Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Mar 31, 2006

As a crash course in the current state of African-American pop music, this weekend's Springroove festival being held on consecutive days in Osaka and Chiba Prefecture showcases an impressive range of artists. The headliners all represent major labels, and thus the mainstream: Since hip-hop and R&B...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Mar 26, 2006

Consumer credit companies have your money, and the media, in their pockets

On Jan. 13, the Supreme Court found in favor of an individual who had sued a consumer credit company for charging too much interest. By doing so, the court rejected the controversial "gray zone" that such companies take advantage of in their business.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Mar 19, 2006

Prefecture opts for foster-care plan to combat declining birthrate

A recent Associated Press poll found that Americans' views about abortion aren't very clear-cut. Only a small percentage of the respondents were in favor of either legalizing abortion completely or banning it outright. About 60 percent were somewhere in the middle. The AP took these results to mean that...

CULTURE / Music

Mar 17, 2006

Reggae Japansplash

Until 2002, Reggae Japansplash was Japan's longest-running non-jazz summer music festival until it was moved up to the spring. The change made it easier to book a reasonably priced venue, but also eliminated one of the festival's most basic appeals: grooving to deep, sinuous riddims under a sweltering...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Mar 12, 2006

Weekly magazines joust over trillion-yen fortunetelling trade

It is often said that if you really want to understand what is happening in Japan you should read the weekly magazines. Though the weeklies' journalistic standards are considered less rigorous than those of the daily newspapers, they are less reluctant to step on toes that belong to people who might...

CULTURE / Music

Mar 10, 2006

Dem Franchize Boys "On Top of Our Game"

In case you didn't know, "snap" is a relatively new hip-hop genus of the Dirty South species, utilizing slower tempos and concerning itself mainly with clubbing and a life of leisure. Dem Franchize Boyz is one of the groups who take credit for inventing the style, and Jermaine Dupree, who produced their...

CULTURE / Stage

Mar 9, 2006

Who are you, Tommy?

" 'Tommy' didn't really answer anything, which was the beauty of it.''

CULTURE / Stage

Mar 9, 2006

A thumbnail history of the rock musical

"Bye Bye Birdie" (1961) The songs aren't rock, but it was the first Broadway show to address rock 'n' roll: an Elvis-like singer (actually based on singer Conway Twitty) stages a big publicity event before he enters the army.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Mar 5, 2006

A few bows too many for shamed DPJ lawmaker Hisayasu Nagata

One picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words, and the one that graced the front page of the Feb. 24 Asahi Shimbun is worth more than all the kanji expended on the Democratic Party of Japan's e-mail fiasco.

CULTURE / Film

Mar 3, 2006

At the heart of the matter

April 26 will mark the 20th anniversary of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine.

CULTURE / Music

Mar 3, 2006

James Brown

Of all the self-promoting labels James Brown has appropriated in his career, "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business" is probably the most apt. People think it refers to the intensity of his live performances -- the hoarse screams, the manic, stuttery dance steps, the buckets of perspiration -- but...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Feb 26, 2006

It was downhill all the way in Japan's media coverage of Olympics

Were the Turin Winter Olympics really that boring or was it just the Japanese television coverage?

CULTURE / Music

Feb 24, 2006

The Verbs "And Now . . . "

When Meegan Voss tells off her unfaithful lover in "Don't Say a Word," you imagine her walking out the door all calm and collected. "I'm tired of your story," she exhales, and while the bluesy backing track sounds a little like "Piece of My Heart," Voss's vocals are exactly the opposite of Janis Joplin's...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Feb 19, 2006

Careful planning helps to preserve male-succession mind-set

The morning after it broke, news that Princess Kiko is expecting a baby in September was greeted with predictably meaningless blather on the TV wide shows. Commentators made a connection between the pregnancy and that ceremony the princess and her husband, Prince Akishino, attended in September of last...

CULTURE / Music

Feb 17, 2006

Various Artists "Congotronics 2"

One of last year's great discoveries was the "Congotronics" album by Konono No. 1, a Congolese group that's been around since the 1970s. Founded by electrician Mawangu Mingiedi, Konono No. 1 produces music with likembe thumb pianos amplified through microphones and amplifiers rebuilt from old junk, and...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Feb 12, 2006

Hosting is ghosting in as respectable profession

The reported improvement in the ratio of jobs to job seekers is good news for the nation's leaders, and not just because it indicates better economic health.

CULTURE / Music

Feb 10, 2006

BMX Bandits

Every regional music scene has its petrie-dish band from which members crawled off to spawn other bands with the same stylistic DNA. In Seattle it was Green River; in Omaha it was Commander Venus. Glasgow has had an internationally recognized rock scene for longer than those two cities, and while Orange...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Feb 5, 2006

When building bridges becomes a fruitless endeavor

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi prides himself on his plain-spoken approach to politics. His popularity guarantees that people listen to everything he says, and because what he says tends to be simple it has the power of a pronouncement, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense.

CULTURE / Music

Feb 3, 2006

Siblings' sweet harmony

From their look and sound to their history and attitude, The Magic Numbers contradict most of the conventions that define the British obsession for next-big-thing-ism; at the moment, this is best exemplified by Arctic Monkeys, who have sold more than 100,000 copies of their debut album in two weeks with...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jan 29, 2006

Sifting through the geeks -- that's all of us -- to identify the perverts

Less than a week after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence for serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki on Jan. 17, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia had not only recorded the ruling in its entry on Miyazaki, but had added an incisive note. When the Miyazaki case was dominating the headlines in 1989, he...

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