Make Believe Mailer Vol. 23: Oh Hi
Oh hey, remember this thing? Looking over my drafts, it appears the last message I tried to write was at the very start of May. It opened with a paragraph about my freshly removed wisdom teeth, and how I basically had been out of it for a week (aside: never get your wisdom teeth removed if you absolutely don't have to, dear god). At some point, I just abandoned that draft, probably to go suck on another jelly packet and watch 30 For 30 documentaries...and never came back to this here thing. Life just got incredibly busy (or, maybe more accurately...my working weeks became busier, and I spent my weekends decompressing), and this got lost in the shuffle.
But I don't want it to, so I'm going to try to hop back on this weekly thing, and this seems like a good time to do it, as tonight saw the event serving as a handy Prime Meridian for the J-pop calendar. Idol mega-group AKB48 held their annual election in...uhhh, Niigata, at something called the Hard Off Eco Stadium. This event -- fans can obtain ballots to vote for their favorite member via the most recently released single -- has lost a bit of luster in recent years. A few years back, people and media probably paid more attention to it than actual summer national elections, but now in 2016 the AKB variety probably attracts about the same overall amount of interest. Yet it remains a big enough detail -- nationally broadcasted, Twitter-dominating -- and can offer up some fun drama (and hey, I watched all of Produce 101 this Spring...this sort of thing is great entertainment).
This year's edition came down to the J-pop idol version of Magic vs. Bird, with defending champ and all-around excellent human Sashihara Rino pulling off a repeat by stomping the eternally boring Mayu Watanabe. It probably isn't the best reflection of the group that this is the fourth year it came down to those two, but ehhh it still has its charms.
Spent 20 minutes trying to Crying Jordan this pic, but alas, I was not made for photo editing
Japanese Music Highlights From This Week
Ujico (aka Snail's House) keeps getting better, as highlighted by his latest collection, which finds a nice balance between "kawaii bass" and more refined ideas.
Nagoya's House Of Tapes also released a really nice album, good week for fans of music without words.
Moving towards Kansai, Osaka's Pictured Resort get the whole city pop thing better than a lot of "city pop revival" acts, while Kyoto's Native Rapper pays tribute to music and creation on "Track Maker."
Stared out of a coffee store window for like 30 minutes listening to Tokyo's Baby Fire, seems like a good sign.
And since this is basically 2016's midpoint, let's take a moment to revisit FAMM'IN's "Circle," still the best song I've heard from anywhere this year.
News And Views
While AKB48 enjoys the spotlight, feels like a good time to also highlight the recent drama they've faced in China, where the officially sanctioned Shanghai-based group SNH48 found themselves in a tough place with the mothership after creating unsanctioned sister units in Beijing and Guangzhou. Mmmmmm, geopolitical drama, can't get enough of it!
So, maybe we are over the whole Becky kerfluffle, maybe? She's back on TV, the dude from Gesu is going to be continually owned online for all time, all is right with the world. Thankfully, other scandals have stepped up to fill the music industry's thirst! Funky Kato, formerly of truly insufferable junior-high-school-graduation-soundtrack trio Funky Monkey Babys, went and had an affair that got a decent chunk of coverage. And gave us this sentence:
You play J-pop in your hair salon and / or restaurant? Pay up bub.
Really enjoyed this story by Laurent Fintoni for FACT about Seiho, primarily because it did a great job of making me nostalgic for the Osaka music scene from 2011 to mid 201. Not to get too goopy about it, but it was pretty exciting to watch it unfold in person -- getting to go to INNIT parties, watching as artists such as Seiho and Magical Mistakes came into their own, seeing a city where the electronic artists checked out the indie-rock bands, and vice versa -- and this story got me in the feels about those times.
Was going to make mention of that silly-but-fun fake Trump Japanese ad, but trying to bring it up lead me to this video titled "Notice Me Trump Senpai" and, well, reality always beats jokes I guess.
Look At Me!
Reviewed the recent reissue of Cornelius' Fantasma, and got to slap it with the Best New Reissue sticker, on Pitchfork. It was one of the few Japanese albums I listened to before ever coming here...and still one of the finest.
For The Japan Times, I chose a few highlights of 2016 so far! In non-music writing, I also talked to YouTube That Japanese Man Yuta, who talks to ordinary Japanese people about various issues in an attempt to combat inaccurate ideas of the country.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
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Header by Alan Castree (AC Galaga)