Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Aug 3, 2003

Michael Franti was the man of the festival, the one artist who embodied the spirit of Fuji Rock better than anyone else. As tall as a basketball player and sporting wild dreads that reach the middle of his back, he was seen everywhere -- dancing with the crowd at the Talib Kweli show, hanging out backstage...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Aug 3, 2003

SDF bill provides ammo for DPJ bid for power

The photos and footage of opposition lawmakers trying to prevent a July 25 vote in the Upper House on a Liberal Democratic Party-sponsored bill to send Self-Defense Forces to Iraq were all over the media last week, which is understandable considering how action-packed the Three Stooges-like melee was....

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 30, 2003

Ted Leo & The Pharmacists

New Jersey native Ted Leo, who learned his trade in the East Coast hardcore scene of the late '80s, has been toiling as an indie idol in the Washington D.C. underground for more than a decade, first fronting Chisel, which prefigured the current mod-punk revival, and then the Sin Eaters, a power-pop band...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 27, 2003

With missing persons it's not where, but why?

After it was revealed last year that at least a dozen Japanese were kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and '80s, the Japanese government was criticized for not aggressively pursuing the disappearances of these people as abductions. But the truth is that thousands of people disappear every...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 23, 2003

Polyphonic Spree

For a year and a half after Tim DeLaughter, formerly of the psychedelic hard rock group Tripping Daisy, assembled The Polyphonic Spree in 2000, the band only played isolated gigs around their hometown of Dallas, Texas. Then they went to Austin to play the South By Southwest Festival, where they caught...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 20, 2003

Life's a drag for all those 'guilty' parents

State Minister Yoshitada Konoike's comment July 11 that the parents of the 12-year-old boy accused of murdering a 4-year-old in Nagasaki should be "dragged through town" and "beheaded" shocked a lot of people. He later apologized, but added that he did believe in the "principle" behind what he said,...

CULTURE / Music

Jul 16, 2003

Not fade away

If Jim Morrison were alive, he'd turn 60 in December. His band, The Doors, will be playing in August at Summer Sonic; or, actually, keyboardist Ray Manzarek (64) and guitarist Robbie Krieger (57) will. The other surviving member, drummer John Densmore, has sued the pair for using the name without his...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 13, 2003

Misogynistic politicians get away with the gaffes

The recent series of verbal gaffes committed by Japanese politicians has whet the media's appetite for high-calorie, low-nutrition "gotcha" quotes.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 9, 2003

The Pretenders: "Loose Screw"

In "Complex Person," a reggae-metered song from the Pretenders' eighth studio album, "Loose Screw," Chrissie Hynde sings that she'll do anything "to make you adore me or deplore me but never ignore me." If there's desperation in the line itself, there is also a note of resignation in Hynde's reading...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 6, 2003

The rich visit the poor to teach us a lesson

The fate of the Japanese economy may still be up in the air, but one thing is certain: We are living in an age of reduced expectations. Regardless of what happens to the GDP and unemployment rates, the public does not believe that things can only get better.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 2, 2003

Linda Thompson

Linda Thompson is living proof that it is more difficult to be wed to genius than it is to possess it. Her 10-year marriage to the flinty, cynical singer-guitarist Richard Thompson that ended in 1982 was by all accounts, including hers, a tumultuous affair that produced three children, at least four...

CULTURE / Music

Jun 29, 2003

The poetry and power of rock 'n' roll

For an artist as personal as Patti Smith, who once told an interviewer that it wasn't difficult to leave "the limelight and the applause" at the height of her popularity as a rock singer to become a full-time wife and mother, she certainly seems to derive a great deal of spiritual sustenance from direct...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 29, 2003

The party is over for 'Super Free' sex gang

The hormone-fueled stupidity that characterizes the behavior of your average college student is a fact of life, and people who are bothered by the unsafe sex, nonstop boozing and mindless pranks that typify spring break in the United States usually advocate moderation rather than outright prohibition....

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 25, 2003

Fountains of Wayne: "Welcome Interstate Managers"

Lou Reed may be the New York Man, but only a fraction of his New York fans have any direct experience with the Downtown demimonde he writes about. Most are Tri-State suburbanites who as kids went to Manhattan to party and as adults go there to work.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 22, 2003

Japan juggles issue of health vs. economy

The health ministry just never gets a break. As the guardian of the nation's physical well-being it is expected to warn the populace about practices and products that may pose a danger to health, but whenever it gets up the wherewithal to actually give advice people cry foul.

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 18, 2003

MC Honky: "I Am the Messiah"

Over the course of five albums with The Eels, singer-songwriter Mark Oliver Everett, known professionally by the initial E, has done as much as J.D. Salinger to make mental illness a fit subject for entertainment. If E's tongue-in-cheek songs about manic-depression are "edgy" (his description), it's...

CULTURE / Music

Jun 18, 2003

The Go-Betweens, take two

In pop music, what usually works the best is the thing that sounds as if it took the least effort. Twenty-five years after Grant McLennan and Robert Forster joined forces in Brisbane, Australia, and called themselves The Go-Betweens, and three years into a reunion gambit that follows a decade working...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 15, 2003

The albatross of nuclear power in Japan

According the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the residents of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area are facing the crisis of a power shortage this summer because most of the company's nuclear reactors will remain shut down for inspections and repairs stemming from last year's discovery that the...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 11, 2003

Radiohead: "Hail to the Thief"

According to Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke, the cover art of the new album, "Hail to the Thief," is a road map made up of blocks of words that "rang bells" in his head whenever he listened to commentary about 9/11 and its political aftermath. Radiohead has always invited as much interpretation as the...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 8, 2003

The police should be mapping out a future

Every year, the National Police Agency sponsors a nationwide traffic safety promotion campaign that is mainly carried out at the community level. In my neighborhood in Tokyo, the campaign involves setting up tents that are manned by local volunteers.

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