I'm not sure if Yoshi's has ever had a crowd surfer before. The venue, near San Francisco's Japantown, is primarily a jazz lounge, but Sunday night it hosted the Japan Nite Special Girl Rock Explosion! + Harajuku Kawaii Experience presented by NEW PEOPLE, and all of the bands that played really knew how to put on a show.   I arrived early to dine in an effort to reserve a seat -- I had never been before and wanted to make sure I would be able to see everything -- but it turned out that we were allo...

Shinshoku Dolce , the debut album from singer, cellist and illustrator Kanon Wakeshima, has the stamp of producer Mana all over it. Sure, Kanon is able to project her own voice, both literally and figuratively, throughout the album, most notably in her cello playing. Yet despite the obvious emphasis on her cello skill, the music is oddly thin on any actual cello playing. Or rather, the cello is there, but it's more often than not pushed aside for the more electronic elements, like all the drum machines,...

Fujiko-chan is a four-member Japanese rock band formed and based in San Francisco, consisting of one female vocalist and three male musicians, two on guitar and one on drums. They incorporate a wide range of styles—punk, heavy metal, hard rock, and a form of Japanese pop called mudokayo (moody blues)—but have achieved a reputation based on their affinity for covers of anime theme songs. Their name comes from Fujiko, the comely, naughty, often duplicitous female lead from the Lupin the 3rd anime series. ...

1999 was a special year for me. It wasn't just the end of the 90's, it was the year that I got my first taste of Japanese music that would leave me wanting more. The sample came in the form of a website reviewing the first album of one Hikaru Utada. Embedded in the site was a sample of her first single, "Automatic." All the same, from that moment on, I was sold. Even as I began to discover more artists, I always kept coming back to her music. In a time when N'Sync and Smash Mouth summed up my age-group'...

Omodaka Cantata No. 147 and Favorite Games Far East Recording www.fareastrecording.com Being his first full length release, Omodaka's Cantata No. 147 is primarily made up of previously released material. The singles are all represented on the album, though many of them appear as different versions and remixes. This makes for a great package for long-time fans, as well as the perfect primer for the sound that is Omodaka. Things kick off with the breaks oriented tracks, "Otemoyan•bCrLf and "Asadoya Y...

Originally formed in 1975 by Blues Interactions as a label re-issuing blues and R&B acts, P-Vine Records specializes in the art of the rerelease. In 1999 they put together an amazing collection of early 80s synth pop and electro new-wave called Techno Ca-Yo . The collection spans 128 tracks spread out over eight discs and roughly 10 years, from 1979 to 1987. Even more interesting is that each disc is a collection from a single label. As a whole, the collection is imposing to say the least. The quali...

It's come to my attention that there's a few of you ne'er-do-wells out there who take objection to the fact that "Rock the Dragon" was soundly defeated by "CHA LA, HEAD CHA-LA" in Issue 6 of Otaku USA. I can think of only one explanation for why anyone would think in such a fashion, and that's that they just must not know about Hironobu Kageyama. In the modern era of what passes for shonen anime and anime in general, the opening and ending theme songs are selected based on whatever single the sponsors a...

Label: Universal Japan Available: Now (import) If you ask me, one of the very best things in this wild world is video game music, from the beeps and boops of the NES days to the complex orchestration of a modern title like Heavenly Sword . Not everyone can sit around and listen to chiptunes without their ears bleeding, though, which is probably one of the chief reasons behind everyone's love for legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu. Even when his compositions were restrained by technology, the...

Shinjuku Saturday night and the long crawl from West exit through Kabuki-cho. A wide trail of pleasure lovers and profit seekers gets in the way to NATURAL BORN ROCKERS night at the live house known as Shinjuku Red Cloth. Suddenly, a line of vintage scooters emerges from out of the velvety dark. Kids in skinny jeans and greasy hair stand around sucking on Marlboro Reds and guzzling Ebisu tall boys. This must be the place! Inside, the Romanes-a three-piece female Ramones tribute band who mix up covers wi...

I was introduced to the music of The Captains by Hajime Kusano, the manager of a Japanese rock band called The Emeralds. Hajime sent me a gift box of CDs in the fall of 2006 and I was immediately attracted to the cover art for The Captains' The New World EP. The band looked like characters from The Rose of Versailles if it had been created by Leiji Matsumoto and their matching retro, military-esque outfits just screamed "Group Sounds," a musical genre very dear to me. I fell in love with the band upon m...