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Old 2007.04.17, 12:15 PM   #11
Tokyo Jihad
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Originally Posted by Jer View Post
Because you know, heaven forbid the artist makes the music they want to make over want their fans and the mass population wants. lol
Thats fine if the artist doesn't mind playing to an audience of themself.
When an artist literally does whatever they want, it very rarely is considered a good thing. It often gets labelled as "self-asorbed" and pretensious. (See: Smashing Pumpkins post-Adore.)

Lets take this to a different medium, lets go to the movies. Lets look at some movie monuments like the original Star Wars and Matrix. These films had technical and monetary hurdles to endure. So they compensated and cleverly mad do and became hits. Now lets look at the Star Wars prequel trilogy (eps 1,2,3) and the Matrix sequels. Here, they could do whatever they wanted. They could make the film THEY (Lucas and the Wachowski bros.) wanted to make. However, we found that the films theywanted to make weren't quite movies we really wanted to see. Bloated shit is what we got? Why? Cuz no one could second-guess the directors. No one had clout to say "hey, a 20 min pod racing scene is fuckin retarted." or "Neo has "matrix-site" in the real world? whaaaaaaat."

An artist always needs some obstacle so they don't get too fuckin sure of themselves. In most cases it REALLY needs to be the fans. Now, some artists don't give a shit, and thats when fans should just leave. Now growth nd maturity and whatever, sure thats great. But when you're nigh-close to being affront to what got you here...eehh, thats we in the hood call "frontin'." And puttin up a front means you gets sunk, yo. When youre an artist, you have have have to keep your audience in mind. In my school (radio-tv-film) thas rule #1. If you're gonna totally pull the "well I will appreciate this song" (like say, The Beatles "Revolution 9") you HAVE to throw the dogs a bone (like "Revolution" or "Birthday".) So not many people really put on Revolution 9 and get their groove on -- The White Album is still one of the best albums ever. Beatles knew this, Shiina has to.

EDIT: of course, the beatles had to impress the other beatles, wchwas their min obstacle. This, unfortunrely, doesn't seem to be the casefor Jihen, and I was hoping it would.
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Old 2007.04.18, 05:58 PM   #12
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Okay, as a visual experience, this dual concert sucks.

BUT.....If you put it in, and leave it running in the background, you've got a great soundtrack for whatever else you're doing around the house. Or burn the audio and treat it like a regular album.

Her voice is terrific. Saito Neko is great backup. The blind guy's great and so is Mikka.

This also has the best version of Dynamite. She actually pronounces "history" correctly.

The first time I saw it though, I loved it as a visual experience. It was the only time, except maybe in those concert clips that had her Zecchoshuu songs, that I got a feeling of what it would be like to watch SR perform live, in a regular club, without any pyrotechnics or barriers.
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Old 2007.04.18, 06:33 PM   #13
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Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad View Post

An artist always needs some obstacle so they don't get too fuckin sure of themselves. In most cases it REALLY needs to be the fans.
An artist needs to ignore fans. Listening to fans all the time, even when they criticize, is the definition of selling out.

Churning out fan-requested material time and time again is what gave Barry Manilow a great career---and a lousy reputation as an artist.

I seriously doubt that a young woman of Ringo's, er, visual appeal, would fail commerically churning out crap in Japan. She can deck herself out in a nursing uniform and lick the necks of female fans hand-picked from the audience while singing "Honnou" for the 942nd time, and rake in millions. But instead, she's doing what she's doing, because something in her (talent, discipline, passion, whatever) won't let her sell out.

Didn't Frecklegirl write in her paper that when SR was just starting out, a Trump-like pimp wanted her to be his #1 hostess? I can only guess how many millions she turned down. I wouldn't be surprised if they still approach her with those sorts of offers. (I expect when she's in her 30s they'll really start courting her, since she'd be over the hill in J-music terms.)

Not to be Freud or anything, but if a woman turns down a pimp, I assume it's because she doesn't see herself as a prostitute....in any shape or form.

To me, telling SR what she can or can't do with her talent is like telling a hooker to swallow.
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Old 2007.04.18, 07:25 PM   #14
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No, see, The Black Eyed Peas staring in a Best Buy commercial. Thats the definition of selling out. Listening to your fans is pretty far on the other side of the scale. However, putting out a record over half-way filled with songs we've heard before to bank in on a movie tie-in deal...

Now, I didn't say to do whatever the fans say. But you can't ignore them as it seems like she does every once in a while when she does this BX/Ringohan/HF kinda stuff. I'm all for evolving as an artist and everything because the same old gets old. I know its fun to misconstrue what I say as "do what we say, raah" but really now.

But an artist, an artist whose goal is to entertain or enlighten in some way or another you have to think about your audience. Its inexcusable. I know its fun to have that "artists should do as they desire" but rarely is it any good to anyone but the artist, which is why as I said if you do you have to also throw the dog a bone. Generally artists that start to do the "do what I want to do" game generally have started to take themselves too fuckin seriously anyway.

EDIT: And for the record, as has been stated by me before: I liked Adult. I'm 100% fine with Adult as a fan (Ukigomo, Toumei Ningen aside.) I don't think its a classic. At absolute most positive its "great;" at most critical its "solid." However, what I didnt like was everyothing but the music. Adult had some incredibly inconsistent stylization. You have a vid like Himitsu where "oh, everyones riding in limos, playing chess and drinking. Ooh, being an adult!" and then have stuff like the Get it up for Love vid or the JCHI-Service. Like wtf? Make up your mind. Its not playfully inconsistent, its just "wtf?" And of course JCHI i thought was a mess. Not as bad as HF or Ringoran (or Haitsuku or BX) but y'know.
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Old 2007.04.19, 08:13 AM   #15
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I think what we're seeing is another splintering of Ringo's persona.

She's got her own songs and ideas and obsessions, but she's also part of this thing called Tokyo Jihen. It was almost easier to deal with TJ Phase 1 since it seemed like a permanent break with her individual persona. But this past year, with band member replacements, and one guy injured, she had an opportunity to do something sort-of on her own.

She's in "kinda-sorta" territory. She's kinda solo. She's sorta in a band. Her fan-base is probably just as splintered: solo fans vs. band fans vs. like 'em both fans. Poor girl probably can't even pick what cereal to eat in the morning---no wonder she's so thin.
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Old 2007.04.19, 09:22 AM   #16
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I think I'm finally starting to understand your viewpoint, TJ (although I still partially disagree with it), and I want to add another idea to this "fans vs artists" debate.

I know I mentioned this at RJ several times, but artists are people too, and if they want to release music that some fans may view as "shitty" or "sub-par" or whatever, that's their choice. This doesn't take away the listeners' right to criticize an artist, but as fans, we have to remember that we are at the mercy of the musician when it comes to what kind of music they release. Now, this is just my own personal viewpoint, and I don't expect you to agree with me, but I value the individuals' right over that of the majority (or, in the case of musicians, the tastes of their fans) any day, and that's my main reason for feeling like I do about musical artists.

The main thing I disagree with in your argument, Tokyo Jihad, is your idea that it's the fan's job to direct an artist, and that an artist's sole purpose is to entertain others. Not to say that an artist should put together a CD of them bashing a microphone against a wall for 40 minutes and expect people to like it (although, in his earlier days, Merzbow did just that...but his music is experimental/noise, so pretty much anything goes), but I don't think that a musicians' career should be entirely fueled by the opinions of those who purchase their albums. I agree that artists should keep their fans in mind when creating music, but if the music the fans like is no longer satisfying a musician's current writing style, they shouldn't have to push their own desires aside just to keep said fans happy.

Say what you will about SR's reasons for releasing HF...if rehashing old material and using it to "bank in on a movie tie-in deal" is what Ringo wants to do, that's what she'll do (although I don't think she did it just to cash in...someone offered her the job and, like NIMH Rat said, one of the members of her band is injured, so she probably just took it as an opportunity to try something new and to give herself something to do while TJ is on hiatus). I don't view Heisei Fuuzoku as an "actual" release, but it's better than nothing, and I happen to like it. If you don't like it, hopefully her next release will appeal to you more.
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Old 2007.04.19, 10:26 AM   #17
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Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad View Post
And of course JCHI i thought was a mess.
JCHI is a mess only because the DVD is a mess. The live was a perfectly executed performance of music, lights and graphics. I really liked that they paid attention to the lights and graphics as well; it was a real good show and for some reason they had to ruin it with the non-live parts.

So anyway, Tokyo Jihad's view that fans should direct what an artist produces is kinda extreme to me. I don't think fans can ever have such a clout to do that, but then again, what do I know. BX was fun, I enjoyed it, it appeals to my classical music side. With this I have to add that SR fans are a pretty diverse bunch - just you and me alone, we already come from different music appreciation backgrounds; so the BX/HF/Ringohan thing is not "ignoring the fans", but really just exposing them to a different side of SR. However, if HF was supposed to be a soundtrack to Sakuran, then it really is a lame release. It's not in SR's character (at least the SR that I remember) to just rearrange a bunch of old songs and stick them in a movie; the perfectionist SR I remember will write original songs just for the movie itself, so what she did in HF really eluded me. As for the Ringohan performance, I'm just really confused about it I don't know what to say. I'm a firm believer of "active listening", so if the Ringohan concert is good for a soundtrack while you're doing things at home, as mentioned by NIMH Rat, it's not good in my books.

Like Tokyo Jihad I'm probably one of her harsher critics on this board, but really I couldn't help myself since SR has proven time and time again that she can push the limits of what she can do. SR as a musician and songwriter widened my musical horizons and I can feel my ability to appreciate music grow with her ability to write increasingly good music. So her recent work comes to me as a disappointment, but I do realise that artists have bad days too. So the next album is critical, and I'm hoping that it will be something that I will really love or really hate, and not something mediocre that will leave me ambivalent about TJ's musical style and direction in the future.
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Old 2007.04.19, 10:51 AM   #18
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Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad View Post
I know its fun to have that "artists should do as they desire" but rarely is it any good to anyone but the artist, which is why as I said if you do you have to also throw the dog a bone. Generally artists that start to do the "do what I want to do" game generally have started to take themselves too fuckin seriously anyway.
I completely disagree with this. I think you're only speaking from a few bands you've listened to where you disliked the direction the artist was taking and felt betrayed or something of the sort. If all artists simply listened to their fans and made what they want to hear there would be absolutely no room for creativity. It only results in stagnation not for the artist but also the entire industry. I'd much rather listen to artists that experiment and create their own sound for themselves over artists that are going to make the same cd over and over because that's what their fans want. His Name Is Alive has been making awesome music prolifically for almost two decades now on their own. Shiina Ringo as well, I'm pretty sure that this far in the game she doesn't need to be holding anyone's hand as far as what she should release next.
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Old 2007.04.19, 11:13 AM   #19
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Originally Posted by Jer View Post
f all artists simply listened to their fans and made what they want to hear there would be absolutely no room for creativity. It only results in stagnation not for the artist but also the entire industry. I'd much rather listen to artists that experiment and create their own sound for themselves over artists that are going to make the same cd over and over because that's what their fans want.
Bull. Yes, I want her to play rock music again, but that doesn't mean she has to lack creativity or limit herself. Almost nobody here wants her to retread old ground. Some of us want new, creative rock music and not Muzai Part II.

It's kind of funny how you mention her creating her own sound when her most current releases are the most cookie cutter songs she's made in their respective genres. Standard jazz, standard bossa, etc. She didn't do any genre breaking on Heisei and she never creates her own sound when she collaborates with another artist. SR does all the adapting.
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Old 2007.04.19, 12:37 PM   #20
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I thought I dispelled the"do what we say, raarr" implication, but maybe I didn't do mself justice or maybe I'm just getting hung up on the word "direct" when used by Catch5 and JustinRingo. I'm not saying "we say, rarr go back to playing rock, the disney-strings ain't workin." I dont mean the artist does exactly as said, but take to heart that there was some consensus that "the disney strings" failed in offering a certain "something" that the "rock" did and should do everything to remedy that.
I'm not saying the fans decide "oh, put the piano lower in the mix" or "this shouln't be a b-side" -- thats stuff we bitch about, sure, but that's not our call. What I'm saying is that the fans should try to "keep their artist true." I know thats kinda ambiguous. It doesn't mean keep playing the same stuff you did on your first record. But it does mean to keep the spirit of that first record alive, even if the current is radically different.


Maou "got" it, but I'm explicating the meaning.


Now then, lets address.

Originally Posted by CatchFiveBats View Post
and that an artist's sole purpose is to entertain others.
What I said was "But an artist whose goal is to entertain or enlighten in some way or another..." I'm not saying all artists, Im saying certain types whose job it is to o exactly that. Thiis wsn't a big deal now that I'm typing it, but for some reason it bugged me =P

Originally Posted by CatchFiveBats View Post
so she probably just took it as an opportunity to try something new and to give herself something to do while TJ is on hiatus
I had no idea both quotes were from you Catch 5, im not picking on ya
But I got a wild idea for something she could do: WRITE SOME SONGS FOR ALBUM 3! an in fact, this wasn't "something new" at all. The style was as new for her as KZK is new.
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