Liz's blog

10/06/2010

AH.... Cameron Diaz & Tom Cruise on VS Arashi!! I can't wait. ^_^

Posted at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/08/2010

Popolo Scans Sept 2010 - Arashi Part 1

They looks so youthful and fresh and summery! More to come later, this is only part one. Comments appreciated.

Posted at 11:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

08/01/2010

Thoughts on Arashi's Albums

I was reading arashic0804's Post on Vox about what makes a good song and her thoughts on Arashi's music.

I was going to leave a comment in response, but my response become so long, I figured I'd make my own post about it.

Arashi's Good Albums, and Why They were Good

I must say, I agree with how the ONE and TIME albums are one of their best (and my favorites). And, like arashic0804 pointed out, you can definitely notice Arashi must have liked those too – or at least, songs from there – because they selected those songs to be on the ALL THE BEST album. (or at least, the music producers for ALL THE BEST felt they would be right to select those songs).

What was good about those albums, I think, were that most (if not all) of the songs were "really good". But what makes a song good, like arashic0804 asked? I liked her answer:

"For me a good song means it is a song where you remember at heart and will listen to it from years to come…

This also applied on Arashi…"

I really liked this answer, and it made me think of my own, slightly revised version of that: A good song is one that I think gets to you, emotionally, on some level: whether you are happy, sad, moved, energized, or something. If you have an emotional connection to the song, it's one you remember. The more evocative, the more memorable.

And what makes it a “good” song? Mostly this is a question of personal taste, but some songs that are catchy enough and evocative enough manage to capture the hearts of most of the population (with allowance for differences in personal taste).

Like who can forget the nostalgic and beautiful "Subarashiki Sekai" and the up-beat, rallying anthem, "Sakura Sake" from ONE? Or the songs from TIME, like Aiba's sweet and earnest "Friendship" and the sweeping and ardent "Life", or hard-edged, cool "Firefly"?

But a good album is more than just a bunch of "good songs" (although that's important too). What else matters?

Consistency

The other thing that made these albums great, in my opinion, was that there was a good consistency with the songs. As in, the album felt "connected" and all the songs had the same vibe. Not to say that ALL the songs were the 'same' (there were ballads and pop songs mixed in), but the SOUND was such that: "oh! This is the vibe for 'Time'" or 'One'.

For example, ONE, for me, sounds like nostalgic, happy summer time.

TIME is the new wave, a time for transition and slowly moving forward into new things.

Both albums had songs that were upbeat and moving, somehow - which I feel is what Arashi's "Sound" is, as an artist.

In tandem with consistency, these albums felt like listening to a "movie" that had a beginning, middle, and end, instead of a hodge-podge patch-work of sounds and flavors. True, this hodge-podge of music may sound good, depending on how well it is executed -- for example, ARASHIC has that sense of mixed-genres. And if an album’s intent is for the artist to experiment, that's great. However, at its core, an album should have some sense of fixed "identity", which makes the album stand out, in a person's mind.

And of course, do not underestimate the importance of having good songs.

Arashi's Not-So-Memorable Albums, and Why They Weren't

DREAM “A”LIVE. Everybody loved the solos from it, but the album itself was very much "forgettable". For me, it didn't leave much of an impression on me, because it felt too retro (like 80s and 70s music, which I don’t like). Again, although DREAM “A”LIVE had a “vibe”, and attempts consistency, it doesn’t do a very good job of it. The consistency strikes a chord of dissonance and in all honesty: there were not a lot of good, memorable songs there.

The only memorable, good song there was “Once Again” and the solo songs.

What makes these songs good? I don’t know, but the solo songs here up-beat, memorable, and each sound evoked some emotion strong enough for us to like. E.g. – “Take Me Faraway” was evocative song of yearning with an R&B style. “Gimmick Game” was pop-ish and bratty but mixed well enough that it got your heart racing and the party started.

Another “forgettable” album was Here We Go! True, this was more of Arashi’s older work, but the reason I didn’t like it was the songs seemed to blend together, they were all attempts at being more hip-hop (which, honestly isn’t Arashi’s “sound”, as we know it now), but the songs were similar and nothing really stood out.

The New Album…?

Anyway, that is my analysis. As for the new album: I have yet to form an opinion on the entire album. I’ve only listened to it once through. Although there are some songs in there that alone, are shining gems, while other songs are “okay”… I wonder if you have too many multi-colored gems in a bracelet, each standing to shine its own way, it ruins the effect of each one, creating some dizzying mess of color.

Posted at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

07/16/2010

I wonder if Jun Felt the Deja Vu...

I know I did, when I saw this moment, in VS Arashi

Fan ~~girl~~ boy ~~Liz~~ Nino goes up to Jun with a bouquet of flowers, and he...

Well, okay, so Jun pushes Nino away (not what he did to me, the security guard did that, haha), and tells him to stop interrupting him. But fanboy Nino is so earnest, he can't help it, and...

Okay, so he gives it to the chick standing next to Jun. BWAHAHAHA.

But still. It was SO cute seeing Nino fanboy (whether for real or for show?), I agree with that person in Vox who said, it was like seeing a new side to Nino.

And guess who was the guest "5th" member of Arashi, while Jun played against him?

OGURA SAN!! Ahh... Natsukashi!! You could tell from the boys' reactions, they were floored (Nino was, literally!) by the surprise. So cute! You could tell they were happy! ^_^

And so... although i don't care about VS Arashi, the show, this was really cute one! ^_^

Posted at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

06/21/2010

the Jin Akinishi concert at the Nokia LA Live Theater

June 20, 2010

So I went to the Jin Akinishi concert at the Nokia LA Live Theater (concert was called You & Jin). It was so freaking AWESOME!! AT first I was afraid I wouldn’t like it because:

1. I don’t even know Jin that well, or his music.

2. What little I DO know about him and his music, it’s not my style – he’s hip-hop, I’m more of a pop rock girl.

3. He seems like a douche bag.

But!!! It was awesome.

Before the Concert

I picked up my friend Ashley at around 9:30 a.m. to get brunch in LA and go to the concert. We found an IHOP so I pulled over at the parking garage that was $5 for the whole day. I was like: SCORE! Although it said it was near the Staples Center and Convention Center (and Nokia Theater), we found out later it was not.

I got the pancake combo (with eggs, hash browns, and fruit) with coffee and Ashley got some yummy mocha coffee and something similar to what I got, but without the pancakes.

It was amazing, there was the big old line to get inside, but when the store manager saw us, and I was asking: “How long is the wait?” He was like, “Give me just a minute.” When Ashley gave her name, and we said it was for two people: BOOM! We got our table right away. It was pretty crowded, but it was Father’s Day, we figured.

Afterwards, we had to figure out how to get from there, to the theater. Which we had no idea where it was, LOL.

Oh, and as we were walking down the street, a bird pooped right between us on the cement. We were like, “What the heck?” Luckily it didn’t get on us, but I told Ashley that it’s good luck: it means you’re going to be rich, if a bird poops on you.

So we got lost, and finally, finally found our way to the Nokia theater (which was really far from IHOP and where we parked)… and we were there at around 11:30 cuz the tickets said 12:00. On the way there, Ashley was wondering, what if it would be empty. But when we got there, there was already a line. Most everyone was Asian or from Japan – although there were two African American girls who were taking pictures with the Jin poster.

While we were in line, I was gonna sneak in my camera, but a security guard asked me if I had one on me… I froze and said maybe (I should have lied, damnit!) he gave me this knowing, smug look. “You either have one or you don’t.”

I explained to him, “But my car is like 3 blocks down! Besides, what time does the concert start?” It was already 10 minutes to 12:00.

The guard was like, “The gates open at 12. The concert starts around 1 or 1:30.”

So we walked under the hot sun all the way back to the parking structure. I paid my $5 and I was like, okay, we are parking closer this time – I didn’t care if we had to pay a lot, I didn’t feel like walking all the way back there.

So we went to the spiffy new parking structure at the theater (which would cost me an additional $25 for –parking). Then we looked around for the bathroom – which was really hard to find, but we found one at the Yard House and went there.

I saw some girls dressed as Lolitas and it was really cute. I told her so.

We went back up stairs to the theater (to where we were before) but another stupid guard said, “You can’t go up there… you have to get in line out there.” I was like, WTF? There was a line out there before, but we went up there just fine!! But whatever: we stand in the sun for another 15 minutes.

I’m starting to hate the guards.

We get inside, having to throw away our water bottles, but I’m happy to see that we have good seats: first floor, back center.

I’m starting to feel happy.

We go to order some drinks, and I’m thinking I want something alcoholic. They offered three drinks: 2 alcoholic, one non-alcoholic. They had such cute names: the one Ashley and I got was called “Love Juice” (get it? LOL.) Which was alcoholic and REALLY good. It had Absolut Mango, Sprite, and Ashley says orange juice but I swear I remember reading it was pineapple. The virgin drink was called, “School Girl Crush” (Sprite, Orange Juice, and something I don’t recall), which was cute. The third one was called “Jin’s Surprise”. I took a picture of the menu but it came out blurry.

Concert Starts

So in the opening, two guys tried to pump up the crowd, but everyone was really mellow and quiet, which was funny. They were trying to get the two sides of the room to yell, but they weren’t that loud.

The first act was a 16 year-old, Japanese-born, American-raised boy who did some break-dancing.

The second was a rapper, I forget his name.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (and yes, they showed videos of Jin in the beginning and after the end of the opening acts), Jin came on.

He was wearing this big white puffy ski-jacket thing with a hood, his hair tied up, his big aviator sunglasses on, a black undershirt, and necklace.

He pretended he was one of those wind-up musical box things that spun, and kept spinning back and forth. Then he got behind the drum set and hit the drums a little bit, and the back-up dancers moved to the beat, the lights turning on with each hit of the drum.

I was like, “Okay, are you not going dance? After hyping us all up, this feels a bit anticlimactic.”

Afterwards, the dancers come out, and they are all dressed in shiny gold outfits (one of the back-up dancers that was trying to hype up the crowd earlier commented saying that backstage, they said he looked like a “second-place trophy”. LOL He did).

Anyway, so the concert was really fun, and the dancing, the tension/atmosphere, and the art-work and the creativity that went into creating these performances was amazing.

The costumes, the sets, everything was very incredible and got you into the concert. As a Johnny’s I was hoping he’d live up the expectations of a Johnny’s (but my hopes, true, were low because he was doing in America and it was small venue, and a solo con), but in terms of that, he didn’t disappoint. In fact, it was a pleasant surprise. I never been to a hip-hop style concert before, but this was really good one. The dancers were really good, I must say.

One of Ashley’s favorite song’s was: “Bass Go Boom”, and the other one which was like “Go Girl” or something (I’m totally blanking). They were both good. “Bass Go Boom” was a good party song with a nice beat.

After “Bass Go Boom, was a duet with Crystal Kay, called “Wonder. She wasn’t there, but her voice was there, and a video of him and her was playing in the background.

He sang a few other songs. One “Tipsy Love” and another was like how he wanted to dance with this girl at a club, and not another girl - said that the other girl was “a 10 when someone was counting to 100” (oooh, burn!)

He did sing A Page… they had these black wall panels that had neon-green writing on it… and when they rearranged it, it said “Jin”, and when they turned it over, it said, “A Page”. For that, Jin was in a black top, black… jacket(?) kaki pants, a big, bling-wrist watch, his hair down, and his signature black fedora. He sat on the stairs and sang it by himself. It was really cool.

Then they broke into Love Juice, and I was surprised I enjoyed it, instead of blushing over it, like I usually do when I hear it. Two sexy girls: A brunette in red and blonde in blue danced with Jin.

After the Love Juice, where he danced with two girls, he sat in the background, in a supposed “club” setting (although the venue is a club, actually. Haha), the other dancers danced, and afterward the “paparazzi” come and take pictures of Jin “partying” with these two girls.

I REALLY thought the next song, Paperats (paparazzi) song was really moving.

Then he sings about how the paparazzi makes him look like who they want him to be, and he doesn’t care, and that person isn’t who he sees in the mirror. The rap-parts were okay, but the chorus, he sang it like a rock-and roll like… it was amazing. You could tell that what he was saying was from the heart. Because Jin is always in the tabloids and he’s always depicted as this hard-core partier (douche bag), but he really gained my respect by him voicing his thoughts in this song, and it was an amazing performance.

One of the things that annoyed me was that Jin’s voice was changed into one of those wiggly I dunno… different sounding. I wonder if they did that to cover up his accent? But at some point, my friend mentioned it was so high-pitched that she thought he sounded like a girl. I agreed. LOL. But he did talk without the voice alter-thing and his voice was deep. <3 Hehe.

Towards the end of the first half of the concert, he went the bar at the back of the club, and drank some… gin? (J/k) he drank the Love Juice, and gave a toast to “You and Jin”. LOL. He gave the cup to someone else.

The fangirls in the back rushed to get near him. Ashley and I stayed in our seats, but the MC guy said, “if y’all rush him, we’re gonna stop this concert here. We need to get Jin back stage, so please back away.”

Thank God they did.

So, after intermission, the rest was… good. More dancing than singing.

There was this really cool dance thing with these hot chick dancers in kimonos and Joey had this demon mask, and later Jin came on with a purple wig and masks, and kept taking off mask after mask. It was scary, but pretty fascinating to watch, too. Then Jin put on this red hooded robe, and they did a magic trick where at first he was the guy in the back, with the robe, and then he was the guy in the front with the robe. Pretty cool.

Then they did another dance called “screen” where Jin and two dancers wore white “painting” jumpsuits, and with the lights, they did all of these cool effects on them. It was fascinating, and totally creative.

One of the last songs was called “Yellow Gold” and I really liked that one. By then the audience was waving their hands to the music, and the last song was something like, “If you need me, say, “Ye-oh!” and the audience hollered back. The music stopped but Jin and the crowd kept saying it back and forth. All the back-up dancers (there were about 10 or 12 in all – 4 or 5 girls and guys) stood in a line, arms around each other’s shoulders, swaying back and forth, chanting with the audience.

In the end, Jin re-introduced everyone, and they walked over from the right side of the stage to the left, where Jin was standing, and gave him a hug (even the guys, although it was a “man-hug”). You could tell how much the dancers respected and admired Jin. They even chanted “Akinishi! Akinishi!” So cute love!

Anyway, so that was the con. I had fun, the music was good – like Ashley later said, “it was more pop than too much hip-hop” although I sort of disagree: it was pop AND hip-hop. It felt like I was in a club (well, I was, haha) but the vibe and music was good, and it had interesting scenes to look at, unlike the rock concerts I’ve been to, which is just about the music, this was literally a SHOW. And a damn good one. Haha, I wish I could have gone back in and re-watched it again, because outside the lines were already forming for the 6:00 o’clock show.

But I have work, alas.

Ashley & I were hoping there would be souvenirs, but there were none, alas. What a jip! We already paid $10 for extremely high-priced drinks. I wanted to buy extremely high-priced souvenirs at least to remember the experience by. :( Oh, and as I was walking out of the club with my drink in my hand, the security said, “you can’t take that outside.” WTF? The security was having fun bullying me about, I can tell you. I hated them by then. WTF.

But I had fuuuuuun today. Even if we got lost trying to find the freeway to go back home, LOL. Imagine if I had this much fun WITHOUT knowing who Jin was, how much I would have if I DID know him. Haha.

When we went to Best Buy and the mall after, Ash was wondering if they’d have a demo CD of them there. I told her that Jin didn’t have a solo album, which kind sucks, and if he did, it wouldn’t be in Best Buy, but he should have a CD with these songs on it, I think. Anyway, I recorded the audio of the concert, which I’ll post up for you guys to download. Yays!

Finally: My outfit was super cute today! Haha. A rock-and-roll thing I bought from Forever 21 that I looked good in.

Posted at 06:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

04/14/2010

Anyone Going to the Jin Concert in LA?

Anyone Going to the Jin Concert in LA? If so -- what day are you going, and what price-range would you be buying tickets for?

I'm looking to see if anyone's going. I'm planning on going on the Sunday show at 12:00.

http://www.jinakanishi.us/

Posted at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

01/10/2010

JE in the US: AnswerMan

In case you don't know, Answerman is a column in the Anime News Network website. I came accross this question, in which it talked about Japanese songs and liscencing in the West (see the last paragraph for the Johnny's reference). Opinions? Thoughts?

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2010-01-08

Quesiton:

Hey Answerman!

For A-list shows like Monster and NANA, it is so irritating to not have the original ED themes. Monster used a top-shelf David Sylvian cut, and being a long-time fan of Sylvian, I can't imagine a songwriter fitting the tone of the show better. And NANA's first ED is not only performed by the same vocalist who did the later EDs, but large parts of the song remain as incidental music during key scenes. Presumably we're looking at different songwriters, musicians, or publishers... it really makes a farce out of the whole "inspired by Reira" promotional tactic.

Does it really cost so much to obtain the rights to use these songs?

Answer:

There's two different answers to each of those questions, because they deal with two separate markets.

The first, about David Sylvian and Monster: I can't speak to the specifics about that one because I don't know, but... yes, yes it really does cost that much money! In this era of nonexistent CD sales and thin margins on MP3 downloads, one of the most lucrative forms of revenue that any musician can get are by licensing out their music for film or television. I mean, nobody but pedantic music snobs like me would know or care about Feist unless she was on an iPod commercial. These "synchronization rights," i.e. a piece of music being attached to a visual, are heavily lobbied by record labels and the individual artist's manager. And they are not cheap. They go for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.

In Japan, though, a country with a much smaller media market in general, the cost to license popular music from the US is scaled back appropriately, so it's easier for anime studios and TV networks to afford them. So, Monster can use David Sylvian, and Speed Grapher can use Duran Duran. In Japan. When those shows come to the US, there's a whole new mess of music licensing fees to deal with, and more often than not, they're simply way too expensive. Not to mention that there's no guarantee, even if they had that kind of money, that the artist would agree to let it be used. They can always just say "no."

As for the Japanese side of things, I'll let my most-excellent-of-superiors Justin Sevakis take that one, since he's got more chops about the ins and outs of the Japanese music industry than myself:

In the case of Japanese artists, the problem is more along the lines of a delusion of grandeur. If a Japanese artist is a big name there, they naturally think they could be huge in America too. Even if nobody knows them in the West, the artist and their management usually believe that it's just a matter of time before they're walking the red carpet with Britney and Lady GaGa, and they should be compensated accordingly. This is an especially big problem with Johnny & Associates, the company that controls SMAP, Tokio, Arashi, Kat-tun, and myriad other Japanese boy bands. Never mind that, to date, only 1 or 2 Japanese artists have ever had any measurable success in the US. Some might refuse to allow their music to be released in America altogether, lest a little cartoon spoil their big American debut.

Posted at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)