with a penchant for pop-rock. They have a lot of musical talent, that’s for sure. Too bad a lot of the rather sketchy guys up front didn’t really care.

As always, I have pics up on my flickr account. SXSW Japan Nite @ TT Bears photo set is here.

Two friends of mine (Boston-area!) just left after spending an evening chez moi just watching hours of J-rock and the Nana movie. I hang my head in utter shame to admit this was the first time I’d ever seen Nana! I knew the premise, I knew most of the characters, I knew a lot of the music, but I’ve never sat down to watch it.

It’s as good as people say. I hesitated to see it all this time because of all the hype around it, which I admit is a really lame reason to not see something. But Nana‘s definitely the movie for J-rock fans everywhere, as I think a lot of people will recognize either themselves or a lifestyle they want to emulate in this film. (And yea, the all-important kohl-eyed and skinny-pantsed J-rock dudes are in there too.)

Nana and Hachi’s friendship was so beautiful in how it transcended stereotype, these two girls were so genuinely kind to each other that they could understand and support each other as friends despite their wildly different personalities and lifestyles. Ah, writing it sounds so cheesy! (I don’t want to spoil the movie for people just coming through, so sorry for the purposeful-vagueness here.)

And is there anything better in the world than walking around Davis Square on a warm Friday night when the Red Sox are winning a game 8 to 1? Don’t think so!

[edit 9/22] This is kind of old news by today, but it’s so awesome that I have to post about it:

B’z is going to be “inducted” to the Hollywood Rock Walk of Fame! The very first Asian artists to be on there, and what better band than B’z? Top grossing Japanese artists of all time, record number of #1 hits in a row — 39 so far. News of their induction (there must be a better word for it…) comes on the heels of their 20th anniversary! Hard to believe these guys have been around for roughly 2 decades now, all the while they keep topping the charts. This is pretty epic and definitely well-deserved. (Here’s the news in Japanese from the B’z official website.)

Oh, and for those of you who have been waiting since the late 1990s for VIOLET UK to release something on disc, that momentous day has finally arrived. Sort of.

JRock Revolution is selling the soundtrack to thriller-movie Catacombs, which has one VIOLET UK song on it. (The man himself Yoshiki put the soundtrack together.) So there’s finally going to be some VIOLET UK in your hands if you buy this soundtrack and — barring some major natural catastrophe — nothing can take that away! Dunno about you guys, but I remember being really psyched about VIOLET UK way back when, so I jumped at the chance to pre-order this, even if for just that one song.

The usual praise for any major artist certainly apply with this guy: he’s talented, charismatic, and entertainment-biz gold. I enjoy following what he’s up to, be it a TV appearance or a new album, and his antics are usually pretty entertaining. Many people at some point in life latch on to some sort of writer or band to fawn over—for some reason, during my formative years in Ex-urbia, Massachusetts, I found this Japanese rock star.

Now, for the meat of this post: A good friend recently introduced me to IMEEM, a service that allows you to upload music files so you can share and listen to them (streaming!) via a flash player later, kind of like a YouTube for mp3s. IMEEM also allows you to embed the flash player in your blog (again, like YouTube), so it’s made sharing music with friends by blog post really easy.

Just for kicks over lunch today, I looked up one of my favorite songs of Gackt’s, his first from when he went solo in 1999, called “Mizérable.”

In 1999, the band Gackt had just left was a gothic-rock style band called “Malice Mizer,” so I believe the purposeful misspelling of “miserable” is a thumb of his nose at the old band. (In the end, they floundered and broke up while his career continues to flourish, ouch.) So, to me, “Mizérable” is a song about ambition, regret, anticipation, hope, longing—all that lovely melodramatic stuff.

It’s still considered one of Gackt’s best tunes simply because it perfectly encapsulates that feeling of finally striking out on your own, all that anxiety and defiance.

Here’s the original recording of Mizérable, from his very first mini-album, released in 1999.

If you’ve never heard Japanese rock or pop music, this may sound very strange to you, so just listen for 2 minutes if that’s all you can take, haha.

In the summer 2004, five years after Gackt went solo, he released two retrospective albums, playing his classics either acoustically or entirely re-recorded and even re-scored. (Gackt releases at least one album a year with several singles, so even just five years into his career he had a large repertoire to choose from for a “best of” set.) “Mizérable” was one of the songs on the hard rock album called “The Sixth Day.”In this 2004 version, his voice is more mature, the sound is fuller and more polished, the composition more complex:

It’d be deceptive to say that the sophistication of this version is the result of making it big, as Gackt and Malice Mizer were already somewhat “big” when Gackt went solo. But certainly it is worth wondering about what’s lost when an artist goes from big to huge in their music and then re-records some of their old hits.

(And no, I’m not one of those fans who thinks an artist loses “cred” or soul when they go big or sign a major label. Artists need to eat, and nobody joins a band aiming for mediocrity.)

The newly re-recorded “Mizérable” has higher production values and sounds more sophisticated than the original. But if the original “Mizérable” has the spark of defiance in it, what does that defiance become five years into a wildly successful solo career? Gloating? Melancholy?

I’m curious to hear what you think. Does the motivation behind a song matter if it is performed well? Or am I just completely over-thinking this?

In the meantime, I’m gearing up for a fun weekend with friends and family. Tomorrow, I’ll be at a barbeque in Gloucester (pronounced “Glaw-stuh” for those of you not in-the-know). Gloucester has lots of stereotypically-NuEnnlan’ seaside village vistas—basically more small boats and clapboard houses than you can shake a stick at. Oodles of fun in the summer and early fall.

For the barbeque itself, well, I’m bringing tzatziki, which is about as un-NuEnnlan’ as you can get, but if the host’s barbeque skills are as legendary as he and his wife claim, some of us may need the cooling power of this dip’s yogurt/dill/mint/cucumber combination.

On Sunday, my parents and I are sorta-thumbing our noses at gas prices, hopping in our extremely gas-efficient Corolla and making the two hour trek out to the Berkshires to see the Boston Early Music Festival‘s presentation of Jean-Baptiste Lully‘s opera “Psyche.”

I stupidly missed this performance when it was in Boston and hated myself for it. The BEMF always does an amazing job with its shows, I am a huge fan of the work they have done. And when they revive a long-dormant play by my favorite French baroque composer (granted, I’m not familiar with very many) and when said production earns critical acclaim from the Boston Globe and New York Times, I think it’s worth going out of my way to see. This will consume all of my Sunday, but I’m going to consider it a warm-up for my California vacation—lots of new things to see and hear, immersion in a new experience, all requiring several hours of sitting still in transit.

Probably California will have significantly fewer men and women in frilly petticoats and lacy crinolines, but since I’ll be at an anime convention for my first few days in Long Beach, there are no guarantees!

A note to anyone attending AX: I’ll be wandering around booths and movie showings with friends in addition to hopefully scoring a few artist interviews. Drop me a comment or an email if you’ll be there too and want to say hello, I’m always psyched to meet new folks.

One of the take-aways I got from speaking with Audrey was an overall attitude towards the American idea of “feminism” versus women’s attitudes elsewhere. Social academics, especially in the Japanese studies circles, have been discussing women’s roles in Japanese society for years. What some American scholars wonder is why the American interpretation of “feminism” never really caught on in Japan. (I’m citing this anecdotally at the moment, but I can’t tell you how many hours in college I heard students and professors going back and forth on this very topic.)

The gigs Audrey signs have an interesting if not slightly befuddling response to all that. Their music is not political. They are not railing against “the man.” I can’t think of the Japanese equivalent of Ani DiFranco, though perhaps there is one.

Instead, Audrey says the motto for these groups is as simple as Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” That’s it. Across all genres, from punk to ska to rock to hip-hop, these artists perform because they enjoy entertaining. They’re not vehicles for a Big Message, nor are they putting themselves in some bigger broader sociopolitical context. Either they’re already well beyond issues of gender struggles or such problems never bothered them in the first place.

Depending on your worldview, this is either refreshing or distressing. Interpret it as you like.

I just realized that WordPress has a “nofollow” policy on links left in comments. As I’m somewhat new to WordPress, forgive me for not realizing this earlier. The moment I have access to FTP, I’ll install a “dofollow” plugin for links in my blog to make things equitable for people kind enough to comment here. (And if you have no idea what I just said, my apologies for that as well!)

Tonight the Social Media Club of Boston hosts its June event: Making the business case for social media. I’m fascinated by this topic so I’m hoping I can attend. If you need to prove ROI for investing in social media at work, it sounds like this panel will be a great guide for doing just that.

And finally, a big thank you to the people who emailed me in the past week. Jake Wark sent me two photos in response to my post and photo about Faces, Cambridge’s magnificent eyesore. Unfortunately, I was slow in posting these pictures so Universal Hub beat me to it—but I’m happy to be beat by such a great resource. Jake’s pictures are at that link, do check them out and read the responses. That abandoned building definitely has a … “special place” in the hearts of us locals who, in typical Cambridge-logic fashion, are sick to death of looking at the ugly thing but also worry how new development might impact the surrounding nature reserve.

I also got a few emails from Greek and Greek diaspora who are J-rock fans. I’m tickled! Yes, Japanese rock is somewhat obscure outside of Japan, and in Greece even more so; however, I recall seeing a flyer for a J-rock party at a club in Thessaloniki of all places. So certainly the global Greek diaspora population, by pure statistical probability alone, has a J-rock-adoring fanbase. We just need to find each other! :) Rock on, παιδιά!

Please please, just buy the magazine. It’s quarterly and it’s six bucks. Give up your green tea frappe and you can afford this publication. For the love of all that is good and holy in this world, don’t post scans of every issue in its entirety.

Sorry if I sound bitter, but the fact that there’s a professional magazine for Jrock enthusiasts in the US that’s actually viable is amazing. This was unthinkable only 10 years ago. There really weren’t any fansites in English, let alone print resources with interviews.

Of course I’m totally biased here as I write for this magazine*, but I’m a Jrock fan above all. So yea, I get why people post mp3 rips or photo scans from FOOLS MATE. I was there once, in middle and high school, no money and no way to buy anything. Especially because in the past, it’s been really hard to get your hands on the music and the magazines.

In the past.

But Jrock is now, finally, gaining a steady foothold in the US. We’re finally getting artists to tour here and take the fan scene here seriously. We’re starting to show the producers and managers that there’s money to be made here. So let’s not completely mess it up by expediently smashing a good attempt to showcase the best of US Jrock fandom.

It’s not like we’re asking you to blow $90 on a Gackt Platinum Bible. It’s six bucks. It’s lunch money.

And it’s at your local Barnes and Noble or Hot Topic — you don’t even need to order it from Japan and wait three weeks for it to arrive. And best of all, you can actually read the interviews and articles, as opposed to just drooling over the pretty glossy photos. (I know how Jrock fans do, I used to do it too.)

On that note, I am interviewing Audrey Kimura, founder of Benten, this weekend. Somehow I completely missed the Japan Nite Tour when it passed through Cambridge—I even saw the posters at Porter Exchange, wrote the date down, and totally flaked.

Ms. Kimura, my apologies. It was an awesome lineup—GO!GO!7188 and Oreskaband are two of my newer favorite groups. Thankfully there’s a new East Coast tour soon in August, so I’ll be sure to ask her about it.

Also, if anyone has any good Jrock blog links I should add to my blogroll, hit me up. I’m on the lookout but I can only think of a few off the top of my head.

*for free, in my off-time

[edit] Strangely, I went to my local Barnes and Noble over lunch break and was unable to find a copy of purple SKY magazine on the magazine rack. In addition to wasting fuel and my lunch break to do this, this was a sad exercise in futility. Let’s hope it wasn’t available because local readers had already sold out stock?

Disclaimer: If you have never heard of Yoshiki or Japanese rock in general, the rest of this post will be utterly confounding. Apologies in advance!

Last year at Otakon in Baltimore Yoshiki announced he was teaming up with Gackt (my favorite J-rock artist). At the recent J-Rock Revolution festival in L.A. (which he produced) he finalized the line-up for his new supergroup S.K.I.N.

Now, not only is Yoshiki producing S.K.I.N., he’s in it. This man has some serious business acumen.

The line-up as we know it thus far is as follows: Yoshiki, the (de-facto?) leader of the band and pianist, much like he was in X Japan. (And perhaps not too coincidentally S.K.I.N.’s new iconography of sorts parallels X Japan’s a lot). Gackt on vocals. Sugizo and Miyavi on guitar. It’s a bit hard to compare or describe how big this is if you’re not already kind of a part of this scene, but this line-up is huge.

For one thing, all four of these men were once in bands and then split off to very successful (and ongoing!) solo careers. And all four of them have rabid legions of fans around the world.

So not only is there enormous name recognition with each of these artists, but there’s major appeal for both “old geezer” J-rock fans like me who have been in the ‘scene’ for a long time, as well as younger and newer fans who are still learning about the artists.

(What did I tell you, Yoshiki is a smart, smart man.)

The formal announcement of S.K.I.N.’s first performance was also at (Yoshiki’s) J-Rock Revolution, and this group’s very first show will be at Anime Expo in Long Beach, Calif., which I am attending. And yes, I’m already salivating at the thought of seeing this group live, I admit.

The only taste of their combined musical sound comes from this official promo video, released less than a week ago:

That photo’s from Yoshiki’s myspace profile.

I’d recognize that eye anywhere! That’s definitely Gackt, I think from around the time he released Diabolos? (Someone correct me on this. I know there a gazillion Gackt fans reading this right now!)

Anyone recognize this Sugizo photo? I have been looking for the original and can’t find what this might be from.

And of course, that kohl-lined eye is most definitely Miyavi’s. I can’t find the source photo for this either.