26 posts tagged “music”

Audio:  Show us a song or album you've recently downloaded.

Radiohead release their seventh studio album today and it's only available online and you set your own price.  Will you buy the album?  Do you buy the idea?

Yup, I've had it in the shopping cart for a while and I'll be picking it up soon. I think it's a great idea for musicians to release their own music.

Got to be seen to be believed.

Check out The Six String Sonics' website for pics and samples of the single-string guitars. Imaging breaking your only string during a performance — silence! :D

 

Well, most of you will have already watched the Kouhaku by the time you read this so you may be interested to know that ratings were down by about 3-4%. The first half of the show pulled in 30.6% (4.8 down from 2005) of Kantou viewers, while 39.8% (3.1 down from 2005) tuned in for the second half. (Via nikkansports.com.) Another interesting bit of information found at Mainichi Daily News is something I've always wondered about: what are the artists taking home for  appearing at this annual event? I mean, I've always believed it was an honor for an artist to be asked to perform at the Kouhaku less than a money thing but music is about business too. Here's a little snippet from the article (click here to read the full article):

For decades, kohaku -- or the Red and White Singing Contest on New Year's Eve -- has been the biggest show for national broadcaster NHK, but the stars who appear on it are starting to grumble because it's such a poor paying job, according to Shukan Bunshun (12/22).

Entertainment beat reporter Kozo Inoue revealed NHK pays a mere pittance, by showbiz standards at least, to appear on its marquee program.

[...]

"When Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi agreed in 2003 to show up for the first time in 13 years and Miyuki Nakajima ended her longtime refusal to appear on the show in 2002, they were cases where NHK desperately wanted them to appear," an NHK insider says. "Of course, they paid the decent wages you'd expect at those times.

This may answer the question of why we don't see artists who we'd otherwise think are a shoo-in to be in a particular year's Kouhaku lineup. For instance, Hikki has never appeared on the show so can it be more a matter of money in the end? Something to think about when the Kouhaku returns at the end of the year.

My feel good moment of the program was Miki Imai singing "Pride" with her husband, guitar god Tomoyasu Hotei backing her up. That was beautiful.

[Updated!] Links to pictures at Japan Probe.

Via Mainichi Daily News (Link)

NHK viewers up in arms over "naked" dancer

Public broadcaster NHK was flooded with hundreds of complaints from viewers about a costume worn by a dancer in a popular annual year-end show on Sunday, which made her look like she was gyrating in the nude, NHK officials said.

Announcer Tamio Miyake apologized for the costume during the program, saying: "We ended up causing misunderstanding to viewers. We're sorry."

NHK received over 250 complaints from viewers about the costume, worn by a female dancer dancing behind musician DJ OZMA during the annual "Kohaku Song Contest" program aired Sunday night. The costume was a body suit designed to resemble a woman's naked body.

"Is she dancing naked?" one of the viewers said in a phone call to NHK.

"It's inappropriate as children are viewing the program," another viewer complained. (Mainichi)

Well, they want high ratings -- enough to bring on big bust gravure idol Aki Hoshino this year. I recorded the show but have yet to watch it in its entirety. But rather than see some dancer for DJ OZMA (I would've skipped over his performance anyway), this year's NHK announcer, Yuka Kubota, is very cute.

Links: DJ OZMA, Kouhaku (Wikipedia), NHK's official site (which has an announcement about the controversy).

We'll have to wait until New Year's Day (what, like a couple days from now) to buy a fukubukuro from CD Japan so until then, we can stare at their place holder page. Here's more info on it:

2006 is almost over and that means its time for our annual fukubukuro sale! The CDJapan staff has spent the last week choosing items from our stock that we think you'll enjoy, and assembling them into bags to represent a number of genres on our site.

Now for the fun part. Have a look at our fukubukuro sale page (products go live New Year's Day so for now the page is just a place holder) and find a bag that you like.

So here's the deal; You'll be able to see at least two of the items in the bag, and the cost of every item in your bag should be well over the cost of buying each item seperately. However, each bag also contains a secret item which you won't see until the package arrives at your house.

Now, we won't be answering any questions about the secret items, but I can promise you we've made sure that each secret item fits in with the feel of its bag.

Now if only the US Apple Stores did these too.

Interesting music coming out of Okinawa these days. Asano Irei is one of my favorite singers of the new wave of artists who blend elements of shimauta, J-Pop and anything in-between to create their own unique style. (So yes, that means she pens her own stuff.) This is one of Asano's more J-Pop sounding tunes called "Delicious Oasis" (which also happens to be the name of her podcast). Don-don-ikou!

The winner, taken from a survey of "33 singers in several genres", was a duo called Vibe. Interesting to note that the majority of winners are male artists. In the J-Pop world, I can bet that the majority would be female singers like Ayumi Hamasaki and BoA. I'll have to give Vibe's album a listen. Link.

[Update!]

Found a video of Vibe on YouTube. It's a live version of the song "He and She" (uploader's translation I guess) sung with Jang Hye-jin. It's a pretty, powerful ballad, that's on the duo's third album "Re-Feel". Cool.