6th Station ~Other Bands for H!P Fans~

[TotallyUncool]

I like to collect physical CDs, DVDs, etc., and I like to bargain-hunt and to dig stuff up from the pop-culture past, so when I discovered Book-Off and a few other places in the L.A. area where I could buy older Jpop at dirt-cheap prices, I went into collector's mode and started grabbing anything that was cheap and looked interesting. That was around the time that I also started to pick up any Mando- and Cantopop that looked interesting on the discount shelves at local hole-in-the-wall stores (and now I find a lot of it in thrift shops).

So I spent a lot of time building up a good collection of Wink, Princess Princess, older H!P, China Dolls, Tarcy Su, etc., and filling in my ZONE collection. I also kept up with the post-ZONE Runtime acts (MARIA, Nagase Miyu's solo releases, the short-lived ZONE reunion), and with a few other current artists, like Huang Fei and A-Mei. I bought a lot of Runtime, Huang Fei, older Tarcy, and current Kpop online, either used through Amazon and eBay stores, or new from CDJapan and YesAsia. But I also lost a lot of interest in contemporary Jpop during that time.

In the past year or two, though, I've found myself getting more interested in current Jpop, largely because the new wave of indie/rock-based/even-sort-of-semi-underground-if-you-don't-look-too-closely idol groups, as well as the big-name acts with a fresh approach, such as Babymetal and Ebichu. Idol music has basically become an adventure again, which I like.

And things have changed enough so that I find that my current favorite resource for finding new and interesting groups is the General Idol news/culture/talk thread at H!O, which at this point has turned into a remarkable collection of the Good, the Bad, and the WTF. I've been listening to a mix of groups from that thread, combined with BiS spinoffs and Ebichu, and to me, it's as fresh and exciting as the stuff that I was discovering around 2003-2004 (which was probably the last time when everything did still seem to be a fresh discovery to me).

Which means, of course, that I'm getting enthusiastic about groups like under beAsty:



And Oyasumi Hologram:



as well as nice, fun, accessible pop like QAM:



But for me, that's just about the right kind of mix.
(And really, all three of those PVs are fun, accessible pop -- it's just that the first two make a good attempt at appearing to be something else. )

Spoiler: show

I'm still boycotting virtually all of Western pop culture, past and present, but that's strictly a running-away-from-my-past personal thing with me (rather than being a critique of Western pop culture itself), and I don't want to pretend that it's anything else.

[erilaz]

I buy massive amounts of Japanese music on CD (and vinyl on occasion), both new and used, but I buy precious little Western music nowadays. What Western music I do buy is overwhelmingly "tried and true": either new albums or compilations by artists I've listened to for years, or expanded reissues of albums I've listened to for years.

Going through my log of CD acquisitions for 2015, the non-Japanese stuff is a pretty short list. In order of purchase:

Sleater-Kinney - No Cities to Love (new album)
George Harrison - The Apple Years 1968-75 (box set of 6 albums plus DVD)
Blur - The Magic Whip (new album, actually a freebie from work)
Annie Philippe - Sensationell! Yé-Yé Bonbons 1965-1968 (new compilation)
Siouxsie and the Banshees - Spellbound - The Collection (new compilation)
Pretenders - Pretenders (2 CD+DVD deluxe reissue)
bis - i ♥ bis (new compilation by the Scottish band, not to be confused with BiS)
The Rezillos - Zero (new album)
Gwenno - Y Dydd Olaf (new Welsh-language solo debut by Gwenno Saunders of the Pipettes)

And that's it.

[TotallyUncool]

I'll go through phases where I'll poke around on Youtube looking for old blues songs. The other day, for example, I got the urge to hear "Two Trains Running," but I thought, "No, the Butterfield and Blues Project versions are both covers. How about the original?" And I finally found it...

[esm]

I'm glad I took some Swedish because there are some pretty good Swedish music out there. Even with artists that sing in English I really like how down to earth they are compared to American artists because they don't live in fancy homes and all and there isn't a paparazzi culture there. Plus, there are articles out there about how Swedish pop music is just so damn good.

This song is so catchy. Like, I initially didn't even realize the melody is just the same few lines repeated over and over throughout most of the song.


---

On the J-Pop front, this is pretty damn good:



Also, I don't think this would be out of place at all on US radios and such (although the video might be kind of wtf). I love the piano in the background so much.

[Nayoko-Kihara]

That Sekai no Owari song is the first that I've actually looked up on my own after hearing it briefly in an Oricon video. They had one other song I liked, but not enough to go searching for it in my own time.

[Starra]

I don't tend to buy CDs. For one thing, shipping costs aren't worth it, and I also don't really have the room to put them anywhere. I would like to own every MM。CD (and every Yuuko CD) at some point, but I feel guilty when I spend money on things I don't really need . Especially CDs, since the music is obtainable by other means (usually).

[erilaz]

I'm glad I took some Swedish because there are some pretty good Swedish music out there. Even with artists that sing in English I really like how down to earth they are compared to American artists because they don't live in fancy homes and all and there isn't a paparazzi culture there. Plus, there are articles out there about how Swedish pop music is just so damn good.

Back in the '90s I was listening to a lot of (mostly female-fronted) Swedish indie bands, who sang in English for the most part. Stuff like Cinnamon, Club 8, Doktor Kosmos, Komeda, Red Sleeping Beauty, Sahara Hotnights, and of course the Cardigans. Hell, I was even buying CDs by the A-Teens (when they were still doing nothing but ABBA covers) and Play. My favorite Swedish band of that era, though, was Cloudberry Jam, whose career was revived by popularity in Japan, so they're one of the bands whose CDs I search for whenever I'm in Japan.

[Amped]

Nominees for Best Japan Artist at the 2015 MTV EMA (MTV Europe Music Awards)
http://specials.mtvjapan.com/ema2015/

[AyuHikaru]

For me, it's def. a toss up between ONE OK ROCK and Sekai no Owari... though ONE OK ROCK is what I'm leaning toward.

[jeiwa42]

I love duets/harmonies:
https://youtu.be/ZN4jCYZo-yo