Bringing the music back
Sure, I’m an anime fan. But that apparently came as a surprise to some people who knew me, hence the name of my site. One thing that won’t come as a surprise to anyone in “RL”/meatspace/whatever you call this fleshy prison is that I’m a giant music person. I think I have three shelves of anime DVDs (formerly known as “the Gainax section”) but literal rooms full of records and CDs, as well as terabytes devoted to what used to be more CDs and records, freed from their round plastic confines like something out of Lain.
When I first started my music series, I didn’t get a whole ton of response. In fact, the response was pretty much a record low for the blog. But I suppose it was my fault.
The mission statement for this series, written in Esperanto but roughly translating to introduce weaboos to music they wouldn’t normally listen to and almost certainly still won’t is admittedly a bold first step on the bright and shining road to failure. Starting the series with icons of Japanese salaryman-hardcore Gauze didn’t help my case.
would you buy a car from these guys?
But recent forays into the last.fm accounts of fellow anibloggers (like OGT, Martin, and TheBigN) has made me want to revive a little J-music blogging. Reason being, I can scrobble all day long with nothing but Japanese tunes and never intersect with any other anibloggers. I admit, there’s not a lot of actual J-Pop in my collection and I don’t expect everyone to just jump on board with “uber cult band” G.I.S.M. (see above lols) and other classic but probably fringe Japanese bands, but there’s gotta be something amidst gigabytes of mp3s and hundreds of slices of vinyl that you people will not only try but love. So the mission will continue. Also, I could use an excuse to rattle on about Merzbow or Susumu Hirasawa.
MERZBOW MORE LIKE 50 MINUTES OF LISTENING TO YOUR TV BLARE STATIC AMIRITE
Music gets waaaaay subjective at times (obviously); I remember that my Asian music textbook told me that Utada Hikaru and Shounen Knife were popular in the West and my reaction was “Thank God I’d already heard about these two the month previous or I’d feel really stupid right now” (this was around July last year).
This probably explains why I fail. Or succeed at being the JAPANESE POP KING. Or something.
“Music gets waaaaay subjective at times ”
Yeah. You won’t see me flat-out pan an anime series, but I’d do that for music without hesitation.
owen - el oh el yeah I expected that from someone. I probably won’t convert anyone over to that cause, but at least I can point out his uncanny connection to lolcats.
OGT – I don’t think I actually know who Utada Hikaru is, but I have a tenuous grip on popularity myself sometimes (at other times I feel much more in touch). Subjectivity is huge, though, in this area.
TheBigN – I think at least with anime we have some sort of common ground, being a somewhat fringe group of people to begin with, but music goes all over the place. Even my own taste ranges wider than my anime taste. I hope to get both giant flames and big ups on music, plus I can ramble forever