Music Rambling

I'm a poet, but I love music. I am influenced by rock stars just as much as I am by other poets, if not more at times. Over the years I've been a fan of a style of Japanes rock called visual-kei. Most Westerners who've heard it seem to see it as weeaboo music. Much of it is highly-stylized and has image as much as it has music.

Last night I found an article one of my fellow visual kei fans found and shared from Tokyo Damage Report. Now I know and am cool with these bands being all about image and illusion, the fantasy on the surface is cool with me. What bugs me is learning how that illusion goes deeper than stage costumes and makeup. Reading the article is very shocking, and you think Western artists get financially screwed by label executives. At least Western artists can make money off merchandise sales and aren't forced to psychologically manipulate their fan base.

The level of seediness and manipulation is more seen in international pop outfits. Last year The Guardian ran an article on the dark underbelly of Japanese boy bands, which sounds like the same story we hear when 90s American boy bands are filing lawsuits against that Pearlman dude who manipulated and molested several of his acts.

I guess in a way I feel hurt as a fan. All that sentimentality bands have for their fans is just part of the illusion as they've become nothing more than trained Circus poodles. At the same time I feel sorry for a lot of these bands since they're being used. You really have to read the article to understand that this particular genre has executives who pretty much run their own music mafia. There's one artist in particular I can think of where I really think his fame actually kept him from any harm or blacklisting.

Onto a different subject, all of this inspired me to write a killer poem! I've developed an odd liking to ruining the things that make me feel sentimental. But when those things are gone, they're gone. I've realized in my online snooping that I'm one of those poets who goes beyond verbal aesthetics and goes for the grit. I could write about moonlight on roses, summer thunderstorms and morning dew, but I also want to write about hearts betrayed, the jaded pain of being on the bottom rung, the things that twist people.