Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Sep 19, 2004

Things are looking good for Grandadbob. The quirky house music duo of Dave Johnson and Vanessa Robinson released their debut album, "Waltzes for Weirdos," on Fatboy Slim's Southern Fried label to rave reviews in Britain last year and are about to tour Japan with the wild and crazy DJ himself. Now that...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Sep 19, 2004

9/11 conspiracy theories enthrall Japanese audiences

Only three years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American mainstream media are providing scant coverage of ceremonies to mark the tragedy, according to Japanese reporter Akihiko Reizei on the Internet news service Japan Mail Media. A resident of New Jersey, Reizei said that unlike the...

CULTURE / Music

Sep 12, 2004

Joseph Fiddler

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Sep 12, 2004

Adjusting McLuhan's reception of 'hot' and 'cool' media

Almost 25 years after the death of Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian writer who coined the term "global village" and philosophized about the impact that television had on our minds and bodies, some of his theories are taking on a larger meaning.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Sep 5, 2004

Bottoms up to those misfiring weather forecasters

Liberal Democratic Party honcho Ryutaro Hashimoto needs all the positive PR he can muster to counteract the bad press he's received since his alleged acceptance of a bribe from the Japan Dental Association came to light.

CULTURE / Music

Sep 5, 2004

Clinic: "Winchester Cathedral"

On the back cover of Clinic's third album is an image of an upright piano made up of separate photographs of parts of the instrument, like one of those David Hockney collages. It's an apt visual representation of the group's music, which is not organic but rather a mishmash of distinct components. Despite...

CULTURE / Music

Aug 29, 2004

Prince Po: "The Slickness"

Prince Poetry, who was Pharoahe Monche's better half in the influential rap duo Organized Konfusion, has abbreviated his moniker for his solo career, and it would be nice to think he appropriated "po" to distance himself from the overground hip-hop obsession with money. Taking up where OK left off, he's...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 29, 2004

Media nets gold in ensuring Olympic success

Anyone who has a TV could see that the attendance at the Athens Olympics has been spotty at best. Scalpers have been practically giving tickets away.

CULTURE / Music

Aug 22, 2004

Sim Redmond Band

Alot of bands form during their players' university years, but the Sim Redmond Band could be said to have congealed in the leafy college town of Ithaca, New York, back in the '90s. Starting from the kernel of brothers Sim (guitar, vocals) and Asa (drums) Redmond, the band grew into a truly organic outfit....

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 22, 2004

N.K. officials bitten by bulldog Japanese journo makes good TV

One of the problems the Japanese government has to contend with in its dealings with North Korea is the fact there is interaction between the two countries that it can't control, such as that which travels over the airwaves. Being a totalitarian dictatorship, North Korea doesn't have the same problem,...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 15, 2004

Still waiting for the final whistle in this Japan vs. China 'game'

A war of words is always preferable to any other kind of war, and for what it's worth the recent controversy over the behavior of Chinese soccer fans toward the Japanese national team at the Asian Cup tournament did offer an opportunity for the governments of the countries involved to express their views...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 8, 2004

Japan hopes to bear it out to gain a World Heritage Site

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization convened the 28th World Heritage Committee in Suzhou, China in early July to screen candidates for World Heritage sites, which are cultural or natural treasures meant to be preserved intact forever. The big news out of the session was...

CULTURE / Music

Aug 1, 2004

David Grubbs

'I'll choose what's next," David Grubbs sings repeatedly on the opening cut of his latest album, "A Guess at the Riddle." The Kentucky-born guitarist seems to accept the inevitable, which is one way of looking at his unusual career. Having begun by making fairly conventional indie rock in a group called...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 1, 2004

Koizumi: Robot? Dummy? Dictator? All three?

A comedy troupe called The Newspaper has recently been lampooning Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's performance at the last G-8 summit. According to the weekly magazine Aera, in one skit, a member dressed as Koizumi explains why he committed Japanese troops to a multinational force without first consulting...

CULTURE / Music

Jul 25, 2004

Little Wings: "Magic Wand"

Portland, Ore.-based singer-songwriter Kyle Field, who performs under the alias Little Wings, initially comes across as one of those new folkies, like Will Oldham and M. Ward, who appropriate old-fashioned religious imagery for purely dramatic purposes. However, with his fragile, druggy voice and gentle,...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 25, 2004

Home is where the financial heartbreak is

If you have a dedicated telephone line, you probably receive calls from sales people pitching new condominiums or single-family homes in your area. The pitch always starts the same way: "Do you rent? Do you pay more than 100,000 yen a month? If you were paying that much a month for a mortgage, you could...

CULTURE / Music

Jul 21, 2004

Staying ahead of the name game

More than 250 artists will be playing at the Fuji Rock Festival and Summer Sonic this year. You've probably never heard of most of them, and since so many bands have similar-sounding names you might wonder at times if what you're hearing is what you thought you came to hear. No one will mistake The Whyte...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 18, 2004

If Japan does get Jenkins, will he really want to stay?

Ever on the lookout for sneaky connections, the media had characterized the July 9 reunion of Hitomi Soga and her family in Indonesia as being rushed through by the Liberal Democratic Party in time to help its election chances July 11. Some people even thought North Korea was in on it.

CULTURE / Music

Jul 18, 2004

Adam Pierce, Doug Scharin

What's in a name? In the case of the postrock instrumental project called Mice Parade, it's an anagram of Adam Pierce, the moniker of a multi-instrumentalist who earned his rep with the lo-fi Boston pop band The Swirlies as well as with the lighter, more experimental Dylan Group under the leadership...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 11, 2004

It's best to be aware of this big trucking problem

The crimes of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. have made the media a little more attentive to vehicles that blow up. In the past several weeks, it seems an awful lot of MMC products have spontaneously combusted. Whenever they do, it's reported in the newspapers, and the frequency of such reports (at least four...

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