Fourteen new videos for your viewing pleasure. Pick a favorite or two.
Since the official version looks awful, here’s the viral video where they pretend to be a cover band covering their own song before it was even released. As you can tell from the “feat. ACO” bit, this is one of their vocal tracks, which have been better than their instrumentals as of late.
Slowly plowing through the year end lists, here’s our favorite collaborations and supergroups of 2011.
After the natural disasters of 2011, it was cool to see all the “pray for Japan” benefit tracks and compilations that cropped up on the internet from all over the world. AA=AiD is a project led by Takeshi Ueda (AA=) that recorded this song to encourage reconstruction efforts. “We’re not alone” is a veritable who’s who of J-Rock and features Hayashi (Polysics), Shinichi Ubukata (Nothing’s Carved In Stone) and Akihiro Namba (Hi-STANDARD) among many others. You can download it for free here.
Kenzi Masubuchi’s Punk Ska Unity did much the same but with even more punk/ska artists.
Last year I asked you to vote for your favorite videos every (other) week on J-Rock Fridays. You didn’t do a very good job, but I did manage to compile a top 10 with your top voted videos and my own. So without further ado…
The Flickers came out of nowhere with “White Heat.” It’s unfortunate they couldn’t keep up the flame on the rest of their mini-album, but I’ll hold this as promise.
Hookers! “Big Saturday Night” has become my weekend anthem, even though I rarely go out on the weekend or at all really.
I bet most boys would love to have Ms. Ratna as their CPU. So sweet.
Not going to Lollapalooza this weekend edition.
Miila and the Geeks filmed an impromptu video while in Austin for SXSW this year. Looks like they didn’t bother to edit the video or inform their neighbor but screaming sax saves the day again. “Superhero” was originally released on their sold out 6 Songs EP last year, but you can catch it again on their debut album New Age later this month.
Looks like it’s time for another Halloween edition of J-Rock Fridays. This time I’m only posting bands that wear masks. I didn’t receive any suggestions last week (guess it’s time to finally shelve J-Rock Fridays) so it’s a bit shorter than I hoped.
Who let the dogs out?! Er…werewolves. Whatever they are they rock.
J-Rock Explosion 