Now that I have made clear what the purpose of this blog is going to be moving forward, I feel like I am a little freer to make the posts I want to make, here. So that’s a good thing. Today I’m going to try to put words to something
A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about Akimoto Yasushi, the guy who founded the AKB48 jpop empire. Akimoto Yasushi – Good or Evil? I want to revisit that post now. As I’ve become more familiar with Japanese culture, I’ve begun to see nuances that I didn’t before.
Over the past year or so, I’ve become something of a fan of Babymetal. This may seem odd to people who know me, because I’m a classically trained musician, and I find most metal to be just people making noise, loudly. But Babymetal has proven to be an exception. There
I will not say that I am a huge fan of K-Pop, nor am I a huge fan of J-Pop, but I am more familiar with J-Pop than K-Pop. But I find myself very impressed with the K-Pop groups I have seen. The other day I saw a “Girls’ Generation”
As I might have mentioned at one point, I am a classically trained musician. I am familiar with most of the works of many major composers, but my favorite classical pieces – or romantic pieces, as the case may be, are some of the more famous piano concertos. Those by
I have recently stumbled upon this particular song by Babymetal, which may have become one of my all time favorite songs and/or pieces of all time. And that’s saying something considering I have a classical background and also rank Rachmaninoff’s piano concerto #3 as one of my favorite pieces of
I’ve posted previously about what I like about J-Pop, but I don’t like everything about it! As with everything, it has its good sides and bad sides. Here, in my opinion, are the bad sides. The Music Can Be Uninteresting I’ve posted previously about how I think that J-Pop is
I was actually trained as a classical pianist. Yes, it’s true. I went to college and everything. I learned how to either play or appreciate much of the repertoire – in point of fact, if I put my mind to it, there are piano concertos that are not out of
I haven’t written one of these for a while, and this one’s a little late. I have some good excuses which you don’t care about, but if you knew them, you’d agree that they’re good, so we’ll just leave it at that. This is an interesting song. Its first few
I have always found idol culture in Japan interesting, but partly because I sought to understand it. I found this video which helped a little. These are several members of AKB48 who were in a contest with a bunch of Korean idols, and found themselves so lacking in comparison it