Japan. It's a country. Cool.
@Sonik Wiz egged me on a while to try some Japanese stuff, and I finally decided to dive into the bubble and see what it's all about.
Well now my music tastes have diversified even further.
If only I could understand what singers are saying without having to use Google Translate for every song.
What have y'all's experiences been with Japanese music?
You knew, of course, I could not resist replying to this topic. I held off a bit to see if it was going to be treated with a collective "meh", but now that
@quadsearcher stepped up and replied it's my turn.....
When I first started sharing my discovery of J music with friends, the comment that was always made is do I speak Japanese? No. Then why would I want to listen to lyrics I can't understand? Well I can't understand half the lyrics in most English speaking music & when I can they are insipid & un-inspired usually. The clever word smithing of Ian Anderson's quality is long gone. So I have looked up a few translations but mostly I'm good just to hear the voice as an instrument.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5q...e-macarena-despacito?utm_source=pocket-newtab
It was way back in 2004 that I was at a record store & some used Laserdiscs caught my eye. There was a group of LD's of Chisato Moritaka & because it was so cheap I bought the Rock Alive video collection mainly because I was intrigued by the album cover:
Obviously any musician that can play a Rickenbacker 620 with pink gloves on must be a formidable talent!
She has noteworthy career worth expanding on. She was at her peak for about 9 years late 80's to mid 90's. Studio album, concert tour, concert album, concert video, promotional video collection. Then she took a whopping 20 years off to raise a family. She was always in the public eye doing commercials & endorsements. Then several years ago she made a comeback starting with what she called a "self cover" campaign. That is re-recording new covers of her hot 100 songs. She threw out the 1st pitch of the baseball season about that time. And got the ball across the plate! Most all of her earlier music was co-written with Hideo Saito but then in 2014 she collaborated with a DJ/producer called Tofubeats and sang to
Don't Stop the Music.
Since this video is about a school girls fantasy performance as a singer, obviously Chisato is not in it. But another aspect of her comeback is that she & her back up group are almost the house band at the Tokyo Blue Note Club, playing there multiple times a week. You can see her perform this song live:
Oh but this isn't really the Chisato Moritaka thread, is it? Another singer I have very much enjoyed is Ayumi Hamasaki. One of the unique things about her is her use of American/European types used in her videos. That makes it even more interesting to me. The thing about her music is it's much similar to Western pop to be accessible but being from Japan still different enough to seem special. This is a great of hers to see:
There are some great J rock male bands too. It's just not all Idol stuff. But the vocals are much more varied. For example Asian Kung-Fu Generation might have afunny name but they make some kick ass hard driving rock that I bet a lot of folks would like on the forum. But for me I just don't care for the lead singer.
The Radwimps are another great choice for something other than J pop idol music. One of my favorites is the theme song they did for the anime feature film,
Your Name. It starts slow but kicks in after about a minute & has some delicious hooks in it:
Part of the down side to my interest in this is that no one in Japan (that I know of) is making new popular music in surround. That had fizzled out by the time I get to the musical time period I like the most: mid-80's on. However Tokyo Cuban Boys and Iromi Hawasaki have been talked about the forum. And they go back far enough to be released in quad. I am certainly open to any suggested J pop/rock musiuc in surround to listen to.
So, Mr Afternoon. I f your musical tastes have been diversified and enlarged, what have you run across that sounds good?
