Okay Then, SR B-Sides vs. TJ B-Sides

[bromithia]

Originally Posted by Osiris12345

Le Salle de Bain was pretty bad.

=(

[Tokyo Jihad]

Originally Posted by Osiris12345

Yeah, now that I think about it....

Le Salle de Bain was pretty bad. It's a completely unnecessary remake that was done much better in HF anyway. Yokushitsu is a great song on its own so why she felt the need to add an overblown orchestra and Engrish lyrics is something I'll probably never know.

[kuro_neko]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad

i know you don't want to keep going back and forth, but your newest point doesn't make sense. the b-sides would fit if they were re-arranged to fit...yyes, but that holds true for every song i existence pretty much..so duh?

no, it doesn't.

your dancing around in circles and never hitting the same point twice so it looks like your argument is sound but in fact your leaking all over the place. your original post and all posts since are confusing a couple of things that are quite important, such as quality vs. production

you claim that Jihen's b-sides are tracks that didn't make the cut. That is an issue of quality. You know the saying, you can shine a turd all you want but its still a turd. That is mostly true, but shinied up enough you can make almost everything sparkle, or at least become easier to look at. That is a matter of production. based on the reactions to Variety the album versus Spa and Treatment live arrangements, it would seem that most people, while not exactly proclaiming it genius, at least can bear to listen, perhaps even enjoy, that era's music.

arrangement makes a BIG difference. Himitsu Dynamite Out version would have been a glaring spot on Adult had it not been rearranged to suite the theme of the album. However, some music just thematically belongs on some releases. Ichijiku no Hana, for instance, technically belongs to the KZK era and is even on the analogue, but that song and the rest of the album, production and writing aside, just does not belong on there.

however, out of all her eras, MM and SS era Ringo is the one with the most bleed-over. There is a distinction between the two, but it isn't as pronounced as either is to KZK, SG, or any of the Ringo-written Jihen era's songs. There are songs like Honnou which exist in both worlds, living somewhere in the borderland between the two.

still, you keep on missing the entire point and focusing on side-arguments details, but again, *for the third time*, I'm refuting your claim that Jihen's tracks are just tracks that "didn't make the cut," that they are all just the left-overs, while SR's are individuals meant to stand on their own for. If you want to completely ignore that this is the bottom line underneath all being discussed in my posts so you can dance in circles, leave me out.

[Tokyo Jihad]

i know you are refuting that. i'm saying your points don't substantiate your opinion.

[kuro_neko]

my opinion is my opinion, I don't need to "substantiate" it to make it valid. you said what you think, then it was my turn to say what I think. everything post was you latching onto tiny bits here and there and it blowing up and convoluting.

[Tokyo Jihad]

you should substantiate it if you're trying to make your point come across to others and justify it as an educated one, which is what i assume you were trying to do in publicly posting and reiterating.

on a different note, something I noticed: everyone's counting Ichijiku as a B-side now? I mean, i guess its a hair too fine to split... It was on WtH but so was Mellow and the other ZCS songs, which thusfar haven't been in the discussion.

[RollOverHobo]

Yeah...Shiina b-sides totally out-awesome TJ b-sides...I mean most TJ b-sides are completely boring and safe...
Considering, IMO, Kokoro and Rakujitsu are probably the best b-sides TJ has to offer it's no where in the level of Aisaka, Toki ga bousou suru, or even Sakuran. Even at worst, I prefer Tokyo no Hito to BB Queen(I heard the first thirty seconds grinding my teeth every second...till this day I haven't heard the entire thing...actually, same goes for Variety.)
I almost don't want to include covers because they almost all suck (and I mean that like a fan...I've heard each about a million times and would hear them a million more.) so here's my rankings...for reference I guess

Shiina
1. Aisaka no choushouku
2. Ringo Catalogue
3. Toki ga bousou suru
4. Sakuran
5. Aozora
6. Memai
7. Subederai
9. 17
10.Sigma
11.SG
12.Tokyo no Hito (The only song I dislike on this list)
TJ
1. Kokoro
2. Rakujitsu
3. Kaban no Nakami
4. Kao
5. Karada
6. Pinnochio
7. BB Queen
Everything on the TJ list is either boring or bad to me...notice most of the songs are slow tempo'd which is probably why TJ b-sides are le dull

[so_cold]

^ Indeed! Although my solo B-side favourites would be in a different order (Suberidai and 17 are the only pieces of music to impair my basic motor functions I was enjoying them so much), it was getting Watashi to Houden (after SS & KZK) that made me properly go nuts about SR. Nobody else sounds like that, while half the TJ B-sides happen to be from the Variety era and are just plain conventional. So if there's a "versus", solo B-sides would win.

BB Queen is just awful. I've never listened to it long enough to hear the fabled guitar fart either.

Having said that though Kokoro and Rakujitsu are too addictive not to be placed alongside her best. They're the only TJ B-sides SR wrote. And I actually like all the Shiina Jihen B-side covers except Can't Take My Eyes Off You, Dynamite and Tramp. Kurumaya-san and Get It Up For Love have my favourite sound from Phase 1 and 2 respectively. Tokyo no Hito's a cover of the Peanuts, but I did originally wonder if she wrote that too.

[Lustau]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad

on a different note, something I noticed: everyone's counting Ichijiku as a B-side now? I mean, i guess its a hair too fine to split... It was on WtH but so was Mellow and the other ZCS songs, which thusfar haven't been in the discussion.

The reason I am counting Ichijiku as a B-side is that it does not have an album, since it is not one of the 1-11 songs of the canonical KZK. I am counting ZCS as an album. But it's a perfectly arbitrary distinction, so I could just as easily see someone counting the ZCS B-sides as B-sides, but Ichijiku as a "bonus track" and therefore not a B-side. To be honest I wanted to cut out ZCS songs because I was having a hard enough time deciding as it was.

On another note, when talking about good TJ B-sides I forgot about Kurumaya-san. Kurumaya-san is awesome. It could be my favorite of all her cover B-sides. I wonder if people think her SR cover B-sides are better than her TJ cover B-sides. It strikes me as a more difficult question than whether her SR or TJ B-sides as a whole are better. Of course, she got so many of her favorite solo covers out of her system with Utaite Myoli, while during her TJ career B-sides have been her only outlet for getting that out of her system.

She's got an interesting mix of artistic aspirations in that she feels compelled to perform her own work, work from bandmates, and also covers of her favorites. Or perhaps I'm just taken by it because I don't follow enough other artists. Is it normal for artists of her caliber to have such a balance of original-collaborator-cover material?

[Osiris12345]

If we're just talking about cover B-sides then the TJ ones easily blow her solo ones out of the water.