Tag: zene

Summer Sonic 2010 (day one)

August 11, 2010
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Summer Sonic is one of the best summer fests for foreigners. (Because most of the others are pretty much japanese bands only.) Although i haven’t been there last year (went home instead), this year i couldn’t help it. Especially when i saw Dream Theater and Coheed and Cambria in the lineup. Those two bands alone would worth the roughly 15000 yen entry fee.

It was held on Maishima, an island of Osaka. The train station was much farther from the location though – it took a 20 minute shuttle bus ride (thus 800 yen plus) to get there. The area of the festival was much different from what i got used to. It wasn’t closed at all – they only checked the wristbands at the entrances of the stage areas. Even there… Well i’d say a cunning person with a printer could pull it off without much problem. This is how the wristband looks (plastic). (Also, my pink spot is visible too – a drop of bbq sauce fried me there a while ago in Kyoto.)

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Punks at 大津 B♭ live house

August 4, 2010
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Friday afternoon there was a really nice punk rock party at the B♭ (B-flat) live house in Otsu, just about an hour by train from here. It was organised by Spike (スパイク), a local (?) punk band. Because i had an exam in the afternoon i was roughly half an hour late compared to the official start time, but actually i just arrived a few minutes before the first band would start to play.

The problem is, that except for Saboten and Spike, i had no idea who are playing at the moment. Apparently mostly everyone in the crowd knew all of them, so they didn’t see the need to introduce themselves—i only recognised Saboten because in an mc the (ex-)bassist-vocalist (he apparently has problems with his wrist so he stopped playing the bass) referred to themselves by name, and Spike because every other band said Spike’d be the last, and they were.

Most of the bands played fast and energetic punk rock. There were eight bands altogether, Saboten, Garlic boys, Shachi, Tac, Spike, the all-(cute-)girls Kurikinton (くりキントン), Lagoazul and Highmount 40. From six pm, they played straight till eleven, so by the end i was pretty tired, but it was really fun. (Also i’ve seen ads that Maximum the Hormone will be playing there in august, naturally in the few days when i’ll be at Okinawa. Just my luck.)

Emo? Not really…

July 27, 2010
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Now in the evening i’m tired, and just as a baby cries and stuff when he’s sleepy, so i get very easy to get pissed off. And i’ve been listening to Nirvana all afternoon because my files were mistagged and i’ve to get back the play count on last.fm. What i concluded is really simple: emos, you’re doing it wrong.

So many of emos claim that their way of thinking is originated from Kurt Cobain and the grungy lyrics of Nirvana. It’s not. Emo kids were screwed up way before they first heard and could appreciate the greatness of Nirvana. They were mentally damaged by the constant flow of those hideous fantastic sad love songs from the radios in the ’90’s (and any other time as well, but seems Chernobil had its effects worldwide). I heard it too, but i rather had fun listening to kid tapes by the Smurfs.

Kurt Cobain and his pals in Nirvana wrote great songs. The Nevermind album only, not counting all of their other songs (even though i’d feel bad if i didn’t mention Lake of Fire in a post related to Nirvana) is worth more than the whole dozen-disc discographies of other artists. The songs might be depressing for some, not for me though, but still, cutting yourself and looking gay is not the way to express your dissatisfaction and/or sadness. When Kurt Cobain went sad panda, he wrote In Utero, but when that didn’t work, he just put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. (Disclaimer: i didn’t check what kind of weapon it was or where he was shot, nor do i consider the possibility of Courtney Love or anyone killing him now.) I do suggest that instead of showing off with your scars on your wrists try following that example. (Disclaimer: i do not encourage suicide or suicide attempts or damaging oneself, also any similarity between this post and reality is purely coincidental.)

What

July 14, 2010
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I got all the relevant exam papers from the past two years today. I’ll check all of them, and of course learn from them. But more urgent than that, study for the thursday bookkeeping exam. I have to get good results… And although i feel like i get it, so did i feel the same before (and after) the previous exams as well, yet see the results…

Today we practiced for the tomorrow english speech exam. It’s going to be interesting. I don’t really care about my own grade, i mean, it’s obvious that Ia and me can pretty much chat till doomsday in english, but the others… I guess i understand the motivation of teachers to bear with the students. It feels great to help with whatever i can.

Also, we were talking about what bands to do in the autumn season, and it seems we’ll be doing a few. A Slipknot copy (with death masks and all) together with the other faculty’s people (me on vocals, so far) and probably a classic heavy metal and/or punk band with the local folk. Hope to get a guitar post there.

For the first one, i grabbed the last Slipknot album to get more familiar with their stuff, and it’s quite good. And straining to sing for sure, but fun as well. And i was reading about Dream Theater for some reason, when i came across the name of Rush again. So i got their 2112 album too. Nice classic rock.

And today i did the translation of the second episode of Digimon Xros Wars. Sub coming soon from OnlineDigimon.

Megjelenések nyara

July 12, 2010
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Július 27, StarCraft 2. Megjegyzés, addigra kell szereznem egy új gépet, mert ez a mostani már mkv lejátszás közben is szaggat. Nem játszottam még a bétával, pedig többen is hívtak kipróbálni, inkább megvárom a végső terméket. A kellemetlen, hogy hiába jelenik meg már július végén, augusztus harmadika estig nem igazán tudok majd játszani – aznap lesznek ugyanis az utolsó vizsgáim, egy nap szám szerint három…

Július 30, Blind Guardian – At the Edge of Time. A német metálbanda rég várt új albuma. Négy éve nem sokat lehetett felőlük hallani, Magyarországon se jártak turnézni, Japánba pedig szerintem nem is tervezik (remélem tévedek). De itt az új album, nagyon látványos borítóval, és amit eddig hallani lehet belőle, jó új dalokkal.

Augusztus 16, Iron Maiden – The Final Frontier. A Dance of Death albumon egyik kedvenc számom a New Frontier – most meg nem új, hanem végső. Az El Dorado című szám letölthető ingyen, természetesen már rongyosra hallgattam, és tűkön ülve várom a megjelenés napját.

Augusztus 24, Apocalyptica – 7th Symphony. A finn csellómetál zenekar is produkál végre valami újat, már vártam. A Worlds Collide nekem nagyon bejött, és amit eddig lehet hallani a 7th Symphony-ből, az End of Me szám, magasra teszi a lécet. Bár egy héttel az új Maiden után nehéz lesz a csúcsra törnie, azért próbálom majd nem hanyagolni.

Újrakezdtem

July 1, 2010
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Sorssal beszélgettem tegnap, többek között irodalomról. És fejbe vágott, hogy az utóbbi időben mennyire nem olvasok semmit, csak darálom a Stargate részeket, tucatszámra. Úgyhogy ma vittem magammal suliba Neil Gaiman Smoke and mirrors című könyvét, és mire hazaértem, a felét el is olvastam. Valahogy akármennyire álmosnak is érzem magam és nem érdekel az óra, egy ilyen könyv ugyanúgy le tud kötni és ébren tartani (vagy éber álomban tartani), mint egy film vagy sorozat. Régen is így volt, ahogy olvasok, egy másik szememmel látom a hotelt az aranyhalas medencével, az álom-történetet döbbenten hallgató családot a kis fogadóban, mintha én állnék lesben a troll helyett a híd alatt…

Kint amúgy villámlik, dörög és lassan már (ha jól hallom) esni is kezd. Valahogy nem rémlik, hogy eddig láttam volna zivatart, amióta Japánban élek. Pedig van egy hangulata, kár, hogy (még) nem lett tőle kevésbé meleg.

Kéne gyűjteni régi rockzenét. Van egy jó hosszú listám már a zenekarokról, akiktől legalább egy válogatásalbumot jó lenne meghallgatni, de az az érzésem, hogy a rockzene történetének minden érdekes zenekarát megismerni nagyjából olyan vállalkozás lenne, mint megtanulni a világ összes nyelvét. Elvégre (mint a japán példa mutatja) egyet legalább két év megtanulni – vagy együttes esetében jól megismerni. Az összes így elég nehezen férne bele, kivéve, ha bejön a logika, miszerint hiába, hogy eddig minden ember meghalt, ebből nem következik, hogy én is meg fogok. Vagy ha átmegyek abba a halhatatlan földönkívülibe az Útikalauzból, aki mindenkit sérteget. A nevére persze nem emlékszem.

ID3

June 29, 2010
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I’m a bit fed up with mp3 tagging already. Seriously, i’m spending more time tagging my music collection than actually listening to it (obviously not true, since i’m listening while tagging as well), and it’s annoying. When i was using foobar on Windows, i had the impression that all my files were correctly tagged, i could mass-rename them to my scheme, it was all fine and working.

Then came childhood’s end, and i started facing problems. Many problems. First, apparently there’s no standard way to store replay gain information, or just all players ignore it and use their own way, because although my whole library had the replay gain calculated, the difference in volume is striking when playing on ipod. Also, ipod apparently requires some specific format to store the cover image in the files, so i have to add those manually too–after my first few searches for some automated method gave no results, i was just too lazy to look for it anymore.

But this was not all. Rhythmbox apparently can’t handle tags normally, favouring id3v1 tags even when id3v2 is present, and what’s worse, it writes its “unknown artist” tags into the files, so it’s not even simple to fix.

So now i just got fed up with the recently oft problem when the song title is longer than the allowed max for id3v1, and i decided to strip id3v1 once and for all. Unluckily, many files were left with “unknown”, but that’s still easier to find and fix than erroneous tags under correct tags, not even displayed most of the time.

Sziget rant

June 26, 2010
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Néha úgy felmerül bennem a kérdés, hogy vajon a Sziget szervezői direkt velem akarnak-e kibaszni szórakozni, vagy csak most jutottak el odáig, hogy mit jelent a “jó zene” kifejezés. Ez utóbbi kétséges, mivel azért korábban is voltak igen jó felhozatalok (lásd amikor ott voltam két éve)… Tavaly mentem haza nyáron, erre a Sziget egy nagy nulla volt, idén meg szinte esélytelen, hogy össze tudnék kaparni annyi pénzt, erre a Szigetnek olyan felhozatala van, hogy ahogy olvasom, két másodpercenként kell megpihennem, nehogy szívrohamot kapjak.

Iron Maiden, Toy Dolls, Paradise Lost, Skindred… (Valahogy mind angol…)

És az Iron Maiden kivételével elég nagy az esély rá, hogy nem jönnek Japánba – hiszen itt nagyjából ismeretlenek.

Vajon a Szigetesek próbálnak provokálni, hogy ne melózzak a nyáron és ne menjek Kínába ősszel, hanem verjem el az összes pénzem egy hazaútra? (Meg persze balatoni buli, lakásavató, satöbbi is van…)

Story of the Year @ CLUB QUATTRO 名古屋

June 24, 2010
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June 22, 7 pm was the start of a great event at CLUB QUATTRO in Nagoya. Although due to school schedules i was late by roughly twenty minutes, i could still catch a few songs of the support band Supe. They played the same kind of music that Story of the Year played later, but i simply don’t know its genre. It’s a great genre for sure, a mix of In Flames and Sum 41, or something along those line, i hope you get my drift. The thing is, gigs of this kind tend to be great. Great. Although Rancid is not of that kind, their speedy music is what made their live in Tokyo so great, and i probably need not say how fantastic In Flames was.

Even though i had no idea what Supe was, after their performance i was seriously considering buying their album as an act of good faith. They played great.

And after a short brake came the main event of the night, Story of the Year. To be honest, i don’t know Story of the Year but for a single song (Wake up).

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El Dorado

June 9, 2010
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Today i was doing nothing when it occurred to me to check the Iron Maiden website for new tour dates. Maybe they’re coming to Japan anytime soon (i pretty much hope so).

At first i didn’t realize there was something amiss. I visited the tour dates page so many times that i can go there straight from link history. But then something… And i checked the front page. And i was close to fainting.

16th august 2010, the fifteenth Iron Maiden album, The Final Frontier will come out. I seriously can’t wait. To make things worse, just around then is the Sziget fest in Budapest, with an Iron Maiden live. I want to be there! (Just can’t, filthy money.)

Also, there is a new song called El Dorado, available for free. It’s on Youtube, and also available for download on the band’s website (though hurry up, only till the 21th, and sometimes it’s just down). Absolutely worth downloading.

It’s a great song. (Though i don’t like the new design for Eddy, but hey, i’m not looking at the artwork but listening to music, i mean, Music, like that, with capital M.) At first i wasn’t sure… it starts strange… Bruce’s vocals seemed powerless… But i was wrong. It’s just that was the first time. Now i’m in love with it. I can’t stop listening to it. And i want the new album badly. Come, august!

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