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Old 2007.08.23, 08:05 AM   #1
Tokyo Jihad
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Default [Electric Hate Forum] The Apple, rotted from stem to core

This is the thread for the line of discussion that ensued in the KT thread before it was poo-pooed, even tho it seems to be worth discussing. If a mod would s kindly move the posts from there to here, it'd be greatly appreciated.

In case you missed it, turn to page 9 in your Killer Tune thread.

Cliff notes ver: Op2 inadvertently cues me to explicate why I think Shiina was/is full of shit, and then Hedo comes along to "not get" it.

However, I think I said my peace to all aspects, so you can discuss these bold statements if you wish.
(To Hedo: As I've told you before, you completely forget theres more to music than whats physically and audibly there. That's al I'm gonna say. Meditate on that some, please )
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Old 2007.08.23, 09:04 AM   #2
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Disclaimer: For those of you who are just joining us because you enjoy the work of Shiina Ringo and Tokyo Jihen and were excited to find a forum where you can discuss their music, these negative views are only carried by a select few (to the best of my knowledge -- admittedly I could be wrong). Others may be discouraged by specific pieces of music, but have not lost their faith in Shiina Ringo as a writer, singer, or performer.
Still, others do enjoy all of Shiina Ringo and Tokyo Jihen's latest releases, and (at the risk of being called a mindless fan[boy/girl]), should not feel inhibited from voicing their opinions as well.

While many signs may point to it, you have not wandered into a completely disgruntled community.


[Note: Do not confuse this post as me saying that we would be better off without this thread. It is understandable that people are upset with the changes, and I believe that they should be encouraged to discuss it.]
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Old 2007.08.23, 09:08 AM   #3
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Theres closer to 99 other threads started with positive intentions on this board alone. If were a "select few" is because many older fans jumped ship.
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Old 2007.08.23, 09:12 AM   #4
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The apple is not plastic. If it was, then it would still be the same like 8 years ago XD
That would be cool
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Old 2007.08.23, 09:59 AM   #5
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so I wish that the apple was plastic >_<
I hope that next year maybe (or the next, or the next next) the apple will ressurect and give us again her acid taste that she gave when she was lively
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Old 2007.08.23, 10:02 AM   #6
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There was nothing happening in page 9 @_@.

I didn't miss the point, I replied to everything you said pretty accurately so maybe you should explain what I missed?

Anyway, of course there is more to music than just what you hear because it can make people feel unexplainable things which are really hard to point out. Since everyone has a different interpretation of the same song, it's best to try to judge what IS there and not what you think is there, or should/should not be there. If you feel bad about OSCA and Killer Tune, thats all good but you need to separate how you feel about the new releases and what you think about the old ones. Claiming that Ringo was a fake or is a fake is just your speculation but that does not give you the right to now say that her old work was sucks now because you think she is a fake. Like I said in the killer tune thread, how can you fake out her early works? They were genius (I also like their newer works alot as well but you only like/liked the old ones). How can you now turn and say that her old works were nothing because she is faking now? You can't say she was "faking" then because those works were no flukes (as you yourself said). So what are you saying? You don't think her old works are good because she is "faking" right now? That does not make sense to me.

EDIT: All I'm asking is to judge the albums by what they are, and not by how you feel about Ringo's works now. It's not good to judge based on rage/passion. You can't say that you didn't mean what you said about ADULT before, but only that you can't enjoy it anymore because in YOUR eyes, Ringo has been tarnished.

EDIT #2: " And by backbone i mean 'cohesiveness.'" Since when is that? I feel that you are just flipping words around and I'm just saying the same thing so I really do not care to keep arguing this since it's you that is missing out on all her works and not me.

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Old 2007.08.23, 11:29 AM   #7
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I think Shiina is more interested in pleasing a mass audience these days than digging into herself. She hasn't made an *anthem* for rebellious youth in the vein of Honnou for years now. I'm not an expert on Japanese society, but the multitudinous social problems of today's Japan are pretty well documented, and SS-era Shiina seems to speak for a lot of Japanese youth (I must have heard Honnou 4-5 times browsing in clothing stores in Tokyo just a year and a half ago).

That's just one form of her authenticity: speaking for herself, and by extension for a lot of her fans.

The other is her pure musical skill, and that's what evolved in KSK, was adapted into Tokyo Jihen, and is now kicking ass. It doesn't really "speak for" an audience, in the rebellious sense. It's more about pleasure and distraction. Dynamite Out was sort-of cathartic in that it had this incredible energy, you can't help but have a physical response to it. But it didn't pierce, it didn't haunt, it didn't *move* the way solo Shiina moved.

If not for the Ringohan concerts, and her work with Saito Neko, I'd suspect she simply calculated her younger persona, and let herself be exploited by faddish marketers until she was successful enough to do what she really wanted to do.

But I believe her when she says she merely changed. She is older now, with a child. She is successful. What does she have to be angry about? What are her passions? I think her passion now is to please a mass audience, with music that may not be as challenging and in-your-face as her previous music, but with the same standards of high quality we've come to expect.

She wants to please us because she's pleased with her own life.

To me, that's integrity.

Life is good for her now, the music is saying. But life, as we all know, kicks your ass every once in a while. It goes up and down. I hope it never goes down for anyone, but of course it does; I just hope that when it happens to artists I love, like Shiina, that they put it in their art. That they don't give up. We need art more than ever when life sucks.

Is she relevant to today's social problems? Well, she's not singing about war, or the decline of the family, or the bad economy, or corrupted values. In that sense, she is irrelevant, more "of" the system than "against" the system.

But if she's honestly not enraged about things, or rebellious, and the other members of Tokyo Jihen feel the same way, then their music does have purpose. They are expressing their enjoyment of the life they have.

That doesn't usually win awards. It doesn't make them "edgy" or "hard." As Douglas Adams said about our planet Earth, they are "mostly harmless." And fun. And brilliant.

They just aren't pissed off about anything. That's not the same as being without passion. Their passion is to entertain us, and on that level they score big time.
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Old 2007.08.23, 11:34 AM   #8
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(response to Hedo)
They were fake if they were not true extensions of Shiina. If they were written because "this is my ticket."

See it this way, I can write a rap song. Maybe even a really good one. Let's just say, and I played up the image. And people really liked it, they bought my blinged records, wore their do-rags like I wore em, and as is apparent on these forums, I have the street-cred.
The problem being? Thats not me. Rap can be fun and the like, but I'm not a "rap" kinda guy -- but I was "frontin" that I was. How irate would the people that saw me as the second coming of BIG be if I was just doing it cuz I could and not because it was what I really was? If I put out an acoustic rock record and played it that I was "stretching my art" and disowning my earlier rap songs -- what credibility do I have? I duped a bunch of people into thinking I was something I wasn't.

Sure, you can piddle with genres and swap them, but you don't swap your philosophy.

This is beyond "HF an Variety are (likely) shit" this is Shiina wrote rock songs cuz she could, played it up, made us believe, but wasn't truly what she was. Whether "phase 2" is 'her' any more than the early stuff was doesn't matter because she already compromised that artistic trust. Why should we think a few years from now she won't separate herself from these albums too?
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Old 2007.08.23, 11:36 AM   #9
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I'm with you all the way, NIHM. I don't see why Ringo is a fake or anything because the band's style has changed. I know I keep saying this, but I'll say it again: Its not bad music, it just depends whether it is your kind of STYLE of music or not. I've heard a lot of music that I can't stand but you can always tell if it is good or not even if you don't like it.

Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad View Post
They were fake if they were not true extensions of Shiina. If they were written because "this is my ticket."

See it this way, I can write a rap song. Maybe even a really good one. Let's just say, and I played up the image. And people really liked it, they bought my blinged records, wore their do-rags like I wore em, and as is apparent on these forums, I have the street-cred.
The problem being? Thats not me. Rap can be fun and the like, but I'm not a "rap" kinda guy -- but I was "frontin" that I was. How irate would the people that saw me as the second coming of BIG be if I was just doing it cuz I could and not because it was what I really was? If I put out an acoustic rock record and played it that I was "stretching my art" and disowning my earlier rap songs -- what credibility do I have? I duped a bunch of people into thinking I was something I wasn't.

Sure, you can piddle with genres and swap them, but you don't swap your philosophy.

This is beyond "HF an Variety are (likely) shit" this is Shiina wrote rock songs cuz she could, played it up, made us believe, but wasn't truly what she was. Whether "phase 2" is 'her' any more than the early stuff was doesn't matter because she already compromised that artistic trust. Why should we think a few years from now she won't separate herself from these albums too?
IF she separates herself from these albums, then so be it. It doesn't make her any less of an artist for it. You do what you are happy with, some people will burn you for it and other will praise you but it doesn't make you any less of a person. Just because she is a public figure doesn't mean she can't live her life as well. And as different as Uki and Izawa's songs are from Ringo's old works, they still have a sense of quality that most other artists who do similar works as their MAIN thing cannot even reproduce.

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Old 2007.08.23, 11:53 AM   #10
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I would be so far from irate, Jihad, you have no idea. In fact, I'd be MORE impressed if I found out, say, that a white woman wrote 50 Cents' P.I.M.P., and not Fitty His-self.

Not to get all lit-crit, but John Keats' theory of "negative capability" has a lot of value. He judged a work of art not by how close it was to the artist's experience but by how *far away* it was. In his eyes, Shakespeare was the greatest author of all time because Shakespeare, even though he never spent one minute in the shoes of most of his characters, nevertheless wrote them, and did a damn fine job doing it. That, to Keats, is what the imagination is all about, and "imagination" should be valued over simple self-expression.

I think there's a lot to that. At the same time, there's genius. The same Mozart that wrote the mazurkas wrote the requiem. You can't study that, or learn it. That's simply God's gift. (I'm an atheist, but bear with me.)

I'm not saying Shiina is a genius on that level. But I do think she's proven to be a good chameleon, channelling personas that may not be remotely close to her own.

Which one is the "authentic" one? That's an impossible question. Her Honnou persona could very well be the authentic one, *at the time she wrote it*. Just like her crowd-pleasing TJ persona could be authentic *for the time being*. I don't think a person should be expected to declare one particular "authentic" persona early in their career and never move away from it. That's pretty restrictive, and unrealistic.
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