What would be better is if every Guitar Center type place included a copy of This Business of Music with every starter guitar and amp set…
I can barely remember when, just that it was at a flea market in the US so 20-30 years ago. Beat up but still playable. Currently in storage so not convenient to take a pic.
Lately I’ve been wondering what kind of metal music is made locally so now that I’m funemployed I went to Tower Records in Shibuya yesterday and got a pile of CDs of Japanese bands. Actually I was inspired by this:
What a great find… it’s been a while since I’ve been to a flea market.[quote=“Israel_B, post:21, topic:95839”]
funemployed
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Oh no! When did this happen?
Babymetal is a fun band. They seem to have a little bit of attention here in the states. My daughter saw a Babymetal t-shirt at the book store the other day.
I miss the huge flea markets of the US. The ones here are never as good.
It was voluntary. I left my last employer as of 2/28. Working on getting another gig but it just wasnt possible to align overlap.
Good for them. They seem to be really hard working girls and have their act down tighter than tight. Its so rare that any Japanese musicians succeed overseas.
They can be quite big here in the south… we got lots of room for such things…[quote=“Israel_B, post:23, topic:95839”]
It was voluntary.
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Oh, that’s not so bad then, especially if you can use the time to do something fun and productive you wouldn’t otherwise have the time to do… like filling in your gaps on Japanese metal.
There’s always Shonen Knife!
The anime convention circuit is probably where lots of Japanese bands can get a little bit of an audience here, if no where else - . We go to the local one every year and there is always at least 3 or 4 bands playing (usually bands that have a song on some anime, but now and again it’s bands like Melt Banana or something off the wall like that). Actually, a friend of mine had a pretty well regarded Japanese music show on WRAS for about 7 years and she got some press attention for it. I think she managed to introduce people to some Japanese bands and helped them get a little mindshare in the US. There is a new Japanese music show that’s on WRAS now that’s pretty good, but not as good as hers was…
Here is her (now sadly defunct) site for the show (and it was on for 9 years!!!):
Anime/weeaboo audiences, alterna rock fans who discovered Shonen Knife or Pizzicato Five in their parents music collections are still small audiences.
What is pretty shocking to me is how Babymetal has ended up playing at major festival venues in the US & UK in front of tens of thousands of people and opened for Metallica overseas and KISS here in Tokoyo and so on.
Unfortunately theres a greater chance that Babymetal wont last:
They are a manufactured band so management could lose interest
Japan is a crabs in a bucket society when it comes to local entertainers getting any success outside Japan
The US & UK are notoriously unfriendly markets for music that is not in English
