Choppa’s Neighborhood

JRock Revolution is conducting a poll regarding whether to have miyavi do a live in New York City or not! I'm shocked (and of course utterly pleased) that NYC isn't getting screwed over once again because of a certain West Coast city that I shall not name (*points accusatory finger* =P).

If you live anywhere close to NYC, go vote!

At this point, I might as well admit that I'm now a full-fledged miyavi fan (musically, not fandom-obsessive-ly). I really hope that JRock Revolution give people enough time (at least 2 months!) to prepare and fit the concert into their schedules. Not everyone can pop over at the drop of a hat because, you know, we actually have lives outside of J-Rock like work, school, and whatnot. There are classes to attend, money to be made, so please be considerate JRR!

Now I'm off to wince over how Japanese anime/manga fandoms had totally infiltrated even original fiction writing. Why do I find Saint Seiya, Detective Conan, Naruto, etc. references everywhere?!

(See how much I improved in vector drawing?)

I've been preoccupied with self-enlightenment and business-related matters. I'll return to the J-Rock fandom after this week. <3 I know I owe people/parties posts. Will sort things out soon enough.

I figured that I should write something on the last day of the year 2007.

Despite the many going-on's in the J-Rock world that had taken place in the month of December, I've been preoccupied with rediscovering digital graphic art instead. I went through phases of icon-making, wallpaper-making, and now I'm working on learning vector drawing (aka. creating art using geometric shapes).

My first vector art, featuring the little girl on the cover of alice nine.'s TSUBASA single:

What I did here was using vector (geometric modeling) to create layers of different shapes and stacking them on top of one another to produce this rendering (done in Paint Shop Pro). Since this was my first time attempting anything of this sort, it took me more than 12 hours despite using very basic techniques. I swear I'm going to master Bézier curves someday and get better at vector drawing.

Yes, so this concludes the last post of the year. Happy New Year, everyone!

How remiss of me to not follow up on the DYNAMITE TOMMY incident in which the president of Free-Will Records, a major visual kei label, was accused of $2.8 million theft. This news is 1.5 months late. I'm sorry. I kept on putting this off.

Phantasmagoria of Livejournal has (once again) graciously translated this article:

DYNAMITE TOMMY says, "F*** you!"

[...]

Tommy, who had been dragged into the fraud scandal, was arrested on September 14th. The police held him for more than twenty days at the Tsukiji office. Despite the result of the police investigation, which brought about no suspicion of fraud on Tommy's part, Tommy was indicted on these charges.

Tommy is enraged. "The police and the prosecutor performed a thorough investigation. The reason for my arrest was due to the asshole judge's assumptions!"

[...]

For translation of the full article, visit phantasmagoria's journal. There's an interesting bit about prejudice against rock musicians in Japan.

Honestly, the whole gleeful cackling of many people upon hearing DYNAMITE TOMMY's arrest back then annoyed the crap out of me. What is it about another person's misfortune that amuses and entertains you so much? What the hell has he ever done to you? This malicious aspect of human nature is revolting.

Personally, I'm glad for DYNAMITE TOMMY. I wish him (even more) success.

The second annual Jrock Choice Awards voting has begun! This time, the awards is produced by Tainted Reality, Jrock Revolution, and purple SKY. Go vote for your favorite candidates.

Every morning I wake up these past few days, my eyes feel so dry and uncomfortable that I get the urge to gouge them out. No, really.

You know, it seems the J-Rock fandom is made up of pretty much the same people at every online social medium. I go to a forum, skim through a bunch of posts and realize: hey, haven't I seen her somewhere before? I post in a community and one of people who reply catches my eye because the username looks really familiar. Then, I have visitors commenting on my Last.fm account and say, "Hey, I read your blog." (Or, "Update, bitch!") And yes, once again, one of them is bound to be another frequent face in the fandom.

It makes me wonder, how big is the active part of the fandom? Is it made up of the same core people? These people are seriously everywhere! You see them in the popular J-Rock forums. You run into them in the numerous download communities. And then, you once again recognize them at various communities of a more... special interest nature. *coughs*

If we all meet in real life and divulge the different names we go by online, I bet we will all go, "Hey, we pretty much know each other already!"

Edit: By "fandom", I don't mean fanbase. I'm not saying the J-Rock fanbase is small. Rather, the core group of active, dedicated fans online is small compared to the overall J-Rock fan population. Please see my comment in this post for further clarification.

龍の化身 (Avatar of the Dragon) is Gackt's upcoming photobook and the man himself will soon be performing at the Japan-China Culture and Sports Exchange Year grand finale concert in Beijing on Nov. 29.

Am I the only one who sees something really wrong about 龍の化身, Gackt, and China in the same sentence? This has some serious potential for trouble if the Chinese press decides to go into this. The possible backlash won't be insignificant.

The Chinese have long thought of themselves as 龍的傳人, the descendants of the dragon. Indeed, in China, "Chinese" and "descendant of the dragon" are synonymous. For Gackt to claim to be the AVATAR of the dragon (I can only assume that's what he meant since he named his photobook 龍の化身, even though he was in the role of a character from a historical drama) is really troubling because he'll be performing in China. It's like Gackt declaring to the Chinese people, "Well, I'm your ancestor."

Oh, lord. Let's just hope I'm being paranoid.

(By the way, alice nine.'s new "Alpha" album disappoints me to bits and pieces. It completely fails to live up to my expectation set by their first album, "Zekkeishoku". I doubt I'll review it, so I thought to tack this on. I want to pretend the new album never came out.)

aka the BEST DAMN PV OF THE YEAR *spasms*

abingdon boys school finally broke my months of no reviews because their latest PV is the awesomest thing made of awesome that ever graced the hall of awesomeness!

The screencaps don't even do the PV justice. The video howls and roars. It's dynamic, raw, and utterly stunning. The water, fire, and spark effects are perfectly executed to add that electric charge to the entire presentation. The camera shots and lighting brilliantly capture the energy of the song.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a work of pure genius. The PV creation team should win an award for this masterpiece.

tetsu of L'Arc and Sakai Ayana to marry, translated by Nanani

On November 17th, it was discovered that the leader and bassist of popular rock group L'Arc~en~Ciel, tetsu (age 38) and popular idol Sakai Ayana (22) are to be married. They began seeing each other during the summer of last year. Finally, they visited each other's parents and reported to their close acquaintances that they will marry. Sakai has said "When I get married, I want an audience to see it", but we are still waiting for official confirmation early this week.

It will be a shocking wedding to the young fans of both this charismatic musician and idol. The age difference between them is of 16 years. As a fashion model for magazine "Ray", Sakai had the opportunity to meet the members of L'Arc, or so her model coworkers have said.

[...]

Translator note:
To repeat : THEY ARE NOT MARRIED YET. The wedding dress picture of Ayana is from a fashion show.

And the L'Arc~en~Ciel fandom's in upheaval! Congrats tetsu and Ayana!

Since writing about the (first) Chinese visual kei band Silver Ash (official homepage) more than a year and a month ago, I never did make good on my promise to post part 2 of their Sohu interview. The truth is, I had begun working on it after finishing translating part 1 of the interview. However, I soon become frustrated with the massive! amount of ambiguities in the transcript. Everything from the lack of subject, tense clarity, and context, possibly exacerbated by the online chat interview format, discouraged me and I pretty much abandoned that project.

Recently, my interest in Chinese rock music resurged and I plan to write more about the subject in upcoming posts. By chance, I once again stumbled upon the Silver Ash vocalist Ling's blog. Looks like many things have happened since last October when I first wrote about the band. According to Wikipedia:

It was last heard that they were still without a record label, as well, but were given various offers from Japanese record labels, such as Avex Trax. They were previously signed to Toshiba-EMI, but were released from the contract again due to government problems.

In the most recent news, Silver Ash held a live on August 30th (2006) with Japanese band, La'cryma Christi, particularly to be viewed by the record label SWEET-CHILD.

Their most recent release is the PV for a track named 海的女儿 (pinyin: Hai de nu'er). The title of the track roughly translates into Daughter of the Sea.

In addition, as recently as this September, Silver Ash had performed along with Japan's rice and Gram Maria in Beijing.

Alas, Silver Ash is terribly ill-fated. The departure from their record label in 2004 also marked the end of the band's career pinnacle. Even though the members were forced to leave the band and despite the setbacks and traumas the vocalist Ling faced, he still was able to keep Silver Ash alive after 3 years of unbelievable hardship.

As I began to browse through Ling's blog entries, I was continuously struck by his strength of character, his perseverance. I've come to admire his relentless struggles against one setback after another. No matter how beatdown he may be, he still retains that glimmer of optimism and smiles in the face of adversity.

I decided to translate one of his recent entries and present it here. In this particular post, Ling speaks of his life outlook and talks in detail of how Silver Ash's ascent to success came about. For all of us who face challenges of all forms in our daily lives, here's the take of one musician on his experiences.

I've been meaning to post this... but didn't realize the last entry on our band history was made three months ago. Many things have happened in these past three months; they have altered the course of my life completely.... So I haven't had the mood to write long and involved band history discussions.

The "Tower" tarot card (1) Xiaobai read for me on the train to Sichuan (2) had clearly been taking effect on my life... My entire second half of the year, family, life, and work had all reached their nadir. The traumas took place one after another.

I still insist on not believing in fate; I insist on believing that one can control one's own destiny. So, I told myself that the fate dictated by cards can the changed by one's own determination. But I had forgotten, no matter how hard I fought, I could only influence my own decisions. Sometimes, events and people are outside of your control, but the decisions and choices derived from them have profound impact on your life, your happiness, even your faith in humanity. Now... at the time my life is about to enter the next yearly cycle, I think of three months ago, when things had yet to come to pass. It's with hope, that I think back on the band's history. It's with hope, that I face my future. I now continue to write about that time, when my sole focus was on the band's future... when I was bursting with excitement and creativity for music.

After "Lunar Eclipse Night", the band's collaboration with Youth.cn came to an end. But the biggest change to the band came when our guitarist Nancy made the decision to study abroad in Canada. The band once more reverted to a four-piece ensemble. Losing a guitarist meant that the band, in order to maintain the richness of the sound when performing live, must play some pre-recorded music. For our drummer, this was a big challenge, because he must precisely match his rhythm to the recording. For the longest time, the band's practice solely focused on perfecting this. During this period, I mostly worked with Lucy to tweak the finished songs, though most of the work that went into changing the compositions fell on him. But I, who initially was not familiar of this area, gradually began to acquire the knowledge of whole-piece music composition and verse structure as a result of working on revising the songs.

One day I went online, and received an E-mail....

It was signed "Lu Bo, Scream Records".... (3)

It was the first time a record label had come to us, yet our performances to date only added up to four or five lives total.

I was so excited. Even though at the time I didn't really like Scream Records, I thought that fortune had finally beckoned, its gate was about to swing open for us.

I had already written about our acquaintance with Lu Bo in the blog, so I won't repeat myself here. Anyway, our three-year collaboration with Scream Records formally commenced. From a new-born band, we slowly began our ascent to maturity and style.

When the band first signed, because our operation and style are completely different from the label's other bands, every decision needed discussion with all involved because no one had any previous experience. The first photo shoot was going to be a test run with makeup, but somehow this set that we spent a night shooting became the most widely circulated, most widely recognized photos of the band during its early period. Even now, the most commonly seen photos of the band found online are all from this set. In the end, the first official photo shoot with official costumes wasn't really used, though this set of photos appeared on the band's first single.

Because we never wanted our band to become overly feminized, for that photo shoot, we all had prepared black costumes. But at the shooting session, Lucy insisted on wearing a white gown. Seeing the makeup artist also supporting him, I backed down. In the end, I think it's this "how can they tell if I am he or she" (4) white gown image that first, on a visual level, began to propel Lucy to his later immense popularity.

Soon, we released the "Organum" single which included the band's self-recorded demo. Additionally, the pre-order numbers broke Scream Records's CD retail record. And it was this single that changed the face of China's rock bands' product release structure, for a mere three-track CD with a simple video was able to compete with ten-something-track albums on the record store shelves.

- Ling, Silver Ash

(1) In tarot card reading, the Tower symbolizes destruction and loss.
(2) 四川 (Sichuan) is also spelled Szechuan or Szechwan. It's a province in western China, famous for its spicy cuisine.
(3) 嚎叫唱片 (Scream Records) is a sub-label of Jingwen Records and one of the major rock, punk and new metal labels. It's the biggest alternative rock label in China and committed themselves to sign every year several bands and release at least 10 records (from: Rock in China wiki).
(4) 安能辨我是雌雄 (An neng bian wo shi ci xiong). This is the last line of the "Ode of Mulan". Thanks to Disney, most people have a general idea of the story of the young lady who disguised herself as a man to serve in the army in her father's place. The translation was from The Flowering Plum and the Palace Lady: Interpretations of Chinese Poetry, by Hans H. Frankel, Yale University Press, 1976. The full translation can be found here.