Happy Birthday to DSK!

Rumania Montevideo - Still for your Love & 恋するベティー

Genre: alternative
Song style: girl alternative

This post is in honor of my friend, who's celebrating a birthday today! While it's already over by now in Japan, there's still an hour to go here in America. We were talking about songs from our childhoods that inspired our current music tastes, and this song came up. This is a very unique band that sadly had a short life - they were only active for three years (1999 - 2002). It's also pretty amazing to see a female drummer also be the main vocalist! While my friend has moved onto much heavier music (which I promise will be up here soon!), it's nice to reminisce on one's childhood every once in a while. How much has changed since this band was popular - it's been 11 years now. And imagine 11 years from now too, where will we all be...

Happy birthday, my dear friend! :-)

This was the hottest spring of the year

Princess Princess - 世界でいちばん熱い夏

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: 100% 80's female electro-pop

So this music isn't exactly "rock", "indies", or exactly my style but these girls are so cute!! There's something I just admire about them - a bunch of girls in the 80s in Japan standing up to stereotypes of what a band should be and going on to make tons of number one hits. They've inspired many of the female artists of today. I just saw a movie now where their popular song Diamonds appears in karaoke and I couldn't ignore it. These girls were active from 1983 - 1996. Cheers to days where we can just enjoy being silly princesses haha. Speaking of which, I'm starting cake decoration classes next week!

Oldies: The Blue Hearts

The Blue Hearts - Linda Linda

Genre: punk
Song style: sloppy but energetic hard 80s punk

This is one of those classic Japanese rock songs (and bands!) that everyone should know. I would call them the Japanese "The Ramones". This guy has such passion and energy when he rocks out to this song - I love it. Though the band is defunct now, you'll hear these songs everywhere - the first time I heard it was playing a taiko drumming game at an arcade center (I'm not a geek okay!!) This song was released almost exactly 23 years ago (imagine, just barely older than me haha). Where will we all be in 23 years? I'm feeling so sentimental as my final days as a student here draw to a close. But at the same time I am stressed about getting everything done in time and in a satisfying way.

Let's go home!

斉藤和義 - 歩いて帰ろう

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: a happy guy with his guitar

Possibly one of the first Japanese "rock" songs I ever heard, this song became the theme song for Ponkiki, a Japanese Sesame Street-like show my sister and I would watch fondly as kids. Sometimes it is nice to return to one's childhood and relive things even if they aren't 100% top notch compared to today's standards. Luckily I think this sweet tune by Saito Kazuyoshi is just as nice, listening to it today. He's still a very active musician, having released a live album March 24th and set for a new single soon. I look forward to see how he's changed in the past eighteen years!

Oldies: The Japanese Nirvana

The Yellow Monkey - 球根

Genre: hard rock
Song style: pretty depressing, builds up to a strong and heavy climax

Okay, so I know the video is really 90s and has iguanas for no reason, but please listen through the whole song. This band really lasts through the ages - even though it was the mainstay for highschoolers about two decades ago (the band operated from 1989 - 2001), the songs are still catchy and relevant to listeners today. This band has had an incredible impact on the Japanese music industry and is in some ways reminiscent of America's Nirvana (both in sound and impact). This would have to be one of my favorite Japanese bands. My sister discovered them first, randomly buying a discounted CD in a Book-Off in Tokyo. Many years later, I was wandering through a Kyoto thrift shop and heard a song that I liked so much that I jotted down the lyrics on my cellphone to look up later. It turned out to be The Yellow Monkey's old single "Morality Slave", a slight twist off the Phantom of the Opera theme. My sister and I compared notes, and realized we had this random band overlapping on our playlists. Ever since, The Yellow Monkey has become a mainstay in our karaoke repertoire (hehe).

They recently had a tribute album released on December 8 2009, with covers from amazing bands including many covered here so far (9mm Parabellum Bullet, The Back Horn, Fujifabric, 椿屋四重奏) so if you get a chance please check it out. It's called "This is For You".

Cover & Oldies: Strange foreigner

久保田早紀 - 異邦人

Okay, so this above song is not quite "indies" or "rock" or anything like that. It was a popular Japanese pop song in 1979. Don't you dig the camel? But it's also a very important song to me and I can justify it with this catchy rendition below.

Acid Black Cherry - 異邦人

Genre: pop-rock
Song style: old school Japanese pop with an electronic twist, somewhat androgynous vocals

I first heard the original 異邦人 when my mom bought her first CD off of Amazon Japan something like ten years ago and started blasting it on her cd player. My sister and I ran upstairs to see what the strange noise was and saw our mom dancing around and singing along to this song. My sister and I started imitating the dance and had a fun and bizarre night. This was our first ever exposure to Japanese music. For the longest time after that night, we thought our mom had some strange hidden history as a Japanese popstar.

Ten years later, my sister and I got into this band "Acid Black Cherry" for their catchy single "Black Cherry" (which I will post soon!). It really surprised us when we discovered their cd "Recreation" (2008) which features solely covers of old, nostalgic Japanese pop tunes. I really give props to Acid Black Cherry for continuing a modern tradition of Japanese pop-rock but not forgetting its roots.

It seems like this is a popular song to cover, too. If you would like to hear a more truthful rendition but with extra guitars, check out this cover below featuring Tak Matsumoto and Zard. Matsumoto is lead guitarist of popular pop-rock band B'z (which doesn't quite fit my tastes so might not make it on here...) and Zard was a female singer who unfortunately recently passed away from cancer.

Tak Matsumoto of B'z & Zard - 異邦人

So with all these songs of foreign romance, hope you all have exciting and mysterious weekends!

Oldies: Blue Chateau

Blue Comets - Blue Chateau

Genre: group sounds
Song style: happy and chill, Beatles-ish

So this is where it all started! Back in the 60's Japan had a bunch of underground bands that grew out of inspiration from The Beatles. This style of music was called "Group Sounds" and helped create the start of indie / garage band music in Japan. Look at this guy rock it out on the flute! I saw a broadcast of one of their recent shows (like 2009!) and I thought their music was so cute and catchy that I had to put it on here. Sadly now, they're old men delegated to playing their old hit songs for old audiences. But here they are, preserved by the magic of youtube, all young and hot for us, playing on the Ed Sullivan Show around 1967 (must have been so high profile to make it into America!). I'm amazed to see their English is pretty sound too. So keep these roots in mind as we continue on our exploration of contemporary indies music!