Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Dec 1, 2004

John and Joe: singin' bout their generations

In his famous 1976 essay, "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening," Tom Wolfe first put forth the now widely accepted idea that the counterculture of the 1960s had been perverted in the '70s by formerly progressive-minded baby boomers when they realized that genuine social change wasn't as important...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 28, 2004

Light remains green for Filipinos in Japan -- well, kind of

The announcement of a basic free-trade agreement between Japan and the Philippines at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Santiago, Chile, was met with a positive response in the Japanese media. Japan, after all, clearly came out ahead: Tariffs on Japanese imported steel products will be substantially...

CULTURE / Music

Nov 28, 2004

Kanye West

The term "old school" can be taken several ways on Kanye West's "The College Dropout," easily the overground hip-hop album of 2004. The once and future producer of Jay-Z, West obviously makes a lot of money so he doesn't have to convince anyone that his lack of higher education didn't hold him back....

CULTURE / Music

Nov 21, 2004

Jean Grae: "This Week"

Regardless of the content of their raps, the vast majority of MCs use the boast as their narrative mode, and Jean Grae is no exception. On the exquisitely tight slow jam, "Not Like Me," from her sophomore album, the NYC-based South African emigre counts off her unique qualities with such an abundance...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 21, 2004

Emperor gets it right, but his staffers get it wrong

The Imperial Household Agency was miffed last weekend when the Asahi Shimbun "scooped" the rest of the media in reporting that Princess Nori was engaged to Yoshiki Kuroda, an employee of the Tokyo metropolitan government. The original plan was to make the official announcement on Nov. 9, but the Emperor...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 14, 2004

LDP crew want credit where credit isn't due

It's easy to believe that once a person becomes a politician, he tends to lose touch with everyday reality as it's lived by the majority of citizens since he's usually too busy looking after his own interests. Nevertheless, a recent remark by Tsutomu Takebe, the secretary general of the Liberal Democratic...

CULTURE / Music

Nov 14, 2004

James Baluyut and +/-

Several years ago, James Baluyut decided to name -- or, more precisely, label -- his new band +/- (plus minus), a statistical term used in hockey to denote a player's effectiveness on the ice. Baluyut, who grew up near Detroit, was for most of the '90s a "sideman" in his brother's New York-based indie...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Nov 7, 2004

Comedian Shinsuke looks to be at wits' end

Social distinctions related to class, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation that mean a lot in everyday life tend to mean less in the world of show business. Indeed, it's one of the few places where the normally dispossessed can expect an even break, especially in Japan.

CULTURE / Music

Nov 7, 2004

Jill Scott: "Beautiful Human"

Originally a street poet who found her singing voice after she sat in with The Roots in her hometown of Philadelphia, Jill Scott was pushed a little too fast on an audience that still hadn't completely digested the neo-soul stylings of Erykah Badu and Angie Stone. On her first album, Scott's earthiness...

CULTURE / Music

Oct 31, 2004

Jim White: "Drill a Hole In That Substrate and Tell Me What You See"

Polymaths are a dime-a-dozen on today's pop scene, but Jim White has a topical edge owing to his Pentecostal upbringing. Having veered into a music career after stints as a pro surfer and fashion model, White was almost 40 when David Byrne signed him to his Luaka Bop label. Byrne, who is famously partial...

CULTURE / Music

Oct 31, 2004

M. Ward finds his voice

Almost every pop musician starts out trying to sound like somebody else, and if he's lucky he ends up sounding like nobody but himself. This truism becomes less tenable with the passage of time and the gradual exhaustion of new musical ideas. Even a field as huge as "American folk-rock" is reducible...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Oct 31, 2004

Daylight robbery -- and we accept it

Last February, the Tokyo municipal government adopted a policy to discourage key money reikin and lease renewal fees koshinryo in rental agreements. The policy is long overdue since key money and renewal fees are tenant-gouging practices sanctioned by nothing more than habit.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Oct 24, 2004

Best not to forget the women in the debate on stem-cell research

Embryonic stem-cell research is a hot topic in the upcoming elections in the United States. John Kerry has said that one of his first acts if elected president will be to reverse the Bush administration policy of no federal funding for ESC research. And in California, voters will decide whether or not...

CULTURE / Music

Oct 17, 2004

Marianne Faithfull: "Before the Poison"

On her last album, "Kissin' Time," the Swinging '60s most elegant demimonde survivor was feted by a coterie of younger admirers -- Beck, Billy Corgan, Jarvis Cocker -- who fell all over themselves trying to do justice to her delicious rasp of a voice. The results were interesting but had more to do with...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Oct 17, 2004

It's a taxing job dealing with the two-wheeled barbarian horde

On Sept. 13, the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry gave its seal of approval to a local tax that was passed last year by Tokyo's Toshima Ward. Whenever a local government in Japan passes a local tax law, the ministry must check it out before it goes into effect in order to make sure it doesn't...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Oct 10, 2004

Women get their own killer matchmaking magazine

It's said that sales is not a science but an art. No one really believes that salesmen are only as good as the product they're pushing. They basically sell themselves. Their art is the art of self-promotion, and often the product is beside the point.

CULTURE / Music

Oct 10, 2004

The Ordinary Boys

It may be that there really are no frontiers left in pop any more; that we are doomed to recycle the past forever. On the title cut of "Over the Counter Culture," the debut album from Brighton's The Ordinary Boys, lead vocalist Preston brays, "Let's see, what can we be now/That hasn't been done before?"...

CULTURE / Music

Oct 3, 2004

Sons & Daughters sing in the name of forefathers

It's high time for another British invasion of the former colonies, and right now everybody thinks Franz Ferdinand is the band that will lead the attack. They're in the midst of their second coast-to-coast U.S. tour since last June, selling out big venues wherever they go.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Oct 3, 2004

Discrimination keeps Chinese tourists at bay

Japan's neglect of its tourism potential could be called a sidelight of its overall self-image. On the international stage, Japan sees itself as culturally impenetrable and overpriced. Moreover, the xenophobia that many people accuse it of fostering has become accepted by the citizens as a national trait,...

CULTURE / Music

Sep 26, 2004

The Black Keys: "Rubber Factory"

Though The Black Keys have been pegged as being part of the current garage-blues revival, they consider themselves a rock act, and Dan Auerbach has more in common with Jimi Hendrix than with any other past-master singer-guitarist. Of course, Hendrix was primarily a bluesman, too, but his flashy vocal-instrumental...

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