I found them in the weekly Korean music chart show, of all places. I don't know what they're doing in M-Countdown, but their image during the performance lulled me into thinking that they were a k-band. Well, I was listening to the 4 Non Blondes in my laptop at the time, while watching M-Countdown on TV, while burning files to a DVD...hey, multitasking is the mode of the future~
Anyway, the words filtered through my headphones enough to make me realize, wait a minute...these are japanese words I'm hearing. So I listened and thought they're pretty good. Then, as is the natural progression of how these things are done, I went on the net and googled them and was pretty pleased that they're indeed j-rockers and not a k-band belting out their japanese release.
They've been around for quite sometime, although I haven't got to finding out whether the band still has the same members or they've been playing that musical chair sorta thing like all the other jrock bands I've liked previously (i.e. disbanding > forming new bands > shuffling members around as they pleased. I mean, look at the updates in this blog today...this band and that band are disbanding, what even *facepalm*).
Here they are: SPYAIR with a theme song from an episode of Bleach, my (only) favourite shonen manga~
You know, if you had died circa 2000 and one of your biggest regrets in life was the disbandment of X-Japan, you can rest easy in your grave now coz this day has finally come.
The guy looks like he hasn't aged at all. Friggin' amazing.
I guess this post has been germinating in my pervy brain (there, I said it) after I read this post about Kame last night. It's true that after being raised on practically nothing but rock music (it was my first and most enduring love) and later finding my way into JRock, watching Real Face made me go... "geh, pretentious little poseurs".
But I'm always game for a new experience, and I thought Johnny's experiment with merging pop and rock was.. (and I'm trying very hard to suppress my cynical side here) ... amusing, enough to get me to take notice of the group that performed the song. I promptly put my interest in the pretty marionettes dancing to jarring guitar riffs at the back-burner though and went back to jrock right after the performance clip finished playing.
I got dragged into KAT-TUN's world again not through their songs, but through their acting... well, namely by the acting stint of two of the group members. What else, Gokusen 2 of course. At the time, I was very... I mean, verrrry... interested in Jin. But after realizing what a bad actor he is and having no interest in the meagre fare KAT-TUN dished out, I promptly dropped Jin and his group along with him. To be fair, it's not just KAT-TUN... it's the whole Johnny Jimusho idoru concept that I (still) can't stomach.
This happened with another actor I had mad crush with... Tomoya Nagase. I really really liked him, and I wish he had left TOKIO & JJ and gone out to pursue his own path.. gah! Have you seen the idoru groups' backup dancers? They're barely out of their diapers yet there they are up on a big stage performing fanservices for the world to see. How sick is that? It's like a bloody slave factory in there. I guess I would have felt differently had it not felt so contrived and forced (maybe I feel this way because they're so young).
Eh, I digressed. Anyway, I'm back into watching KAT-TUN clips now because of Kame. I have no idea why people call him a bad actor, but they must have watched some of his old dramas that I haven't watched yet. That's why I get it when E.G. said in her post that Kame has two facets to his personality. In fact, now he has a 3rd facet... that of a sportsman... ha! Have you seen him play? How can he be so many different people at once? Makes you wanna go.. "Will the Real Kamenashi please stand up?!" This guy is too interesting to ignore, seriously. I have no problem with his stage performances either. Me guessing that KAT-TUN tries to emulate rockers in their performances is what makes it easily acceptable to me. Why? We've come to the real reason of why I wrote this meandering post....
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF JROCK!
And I was obsessed with this jrocker dude for two years. He's the one I listened to, read & wrote on, discussed the music/live performance/PV/movie/etc. with my friends about from the moment I opened my eyes till I went to sleep. Even there I wasn't really safe because he regularly invaded my dreamscape. Yes, for two bloody years... before he suddenly went normal on me. (He said he was ~REBORN~) Meh. Normal artists are so... normal, ergo uninteresting. Wanna know which performance that got me hooked on him? It's this one...
So, you can understand why I find Kame's performances to be pretty ...ermmm, how to say this without exposing my pervy self further... mild? In comparison. I like his self-abandonment when he's on the stage. It's pretty obvious that he's conscious of all his gyrating movements, but it seems like.. he just pushes every little gesture beyond the border of what he feels is safe for him. It's fun watching him watch himself performing.. LOL. Mesmerizing shtuff.
And if you think Kame's pole dancing is gay and so not on, what do you think about Rain when you watch this, huh? :P
Kame's more controlled when he's acting though, staying in character despite showing familiar mannerisms. I like him in dramas when he has to deal with love issues. I think it's how he looks at the girls. To me, a guy is sexiest when he looks at a girl perplexedly, trying to decide what is the best course of action to take regarding anything and everything about her. Maybe I'm just projecting my feelings onto the characters he played, but they all seem to have that quality in their eyes. Eager to please, yet not knowing how, but still trying his hardest anyway. Don't you think a guy like that is sexy? ♥
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Yep, that's Kaya. It's a bloke, you know. Part of the allure of jrock is salivating over all these pretty young things with macho voices. I remember watching the youtube clips of various bands with my jaw hanging open at how much prettier they are than most girls I've seen on screen. They have absolutely no problem performing boy love for their crowd, their fangirls even expect them to do it and it has done only good things for their image. So different from the Western world with all their hypocritical ways of looking at things: it's absolutely taboo if it's in public, but definitely alright and pursued in private.
I've not been indulging in too much jrock stuff lately, ever since my favourite jrocker went completely pop in his recent ventures.. hmmmph. Gackt, I miss your old self but I know we'll never get that guy back, so I'll just shut up and mourn my loss in that little corner of my room..as I've been doing this past coupla years already.
