tell me about Shiina

[Arabesque]

I appreciate there must be tons of threads with tons of info on this website but reading through it is a huge hassle

basically I love her music but I know nothing about her at all, so if anyone would like to contribute anything they know about Shiina as a person or about her influences etc then please fill me in, I'm sure there are many huge fans that know tons about her but I really know very little

i hope this thread isn't something that comes up often and annoys the regulars, if is then I'm sorry but it's hard to find stuff out about her unless you're Japanese speaking it seems. So yeah, any kind of info is very welcome. Probably my fav band is Radiohead and I know tons about them but Ringo is p much a mystery at the moment and I'd love to know more

[Ringo~Bingo]

Facts?

01. Female

02. Japanese

03. Made a bit of noise in the late 90's and more so round about 2003

04. Died 2005



(I'll get my coat)

I'm sure somebody will be round with all the stalker info you could ever need but you may as well gloss over the wiki page as it covers all the bases (probably). Well I'm assuming it does? I've never actually been on it.

[Arabesque]

I dunno, I've been on her wiki page but it's all very very basic stuff, was just wondering if someone could tell me some more interesting stuff. From what I've read on here a lot of people know fuckloads about her and I hope they're not too elitist to just share a bit with me

[justriiingo]

Shiina Ringo, former rock goddess, multi-instrumentalist, genius musician.
She loves "black people music"
hated rock music until Asai Kenichi came along, dated him, dumped him, moved on
got pregnant with Junji, her SS era guitarist, married him, divorced him a year later
pregnancy also produced KZK, a non-pop album
coupled with Baishou Ecstacy which was a jazzy interpretation of KZK tunes
decided that she can no longer make music like KZK
formed a band called Tokyo Jihen
Kyouiku was pretty awesome though it fell short of most people's expectations
Dynamite Out was a great gig
Then the guitarist Hirama and pianist HZM, essentially the two people with the most character in the band other than SR, left
In came Ukigumo (guitar) and Izawa (keys)
Made Adult, a toned down album. Old fans called it "the beginning of the end", but it attracted a lot of new fans.
Somewhere in the middle she made the soundtrack for Sakuran. Old fans said it wasn't original, but new fans liked it.
Then came album 3 (whatever it's called) with Tokyo Jihen version 2, a horrendous horrendous mainstream album.
Then she produced a solo album, collaborating with names like SOIL&"PIMP"SESSIONS, coba etc.
It was marginally better than TJ work, but clearly she's lost it already.

[Arabesque]

thanks for your input justriingo, i guess it's not exactly what I was after but maybe I was asking a bit too much when I said "tell me all about Shiina!"

do most fans think she's lost it then? I haven't followed her stuff chronologically but recently I got Heisei Fuzoku and I love all the original tracks on it, and when I got Sanmon Gossip I just got hooked on Shun and have listened to nothing else on it really yet

still would like to know more personal stuff about Shiina but possibly this was not the best way to go about finding it

[Superficial Fan]

Originally Posted by Arabesque

do most fans think she's lost it then? I haven't followed her stuff chronologically but recently I got Heisei Fuzoku and I love all the original tracks on it, and when I got Sanmon Gossip I just got hooked on Shun and have listened to nothing else on it really yet

I think it's important to be clear that there's a difference between "most fans" and most fans outside of Japan, or most western fans, or most English speaking fans, or most fans who post on Electric Mole. I don't know positively one way or another (is anyone out there doing Shiina Ringo fan surveys on a large scale?), but not, my impression is that most fans wouldn't go along with justriiingo's narrative of Shiina Ringo's downward trajectory. Possibly a high percentage of regular posters to this site would agree. For what it's worth, I would agree that her songwriting is not as amazing at it once was, but I don't see how one can be so certain that she has permanently "lost it." As a performer, she is still going strong, and perhaps as an arranger (since Tokyo Jihen continues to re-work material in novel ways, and I am assuming Shiina Ringo has a hand in at least some of that). I've been disappointed with Tokyo Jihen's albums since Adult (which I rank more highly than I think many who post here do), but after seeing some live clips I had missed, I'm coming back around to thinking they are worth following pretty closely.

Also, a side point: I consider KZK pop, but I may just have a broader definition of pop that justriiingo. It's avant-pop or art pop, but it's still pop, in my view.

I can't tell from your comments if you've worked your way through Shiina Ringo's earlier albums or not, but if you haven't done so, you owe it to yourself to do that.

Anyway, is this someone who has completely "lost it" as a performer?--

"Tokyo Jihen - Kimaru

[Scribble R]

Mm, don't listen to the assessment that 'she's lost it'. Nothing but a broken record; you get these unbalanced views with every fanbase.

And the wiki has a lot of info. I'm surprised that there aren't any Ringo fansites around. Anymore.

[so_cold]

Lily Chou Chou is a great film.

For the OP, all I know is the wiki and then there was this bio about how she came to make music, which people said may or may not have been true. I suppose with any biographical information about an artist you choose the bits that mean something to you as a fan, and I suppose it's that from both those sources she had the music taste of any normal girl I knew when growing up and evidently she did something special with those influences that won't be rivalled until the 90s revival happens this decade. Also if you're really interested in a subject, you'll know more than you think and you're probably in the elite already. She's evidently too intelligent to give away too many personal details to the public.

Oh, and her son may or may not be called Sonata.

Has she lost it? I think so. But to be honest that was my original opinion pre-EMF and so was easy to readjust to. Then I used to pretend that if she fired the Variety Band everything would be fixed, but here is no disguising the lie of the land now, especially as she wrote the most Variety-esque song, Kachi-Ikusa, which is just amateurish. What's interesting is the way she's lost it, she's not petered out into not-as-good respectability, she gone straight over into full-time sucking but with the occasional great song (IMO Shun yes, Hatsukoi Shoujo, Tamatebako, Mayakashi Yasaotoko... YMMV). But she's a major-label million selling artist. How many of those are good? She's just reverted to type. A small piece of optimism is that if she works with non-sellout artists like SAPS and Jazztronik she raises her game.

It would be interesting to see opinions of foreign music listeners outside of the otaku world (nothing against otaku and J-pop is mostly harmless) or unbiased Japanese critics who don't listen to loads of J-pop or MOR rock which is what Phase 2 sounds like to me. Tell me if the Ultra C Sounan doesn't just sound like any by the numbers J-rock act covering the song. The only one I've seen is the lady in the Guardian, who seems to prefer her older stuff. Another thing is there are posters who used to be active when I first started here that now no longer seem to post, and that will be me in a little while. Trying to be dispassionate, I think her earlier material is iconic, universal and varied in the same way as Beatles songs (for her generation, she was that good), while post-Adult Phase 2 have a highly particular, specific sound, which may or may not be to people's taste. MM/SS SR was popular; neo-TJ are populist.

Originally Posted by Superficial Fan

Kimaru

That song's very overrated past the first couple of minutes. That band should hire backing singers who can sing. But yes, KZK is (art-)pop.

Originally Posted by justriiingo

decided that she can no longer make music like KZK

I guess that's why she's "special"...? With any normal artist we might have at least one track that sounds like KZK. With SR, it was like, that's your lot, time to put out another song like Killer Tune

[a_grumble_cake]

Originally Posted by justriiingo

hated rock music until Asai Kenichi came along, dated him, dumped him, moved on

is this part for real? because that's so creepy... I'm talking Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes creepy

Originally Posted by so_cold

Has she lost it? I think so. But to be honest that was my original opinion pre-EMF and so was easy to readjust to. Then I used to pretend that if she fired the Variety Band everything would be fixed, but here is no disguising the lie of the land now, especially as she wrote the most Variety-esque song, Kachi-Ikusa, which is just amateurish. What's interesting is the way she's lost it, she's not petered out into not-as-good respectability, she gone straight over into full-time sucking but with the occasional great song (IMO Shun yes, Hatsukoi Shoujo, Tamatebako, Mayakashi Yasaotoko... YMMV).

I tend to agree with this and it just mystifies me. How is is possible to change the DNA of your own music like that? Sometimes I wonder if someone else wrote her earlier songs. I know it's not true but that's how confused I am.

Arabesque- sorry your thread got filled with bitterness so fast

[Glathannus]

If dumping Asai Kenichi would be any indication of Shiina Ringo "moving on", then why did she do guest/backup vocals for him the same year she released Adult? Or what about her guest appearances in a MO'SOME TONEBENDER album? She also came to the conclusion that Mellow was worth making a PV out of, after all these years.

So at the very least, I wouldn't say she's "forgetting" edgy rock at all. She's making a conscious decision NOT to include elements of that into much of her own newer music, but I think she still wants to associate with rock in some way.

Like.. she ended (and re-continued) her studio career in a very-not-rockin' kind of way, and Tokyo Jihen phase 0/1 was like her outlet to vent her rock'in'roll impulses. Once she lost Hirama and HZM, she lost the kindred independent spirits she needed as the only suitable catalysts to help her project what some of us snobbier fans refer to as her 'true' personality.

Actually, I suspect she lost more in that way, with HZM than with Hirama. How many of you have heard what he's been doing throughout his solo-career? How many of you have heard what his whole concert(s) actually sound like? At least one of those concerts was IN the Dynamite hall!

HZM may not be the man with the guitar, but he is the man who SERIOUSLY knows how to rock. When I look at him now in his solo-career with a couple of great stage guitarists while he's playing the grand piano for songs he actually wrote, I have to think to myself - this man is special, like John Lennon. Now I'm not saying there's much in common with their styles, but I'm talking about the roles they take on, and how fiercely independent they are about almost ANY issue. Shiina Ringo NEEDS to be hanging out with at least one person like that, and let's face it - the rest of the band members COMBINED don't even live up to that.

Now obviously Shiina Ringo was rocking long before she ever hooked up with HZM, but I don't think Shiina Ringo wants to go back to expressing her edgier side through any pre-Jihen catalyst.

I have to admit that Ariamaru Tomi was very interesting, too. If she can still make songs like that, she hasn't "lost it".