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Archive for the ‘Kawaii’ Category

Babymetal (Wind Creek Event Center, Bethlehem, PA, November 21, 2024)

Posted in Babymetal, Bethlehem, PA, Japanese Music, Kawaii, Scene Queen, Wind Creek Event Center on November 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: November 21, 2024] Babymetal

After the horrible attempt to get to this show I was in a bad mood.  It was not helped by the guy next to me who was REALLY getting into the between bands music they were piping in.  He was shouting along and taking up way more than his allotted space.  I spent most of the show trying to inch away from him, but it was quite crowded.

And WOW, did it smell bad.  A scent of body odor or bad breath.  I thought it was just me smelling it but my son, who had moved about eight feet from me when a spot opened said the same thing about the smell.

I was also bummed because I thought we’d be a lot closer with a great view.  But instead the tall guy way in front of me basically blocked my view of the center of the stage (where all the action is). At least there were video screens.

But it’s hard to be cross when Babymetal takes the stage.  First comes the masked Kami band (their masks are cool and the band is incredible).  Then the trio came out Su-metal, Moametal and Momometal.

I didn’t realize that it had been 5 years since I last saw them.  I feel like the previous show was bigger and/or more impressive.  But again, that could just be because of my poor view.

But I was pleased when I saw my son taking videos of songs because that meant he was into it.

They opened with the first song off their first album–basically an introduction to the band.  Which is totally unnecessary.  Not only di d this show sell out, but everyone there knew the words (in Japanese) and what to do and when to do it.  Total crowd synchronicity.  And Su-metal (as a person next to me said) has total crowd control.  She waves her hands and everyone does what she says.

They had a big screen behind them which flashed various images during the different songs.  I loved hearing Pa Pa Ya (Babymetals are mostly in Japanese, so I don’t know if the stupidly catchy choruses are nonsensical or Japanese, but damn if pa pa pa pa pa ya isn’t the catchiest thing to shout.

I will repeat some things I wrote last time

Throughout the songs the trio danced like crazy.  Their precision synchronization was amazing. (more…)

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Scene Queen (Wind Creek Event Center, Bethlehem, PA, November 21, 2024) [BABYMETAL]

Posted in Babymetal, Bethlehem, PA, Japanese Music, Kawaii, Scene Queen, Wind Creek Event Center on November 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: November 21, 2024] Scene Queen

I had this great plan to arrive early to this show.  And then everything went South.

My son’s college had an event that I hoped he could attend, so we wound up leaving later than I intended.  And, somehow, when I bought the tickets, I didn’t realize that going to Bethlehem would be so far out of the way from his school (Philly is more or less on the way, but jeez, this drive was ridiculous.

We also didn’t have dinner, so we had a (yummy) stop in the Bethlehem Waffle House.  But when we got to the Wind Creek Event Center, it was a nightmare.  The traffic to get in was insane–they were directing everyone around the whole campus to the parking garage that you could enter on the way in.

I went looking for a handicapped spot and they were all full, so we had  to park about as far away from the entrance as you can get.  So we trudged through the cold rain to the doors only to find a massive security line and one of the most thorough checks I’ve been in a show in a long time.

When we got in the venue people were spread out all the way to the back of the room making it almost impossible to get in.

I was really annoyed by this time.  So it didn’t give me a great introduction to Scene Queen. (more…)

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David Sedaris–“The Perfect Fit: Shopping in Tokyo” (New Yorker, March 28, 2016)

Posted in David Sedaris, Dry Cleaning, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Huh?, Humiliation, Kawaii, New Yorker, Regrets, Shopping, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tokyo, Japan on July 15, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  DRY CLEANING-“Her Hippo,”  and “Leafy” (album versions) (2020).

After listening to the Dry Cleaning Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, I wanted to hear the recorded versions since the blurb talked about how different they sounded.

Indeed, these versions sound very different from the Tiny Desk Concert.  Well, actually it’s the guitars sound very different because guitarist Tom Dowse is playing electric rather than acoustic.  But it changes the whole tone of the songs.

On the record, “Her Hippo” opens with quiet but sharp electric guitars that echo as the riff circles around. Lewis Maynard’s bass sounds the same, but Nick Buxton’s drums push this song into more of a rock territory (he played keys and electronic percussion in the Tint Desk)..

Florence Shaw’s vocal delivery is similar but perhaps a but more empathic while being heard over the more rocking band.  The middle part features just the rumbling bass and Dowse’s sharp (but simple) guitar solo.

“Unsmart Lady” opens with roaring, echoing wild guitars and thumping drums.  When he starts playing the main (weird) guitar chords they make more “sense” on the electric guitar, but they are still noisy and abrasive.  Dowse wrenches all kinds of screeching feedback and squeals out of his guitar.  The Tiny Desk version sounded really good, but this version is fantastic.

At the Tiny Desk “Leafy” was all delicate synth, but on the record, Dowse plays a kind of lead solo throughout the song–melodic and pretty while keeping the bass company.

I’m glad I listened to the recorded versions of these.  But I’m also glad I listened to the Tiny Desk (Home) Concert first, because hearing the structure of the songs was a great way to be unprepared for the distortion of the recorded versions.  I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the record–and seeing them live.

[READ: May 10, 2021]  “The Perfect Fit”

This is a hilarious essay about shopping in Tokyo.  It’s especially funny to imagine David and his sisters running around the city buying all manner of strange clothes.  Because if there’s one thing we know about the Sedaris family, it’s that they love odd items.

They stayed in Ebisu so they could shop at their favorite place Kapitol.  He talks about all of the delightfully odd clothes they sell there.  The store is still open, here’s a fun piece.

The store’s motto seems to be “why not?”  They make clothes that refuse to flatter you.   A shirt whose arm holes are not made like a capital T but like a lower case t. A jacket that poofs out at the small of your back where for no reason there’s a pocket.  He bought three hats that he wore stacked. (more…)

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David Sedaris–“Unbuttoned” (New Yorker, March 2, 2020)

Posted in CHAI, David Sedaris, Death, Essays, Funny (ha ha), Hospitals, Kawaii, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Nudism, Old Age, Parenting, Tiny Desk Concert on March 2, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: CHAI-Tiny Desk Concert #905 (October 23, 2019).

What sounds like circus music plays as four women dressed in hoods with colorful bangles run out behind the desk and start dancing.

The lyrics begin: C-H-A-I.  CHAI.  We are CHAI.

The choreography continues for about a minute and a half when they take off their robes to reveal the four of them wearing matching pink and orange outfits.

The quartet made its grand entrance wearing hooded pom-pom outfits, with loosely choreographed dance moves, while the band’s song “This Is CHAI” played boombox style. It felt adorable. But once the hoodies came off, revealing their matching pink, crop top uniforms, the serious fun began.

In yet another example of how the best Tiny Desk Concerts are unfairly short, this super fun and adorable set is not even 11 minutes long.

Although CHAI does manage to play 4 songs in that time.

My face hurt from smiling so much! That’s what I remember most about CHAI’s Tiny Desk. CHAI is a sweet, colorful blanket of joy. These four women from Japan — twin sisters Mana and Kana, along with Yuna and Yuuki — are on a mission to expand the conventional notion of what we think of as “cute” or “kawaii” as it’s called in Japan.

They open with “Hi Hi Baby.”  Yuna plays drums while Mana and Kana start singing.  Then Yuuki starts playing the bass–a fast rumble while Mana and Kana keep singing (and doing choreographed arm gestures).

Their voices are high and they are decked out in pink.

CHAI’s music leans punkish, and the outfits quite pinkish. The songs played at the Tiny Desk come from both the band’s 2017 album Pink and the 2019 album appropriately named Punk. The group’s lyrics bounce back and forth from Japanese to English, often in the same sentence.

For “N.E.O.” Yuna sits at the drum kit and plays a cool, complex pattern while Yuuki’s bass brings in a great low funky riff.  Kana adds some guitar licks as they sing in a kind of staccato style (in harmony).

The song ends and the three of them raise their arms and say We are CHAI!

“Fashionista” is one of these songs where you can tell it’s Japanese and English.  There’s big thumping bass as the vocals kinds of whisper the lyrics.  I don’t know what they’re saying–except the chorus “we are fashionista.”  There’s some cool chunky guitar and a great sliding bass (their bass sound is terrific).  Mid-song Kana plays guitar by itself while singing before the band jumps back in together.

Before the last song.  They introduce themselves:

I’m Mana and I’m Kana and we are twins!   Same face!  Same face!
I’m Yuna and I’m Yukki.  We are … not twins.

CHAI chose “Future” for the final song, with more lyrics to brighten my smile and the smile of those around me.

“This is just my FUTURE！
This song about us forever！
Are you ready？
Never seen before！
It’s just what I imagined！
Come on!”

For “Future” Kana plays a futuristic synth sound while Yuuki plays a slow, low bass and Yuna hits the drums and percussion with her hands.

I’ve been looking forward to this Tiny Desk and it did not disappoint.

[READ: March 1, 2020] “Unbuttoned”

This is a another essay about Sedaris’ father.  Sedaris’ father is 96 and quite frail.

David himself was in the hospital about to undergo “a pretty disgusting procedure: in a few hours’ time, a doctor was scheduled to snake a multipurpose device up the hole in my penis” when his sister called to say that their father was dying.

The urologist said the device had a camera that showed what was going on inside: There’s your sphincter!

He says his previous exam like this involved his prostate

I’m fairly certain it involved forcing a Golden Globe Award up my ass.  I didn’t cry or hit anyone, though.  Thus it annoyed me to see what he English radiologist who’d performed the test had written in the comment section of his report: “Patient tolerated the trans-rectal probe poorly.”

They bought next-day plane tickets for the U.S.  En route DAvid learned that his father had been taken out of intensive care and sent back to his Assisted Living Facility.

When his father woke up, David said “I figured you’d rally as soon as I spent a fortune on last-minute tickets.”  He said he knew “that if the situation were reversed he’d gave stayed put, at least until a discount could be worked out.” (more…)

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Babymetal (Fillmore Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, September 13, 2019)

Posted in Babymetal, F.HERO, IRONBUNNY, J-Pop, Japan, Japanese Music, Kawaii, Mastodon, Philadelphia, PA, The Electric Factory, The Fillmore Philadelphia on September 13, 2019| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: September 13, 2019] Babymetal

I first heard of BABYMETAL back in 2014 when they were a massive WTF in the music scene.

Here was a band that played heavy heavy music but the singers were teenage Japanese girls who were totally kawaii and who sang in a distinctly pop style.  The 17-year-old metal purist in me would have been infuriated by this abomination to metal.

But my adult self things this is an amazing amalgam of style and one that is designed to shake people out of their comfortable bubbles.   Even if you balk at the singing style (and the dancing), the music is really really heavy.  Like, impressively heavy.

But the juxtaposition doesn’t end there.  Between the heavy music comes occasional moments of synthy pop goodness.  It made my brain explode the first time I watched the video for “Gimme Chocolate.”  By the time I watched it a second time I was hooked and was determined to see them live.

Back in 2016, I somehow missed that they were playing the Electric Factory.  I was seeing Mastodon there two nights before their show but when I asked if there were any tickets left, they had sold out ages ago.  Boo!  [Looking at that setlist I see they played seven different songs last time!]

So, three and a half years later they finally came back into town and I bought a ticket right away.  Actually, I was supposed to be away for the weekend so I bought a ticket for Sunday in New York City.  This would have been so much work because I would have just come back from a camping trip, I would have had to drive into NYC to a place I’ve never been and it was a Sunday night.  So I was glad the trip was cancelled and I could go on Friday night after all!

I arrived and ran past the merch hoping to get a decent spot, but it was pretty packed.  I managed to get behind some short people and all was well for the opening band.  Then, when Avatar left, somehow 200 people pushed their way in front of all of us who felt like we were packed in pretty tight already.  I didn’t step back at all but somehow twice as many people were in front of me.  Woah. (more…)

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Tom Watson–Stick Dog: A Really Good Story with Kind of Bad Drawings (2013)

Posted in Babymetal, C., Children's Books, Dogs, Food, Funny (ha ha), Jeff Kinney, Kawaii, Short Books, Tom Watson on March 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

stickdogSOUNDTRACK: BABYMETAL – メギツネ – Megitsune (2013).

baby My friend Lar introduced me to this colossal mash-up known as Babymetal just yesterday, and I am utterly hooked by this completely fabricated band.

The visuals absolutely make this song what it is, because without seeing it you probably can’t imagine what is actually happening.

This song is a super heavy thrash metal song.  Even when a hyperkinetic keyboard riff gets laid over the top of it, it still maintains that thrashy sound.  Then three junior high school aged girls start singing.  In Japanese.  The lead singer has a great voice that fits in very well especially around the 90 second mark when the song gets very catchy and swerves into a pop metal vein.  The other two sing in very high-pitched, only-in-Japan voices.  Some time around 2 minutes she starts screaming (heavily processed) adding a  whole new dimension of noise to the song.  And we all like the break around 3:12 which has a brief spoken word section (man I wish I knew what she was saying).

And so this winds up being a meeting of death metal and J-Pop.  And your mind will explode when you watch it.  The video shows the three girls doing their best kawaii–being adorable, in school girl outfits–while headbanging.  And the musicians behind them are all wearing masks and playing traditional Japanese-looking obi and drums while shredding like maniacs.

Everything about this is so artificial that I just love it.  Looking for any info about them, really all you read about is the three girls, there is no mention of the musicians who play amazingly fast and precise shredding guitars solos and can also switch gears into pop and (on some other songs) dance and rap.  I have no idea what this song is about, but I am totally hooked on it.  I imagine this will be a passing phase, but man, what a fun one to get hooked on.

[READ: March 3, 2014] Stick Dog

C. wanted me to grab him this book at the library and then proceeded to devour it in a few minutes. Then he suggested I should read it too.  So I did, and I devoured it pretty quickly too.  Obviously the precedent of the Wimpy Kid books is at play here–a short funny book that combines paragraphs of text and simple drawings, but this story doesn’t really have anything really in common with the Wimpy series.  Because this is all about a dog.

Stick Dog lives alone in a tunnel (but Watson assures us not to feel badly for him).  He has four friends: Poo-Poo (C. loved that name) who is a poodle; Stripes, a dalmatian; Karen, a dachshund and Mutt, a mutt.  The very simple plot of this story is that Stick Dog and his friends want to steal hamburgers from a family picnicking in the park.  That’s it.

The joy of the book is listening to Stick Dog (the smart ones) and his friends (mm, not so smart) try to figure out how to accomplish this task.  Watson prefaces the story by explaining that he could just write “woof woof” but it’s much easier for everyone if he just translates it into English for us.  The dogs are easily distracted by squirrels and garbage.  But when they put their minds to it, they come up with over-elaborate plans (and are offended when Stick Dog points out their lack of common sense).  And just as they are sure to go on a plan that works, Karen gets lost in the tall grass, and the others spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to best remember her. (more…)

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Manami Okazaki & Geoff Johnson–Kawaii! Japan’s Culture of Cute (2013)

Posted in All Songs Considered, Bob Atcher, Christmas Album, Culture Shock, Cute, Food, Funny (strange), Graphic Novel, Huh?, Kawaii, Manga, Punks, The Dinning Sisters, Violence on December 23, 2013| 1 Comment »

kawaiiSOUNDTRACK: BOB ATCHER AND THE DINNING SISTERS-“Christmas Island” (1950).

xmascocktailThere is something so charming and wonderful about white people co-opting Hawaiian music in the 50s.  I know fully well that there is nothing ‘authentic” about the whole AH-LOH-HA-AY business and that they have made it smooth and “sexy” for “bachelor pads” and all of that.  I know that I should be offended on everyone’s behalf.  And yet I can’t be.

I find bachelor pad kitsch to be fun (Esquivel’s Christmas Album is a perennial favorite), and so I was delighted to be introduced to this song from the 2007 NPR Holiday show.  I actually don’t know anything about Bob Atcher or the Dinning Sisters, but this song is a delightful trip through faux Hawaiian music–slide guitars and a very hula-feeling rhythm.

It even features Santa arriving on a canoe.  Yup, the whole simplification of Hawaiian/island culture is in poor taste, but man, it’s such a swinging and trippy take on a Christmas song.  And I’m sure no islanders were hurt in the making of the recording.  Aloha-ay.

[READ: December 15, 2013] Kawaii!

I’m fascinated by manga and the whole, as the subtitle says, Japanese culture of “cute.”  I don’t really get it.  I mean, I get it, that cute things are cute, but the whole cultural love of cute is so peculiar to me–especially when reading this book and seeing that it is a cultural explosion of cuteness.  This book was a great introduction to so many different aspects of this culture. (more…)

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