Three cool wallpapers :)

280396 326471 346853

A Study in Contrasts

DecoLa Hopping's "Kimagure Fearism" PV (thanks Reitsu!) has absolutely nothing to say for itself. You don't need money to make an interesting video, you just need one person who knows how to convey ideas through a visual medium. DecoLa prefer the "aim the camera at something moving and make cuts at random" approach that only serves to further ingratiate themselves upon the altar of the God of Worthlessness.



Flip, who I just heard of today (thanks Evan!), have more money, which helps, but it's the same basic setup as Decola: "the band together, jamming to the song." The difference is the people making Flip's PV know how to light, how to frame, how to shoot movement, when to cut to something, and when to cut away.

But note that a consumer video camera and cheap PC could have produced a video of similar quality. In fact, the same PV shot on consumer equipment might've given Flip more street cred -- the very street cred that Decola could have nabbed, if only they had found SOMEBODY, ANYBODY, with a modicum of knowledge of the medium.

Fuck, you can just take a PV you like and emulate it shot for shot if you want!

It aggravates me that an artist would squander a rare opportunity to connect meaningfully with an audience. It's like a resume with errors in grammar and formatting -- "you didn't bother, so why should we?"

Most Effective Spam Yet

In my inbox this morning:

Konnichiwa~

I was wondering what the weather like in Austin, NY, Chicago, Cambridge and west coast in March.....

Are you coming one of our shows?

SXSW Asia and FXFY host Japanese band Preview Party on Thursday March 18th At the best outside venue in Austin, Typewriter Museum! Check out the 11 great and unique bands from Japan come to SXSW 2010.

Admission is FREE and no need SXSW Wrist band too. All the bands going to sell their CDs and other cool stuff from Japan. Please buy them and support their tour. Thanks.!

Audrey

Japan Preview show
Thursday Mach 18th
12 noon ~ 7 pm

@ Typewrite Museum
add: 1306 E. 6th Austin
* admission: FREE!

1. 12:00 - 12:25 - Geeks
2. 12:35 - 1:00 - Camisama
3. 1:10- 1:35 - Hystoic Vein
4. 1:45 - 2:10 - Chatmonchy
5. 2:20 - 2:45 - Maki Rinka
6. 2:55 - 3:20 - Red Bacteria Vacuum
7. 3:30 - 3:55 - JinnyOops!
8. 4:05 - 4:30 - Dolly
9. 4:40-5:05 - Gagakirise
10. 5:15-5:40 - MARUOSA
11. 5:50 - 6:15 - OKAMOTO'S
12. 6:25 - 6:50 - Omodaka
http://sxsw-asia.com/japannite/

~Japan Nite US Tour 2010 ~
March 19 (Fri) Austin @ Elysium (SXSW Music Festival)
March 21(sun) New York @ Bowery Ballroom
March 22 ( Mon) 　Cambridge @ TT The Bears
March 23( Tue) Chicago @ Empty Bottle
March 25 (Thu) Seattle @ High Dive
March 26 (Fri) SF @ The Independent
March 27 ( Sat) LA @ Viper Room
Info: http://sxsw-asia.com/JapanNite2010/tourdate.html

I know a couple of Audreys, but none attached to bands or the industry... but jrocknyc@gmail.com is most certainly on several billion band/venue/industry mailing lists at this point!

Nonetheless I had to scour every detail in this email like three times before I was sure.

Touche, "Audrey", ~touche!~

But no, I will not be attending your Japan Nite 2010, as screaming, musically inept J-punk girls I can endure no longer, irrespective of their relative cuteness.

But I know many of ~you~ guys have lousy taste, so I thought I'd share. :p

review: nanase aikawa | "rock or die" (best of) (2010

nanase aikawa
rock or die (best of)
2010

Three versions: CD, CD+DVD+T, CD+DVD,

New 2CD best collection from Nanase. Features all the usual suspects from her last two best-of collections (ID and ID2) plus a few of her underwhelming recent tracks.

Nothing new or rare, so no reason for fans to buy (or even download!) this.

Non-fans who want to learn more could get this album and have pretty much everything they'd ever need, though.

The dvd includes the 16 matching music videos, but again, the latest ones suck, and the earlier one's you've probably already got, and there's always Youtube....

rating: :\

176Biz album art, Yo Gabba Gabba album art... what did we do before Photoshop?

Every time I open up my Zune I see, right at the top, 176Biz's ugly fucking text-only cover "art" for their 2008 album Hello:

Unable to take it anymore, I went through my cool internet pix folder til I found some suitable imagery, and made this:

In a related story, I also mocked this up yesterday:

Someone ripped all the songs from the actual TV broadcasts (dozens upon dozens of 'em, way more than the official Yo Gabba Gabba CD...) it is *ridiculous* how many awesome songs that show has.

CYOGH: Kagrra?

This'll be a fun one, 'cos they really do need a best-of, and they're uniquely awesome.

title, year/album, reason...

one song nomination per comment, three nominations per person (leave some tracks for others!)

Dude, Asada was NOT HAPPY

Asada (jp), Kim (kr), Rochette (cn)

Watched some figure skating highlights with Kate on nbcolympics.com, and duuuude, Asada (left) did not like losing to Kim (middle). Rochette (right) had just lost her mother just prior to the competition, and even then Asada is still the angriest person on that podium!

I never liked the Olympics -- it's too much pressure, too much practicing for one single thing that potentially RUINS you if you don't succeed. Goes against my "generalists do better than specialists" philosophy, goes against my "fun things should not feel like work" philosophy.

You also gotta wonder, is Asada thinking "she won because she's prettier"?

CYOGH: Rentrer en Soi!

These received multiple votes but are NOT on the Ain Soph Aur best-of album:

1. Ushinawareta Fuukei no Yume
2. METEMPSYCHOSIS
3. Binetsu Shita...
4. MISERY LOVES POISONOUS BLUE
5. Iconoclasm
6. Baptism
7. CRUSADE
8. Anima Mundi

These received multiple votes and ARE on the best-of (so you might say the band voted for 'em too):

1. Thorny rain break
2. Protoplasm
3. Sincerely
4. Stigmata
5. LAST SCENE
6. Shinwa
7. I hate myself...
8. wither
9. TO INFINITY
10. Bunretsu LE + DD jinkaku
11. JUST MAD PAIN
12. The Abyss of Despair
13. Taiyou no Todokanai Basho
14. Amonst Foolish Enemies
15. Ichigo OBLATE

A nice variety of old and new styles for a band that for some reason never quite caught fire with the public.

Listening to these, I'm amazed by how many good parts keep popping up unexpectedly!

I'm not gonna delete the rest of their discog, but I will be Zune-hearting the songs above for easier playback in the future. :)

Are there any bands that don't have a best-of, but desperately need one?

The Douchiest Band

What I dislike here is that millions of dollars are being spent on capturing songs that are no better than the usual bilge a random collection of teenagers with instruments from Sears would come up with in a basement.



That, or Vamps is like $500 jeans that have been aged, stained, and ripped to look like old $25 jeans, and I find it all abhorrent.

Mute the Video!

I have always hated this song with a passion, but a blue-wigged Kirsten Dunst is hard to turn away from, and bonus points for secret injections of overrated-yet-still-cool artist Takashi Muramaki. But god I *hate* this song.

I hesitate to start whining "it's racist!", since the lyrics reveal no Japaneseness at all, and I can only assume they plugged in the first trendy three-syllable nationality they could think of, with no expectation that anyone would be listening to the song one year later, much less twenty-five years later. But still, I HATE THIS SONG. And miss Akihabara. (Mostly for the computer stores, but the maid cafe girls were nice too.)

CYOGH: Rentrer en Soi?

title

year/album

reason!

They've got the Ain Soph Aur best collection, but let's see if we can do a little better... ;)

It Keeps Getting Worse! Ahh oh lol ohhhh ggg

via LA Times

Hammerfall is as real a metal band as curling is a sport, so... god, they're on the ice!! Some executive at Johnson & Johnson is sitting as his desk with his head in his hands as we speak.

Name That PV #4...

Good luck!

All You Need: the Loudness and Yngwie Edition

For Loudness, all you ~really~ need are two songs, "Crazy Doctor" and "Crazy Nights", which appear on every hits collection they've ever done (and being Japanese, they've done a lot... and you thought Yoshiki was bad!)

Their self-titled 1992 album has Taiji (X) on bass and songwriting, and numerous cool songs (try "Hell Bites" first).

Re-Masterpieces is all their 80's hits, remastered and sounding much better.

Rockshocks is all their 80's hits again, but this time played in the band's unyouthful 90's style.

Best of Re-Union (the original members from the 80's reformed in the 00's and put out another half-dozen mediocre albums) is weighed down with all the 00's "hits," plus a few tracks off Re-Masterpieces.

With these four discs, you've got all the Loudness you'll ever need. You can delete like FIFTEEN or TWENTY other albums painlessly.

Yngwie is harder; his 80's stuff was ridiculously popular, but I didn't get like him til the mid-90's.

The Yngwie Malmsteen Collection and Trial by Fire (Live in Leningrad) (remember when playing in the USSR was rare and cool as hell?) cover his 80's material more than enough for me.

For his 90's stuff, Seventh Sign, Magnum Opus and Inspiration were what I was buying and spinning in Japan during my English-teaching / Kayo-meeting year there in 1996, so that's what I kept.

But I axed (ha-ha!) all his other 80's and 00's albums (there's like 12 or 13!) because the Dept. of Redundancy Department insisted. Yngwie has rockers, ballads, 70's covers, and imitation classical pieces. If you've heard one of each, you've heard 'em all.

Not OK, Go!

NYTimes:

In 2006 we made a video of us dancing on treadmills for our song “Here It Goes Again.” We shot it at my sister’s house without telling EMI, our record company, and posted it on the fledgling YouTube without EMI’s permission. Technically, this put us afoul of our contract, since we need our record company’s approval to distribute copies of the songs that they finance. It also exposed YouTube to all sorts of liability for streaming an EMI recording across the globe. But back then record companies saw videos as advertisements, so if my band wanted to produce them, and if YouTube wanted to help people watch them, EMI wasn’t going to get in the way.

As the age of viral video dawned, “Here It Goes Again” was viewed millions, then tens of millions of times. It brought big crowds to our concerts on five continents, and by the time we returned to the studio, 700 shows, one Grammy and nearly three years later, EMI’s ledger had a black number in our column. To the band, “Here It Goes Again” was a successful creative project. To the record company, it was a successful, completely free advertisement.


Now we’ve released a new album and a couple of new videos. But the fans and bloggers who helped spread “Here It Goes Again” across the Internet can no longer do what they did before, because our record company has blocked them from embedding our video on their sites. Believe it or not, in the four years since our treadmill dance got such attention, YouTube and EMI have actually made it harder to share our videos.

A few years ago, reeling from plummeting record sales, record companies went after YouTube, demanding payment for streams of their material. They saw videos, suddenly, as potential sources of revenue. YouTube agreed to pay the record companies a tiny amount for each stream, but — here’s the crux of the problem — they pay only when the videos are viewed on YouTube’s own site.

Embedded videos — those hosted by YouTube but streamed on blogs and other Web sites — don’t generate any revenue for record companies, so EMI disabled the embedding feature. Now we can’t post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. If you want to watch them, you have to do so on YouTube.

The numbers are shocking: When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.

You know how the housing/mortgage crisis was caused by banks rolling every mortgage up into one big wad?

Isn't there some way we can do that with bands? A million fans investing a hundred bucks among a thousand bands, with the promise of future earnings as payment? Or at least free CDs and concert tickets?

The Trotter Trio - Sketches on Star Wars album art

(Because the original album art is the most unimaginative yellow text on a black background you've ever seen)

(Bonus points for guessing what film the title font is from.) ^_^

ginger's atherstone ball

Bobbies are friendly?! In NYC, not so much... even as a white guy with a wife and kids in tow I wouldn't dare ask a NYC cop for anything. But those british police actually... smile!?!

CYOGH: L'Arc~en~Ciel!

I FUCKED UP and made it impossible to tabulate votes for individual songs, so just go here and peruse the nominations and choose shit at random, I dunno... sorry guys. Next band will definitely not be so huge. (Vidoll, maybe.)

Toys R Us is a Pain to Buy Shit At, But the Comments Can Be Funny

Toys "R" Us Princess Castle Reviews:

"Bought this for my 3 yr old. She gets excited by the 'princess Castle' I however am not excited about needing to hold it up to avoid it collasping EVERY time she moves in it. I would not recommend this to anyone. Because she likes it, I am going to rig it so she can use it. But I wish it was made so she can use it without me making my husband prop it against his knee as he watches football."

LOL! "~I~ will rig it, tho in actuality all the work will be my husband's."

Anywho, uninterested in paying $22 + $12s/h for a piece of crap, but wanting to get Kate a little place she can ensconce herself when she wants to be alone (because she doesn't have her own room), and wanting to get out and enjoy the day and DO something, I took Kate to Lowes, where we bought twelve 5-foot pvc pipes ($9) and eight "corners" ($9 again). Then at the dollar store we picked out four shower curtains (pink & plum).

And ~voila~! Kate's got her own GINORMOUS castle -- it is HUGE inside -- with room for her futon, her table and chairs, a pile of books and games... it's a little trailer parky but she digs it.

I seriously considered buying $100-worth of 1' pipes and a variety of fittings (corners, T's, etc) but they don't cut PVC. :( Woulda loved that as a kid, it's like life-size Legos!

Hakuna Matata!

News On Japan:

A Japanese television commercial featuring pop diva Namie Amuro and a group of men performing an indigenous Maori dance has drawn criticism in New Zealand...



The ad for Coke Zero involves a dance between Amuro and a group of actors dressed in rugby jerseys apparently doing the ceremonial 'Ka Mate Haka' dance.

Te Ariki Wi Neera, a spokesman for the Ngati Toa tribe, the traditional custodians of the Ka Mate Haka, said the ad 'sounds like crap.'

Larf :)

I nearly blorted.

click to enblort

I'm watching Revenge of the Sith when I look up and Kate -- on her own! -- is watching Return of the Jedi! And not just any part, but the part where the Emperor is trying to turn Luke just like my current scene where the Emperor is trying to turn Anakin! And she's my kid and spoiler alert Luke (who she's watching) is Anakin (who I'm watching)'s kid!

I nearly blorted.

We're gonna stay away from anything that might cut off our hands for a while.

In other news, Revenge of the Sith is actually pretty damn cool. I shall enumerate a list of reasons why at a later date, but mostly I just dig Palpatine's segues into and out of "The Voice." Also, lots o' killin'.

review: angelo | "hikari no kioku" pv (2010)

I kind of enjoyed(!?!) the song, as long as the visuals remained interesting. Kept waiting for the giant white blobs to gobble them up tho. "We am not a number! We am a trite band!"

But of course, immediately upon stopping all was forgotten, never to be listened to again.

I feel justified in my recent deletion of all things Angelo, and all things solo-Kirito (even the Marty stuff, I just realized). Gonna keep the Pierrot discog intact, tho, because they're good enough to have earned that.

CYOGH: L'Arc~en~Ciel?

• Song
• (year/album)
• reason!

But!

I think it makes sense to make multiple nominations -- one for the early stuff (Dune/Tierra/Heavenly), one for the good stuff (True/Heart/Ark/Ray/Real), and one for the post-hiatus albums (Awake/Smile/Kiss). Ja?

Had a good run today ^_^

I am digging the BFBC2 demo muchly.

High Score, baby!

Killed a couple guys, then charged up a hill, C4'd a tank (killing two more guys) then shot two lost guys that had been hiding behind the tank, then ran outta ammo and stabbed the last guy in teh group in the head, and rand back down the hill to safety.

My usual game goes spawn, kill once, die; spawn, kill twice, die; repeat, so forgive my ~braggadocio~ today!

edit: also, listening to music makes it much more fun, tho slightly more deadly. But only very slightly!

Buck Tick Can Ruin Anything They Put Their Mind To!

This intestinal-lining-sloughingly crappy tune DOES NOT MATCH the emotions of the visuals AT ALL. God they fucking poison EVERYTHING!

Gimme a Break!

Nestle Japan has started bombarding stores with a battery of Kit-Kat flavors, apparently in a confused bid to compete with the burgeoning air-freshener industry? >_< :



Kit-Kats shouldn't come in FLAVORS! Ugh! ~THE WORLD~!

CYOGH: L'Arc~en~Ciel

A greatest hits collection, wherever did you get such a brilliant idea I wonder Mr. L'Arc~en~Ciels hmmm!??!?!

CD JAPAN > L'Arc~en~Ciel >
"Quadrinity": <-- if you buy it through this link, CDJapan gives me a cut so I can buy medicine for my babies and/or cheap massages from illegal chinese immigrants. ^_^


hyde best

1. i’m so happy
2. honey
3. flower
4. sayounara
5. anemone
6. ibara no namida
7. in the air

tetsuya best

1. ready steady go
2. blame
3. time goes on
4. dive to blue
5. sunadokei
6. link
7. anata

ken best

1. kasou
2. glass dama
3. my heart draws a dream
4. coming closer
5. shinjitsu to gensou to
6. the silver shining
7. niji

yukihiro best

1. a swell in the sun
2. cradle
3. drink it down
4. get out from the shell
5. new world
6. revelation
7. trick

They're all remastered, so they'll sound *a little* different, so I wanna hear them... but L'Arc was never a lazy-mastering sort of band in the first place; "Dive to Blue" still stands up a dozen years later.

This, of course, means the next CYOGH Artist will be... L'Arc!

Trivium Gap Ad!

You Are Hurting My Eyes Lady

more from slate

CYOGH: Shiina Ringo!

This time, only the tracks that got +1'd got included...

Tsumi to Batsu
Honnou
Meisai
Stem
La Salle de Bain
Himitsu
Shuraba
Ishiki
Tadashii Machi
Shuukyou
Marunuchi Sadistic
Poltergeist ('03)
Okonomide
Osca
Suberidai
Identity

Lots of cool songs in here, but lots of songs that feel like trendy-iPod-commercial-music-that-i-hate-more-than-rap in this list as well, plus your abject failure to nominate "Gibisu," "Koko de kisu shite", and "Koufukuron (Pleasure Version)" exasperates me, dear readers! I therefore include them in grey....

Gibusu Gibs
Koko de kisu shite
Koufukuron (Pleasure Version)

Mostly what I learned from this exercise is that she has a lot of songs that muthafuckin' AGGRAVATE me >_< ^_^

review: craig clevenger | "the contortionist's handbook"

Just finished reading (in one marathon reading today while I laid in bed recovering from my Valentine's Day puke-a-thon poopfest) Craig Clevenger's "The Contortionist's Handbook."

It spins the tale of a guy with headaches and a knack for identity theft, and has the best ending of any book I've read in the last ten years. The kind that makes you go, "OHHHHH!" as you close the book and smile and think about how giddy the author must've been when he typed it up.

The story told efficiently, mostly in flashback, with accurate-feeling details and some clever turns of phrase (my favorite, as the protagonist is getting squeezed by former mob associates: "...Quiet Man nods for me to follow. I'm loosely sandwiched between the two of them, down the hallways to a door labeled EMERGENCY EXIT ALARM WILL SOUND but it doesn't...") Love when authors play with words and meaning like that... ^_^

Check it out!

rating: :)

Name That PV #3...

I would never be able to guess any of these, but i'm sure you guys will impress me once again...

CYOGH: Shiina Ringo?

Bit of a change of pace this weekend... suggest which Shiina Ringo/Tokyo Jihen/etc tracks deserve greatest hitness!

As usual:

• "song"
• (album/year)
• reason it's so goood
  

Headbanger Kate

Woooo! Rushed Kate to the emergency room and just got back!

She leaned back to far on her stool and fell backward and CLOCKED the back of her head against the coffee table (rounded corners thank god) and there was blood but she was crying and otherwise normal (not dizzy, not wobbly, not unconscious) so me and her hopped in a cab and zipped to le hospital and she got STITCHES! For the one-inch gash she tore in the side of her head...

...and here's how tough she is: she FELL ASLEEP during the procedure! Zonked out, and snoring.

Before that, though, she said she wanted to make Valentines for the P.A. that admitted us and the doctor doin' the stitches, so I got their names and they'll be getting nice hearts in the mail soon. :)

It was pretty smooth, quick, and professional -- we were in & out in 75 minutes, with only 10 panicky minutes in the waiting room.

edit: just followed up with her regular doc, she's doing fine. ^_^ Thanks for the well-wishes!

"Add a Keyword for This Search" -- Faster Searching in Firefox

In Firefox:

Go to Google.com
Right-click in Google's search box
Select "add a keyword for this search"
Name: Google / Keyword: G

Go to Amazon.com
Right-click in Amazon's search box
Select "add a keyword for this search"
Name: Amazon / Keyword: A

Then go to Newegg.com
Right-click in Newegg's search box
Select "add a keyword for this search"
Name: Newegg / Keyword: N

Then go to your favorite torrent site
Right-click in their search box
Select "add a keyword for this search"
Name: Torrent / Keyword: T

etc...

Now whenever you need to do a search, in the URL bar you type a letter, your search term and it comes right up.

It's better than the ol' search bar in the right because A) it's way faster to type a letter than to use the pull-down menu and B) It syncs with X-marks!!! So you NEVER have to set up your search bar searches again (you know, adding amazon, removing yahoo, that sort of thing).

I've got it set for a few stores, a thesaurus, wikipedia, google's image search... it's really really handy. And built into Firefox already! Who knew?!

CYOGH: Gilgamesh / Girugamesh

asking why
break down
crazy flag
crime ~tsumi~
evolution
fukai no yami
gamble
goku (2005 version)
glamourous sky
(instrumental)
jarring fly
kaisen sengen
kowarete iku sekai
kyo ~horou~
melody
mouja no koshin
omae ni sasageru...
owari to mirai
patchwork
puzzle
real my place
reality
robust conviction
rocker's
shadan
shining
shizumu kako
shoujo A
smash!!
s.t.f.u.
volcano

That's 31 out of 97 songs (including a couple live-only distros)... which seems too high to me. 25% seems more right. So if there's any we can take off...

look how nice i am, caving in and all!