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I dont know if its discouraging or embarassing to be a fan of japanese bands and come accross those who claim to love a band without even hearing the music, id say its somewhat frustrating and difficult to carry on a decent converstation with those individuals.

(Do you think the term 'jrock' is beginning to be a generalization for one set genre) Im fairly certain that its definitely not beginning to be generalized. Im not sure how it started down this path either, probably just something that came to be from just popular western culture/dialogue in an effort to simplify things when they were explaining things? I do think that its starting to come out that there are more generes than just j-rock, however in the end the prefix of adding j- to everything isnt really necessary at all, rock is still rock, punk is still punk, pop is pop no matter what country it came from. Can this be combated? maybe but it would take a lot of effort to break habit. I do think that vendors continue to fuel the use of grouping the music under one label simply but putting up the sign "j-rock here etc etc" Theres nothing malicious intended, its just their use of the adopted term for the popular culture. In the end, its used out of habit, and habits are hard to break.

See thats how I feel! I'm sick of all the jrock fans gushing about Gazzette or wtf is in right now. I honestly can't tell them apart, music or otherwise...I find it to be a useless thing to get into.
I would like VK better if there were like 5 VK bands. And thats it. Because then it wouldnt get so monotonous. gonk

So anyways, it's gotten to the point now where I can't say I'm a 'jrock fan'....I just kind of happen to like some music that happens to be from japan.

The "Jrock" tag is uneeded. If I like a rock band and they are Japanese then I'll just log that under "rock". I don't like defining my music by location and I REALLY don't like even using genre terms that aren't, for the most part, vague. Putting music into too tight of a catagory makes people lazy when trying to describe the sound. I don't know which I find more annoying: Kids who catagorize their music by location or kids that over catagorize their music into subsections like, "Darkwave", "HXC", or "thrash metal". It all seems about the same level of stupidity to me.



No, I just think that the VK tards are the most vocal of fans so it just appears that their stupidity is the majority mindset.

Haaaay what about my Japanese thrash metal? 8D

Actually thrash metal makes sense. It actually relates to the music. What I don't get is the multitude of emo & related subsections. Wtf, shoegaze?

Anyway, hi Guildy. Missed ya. People are actually posting in the hidden-but-not-rly Serious Discussion forum! Cool.





The thing about VK that irks me isn't that they copy each other every chance they get. Hell, you see that everywhere.

It's just that ...so few of them are in a band FOR MUSIC, it pisses me off. I know there's a ******** BBS dedicated to "VK band guys" finding girls who pay them hundreds of bucks a month to be their GFs, but it's NOT a reason for every scrawny pimply high school kid to start a band. Of course, the fan side is just as shallow.

But overall, I kinda like it. Crap or not, a lot of these bands have catchy fun-as-hell songs that can make for a fun drunken night out every once in a while. Of course, it's nothing like, say, GELUGUGU's or YuraTei's shows where you just feel and drink in every note, but that's a whole different scene. VK (mostly) just gives you flashy "shows", and that's not bad once in a while.





Because most of these "'jrock' fans" find VK via anime / "otaku" fandoms. They want stories, flashy costumes, and most importantly, characters, and that's what they're looking for in these bands. It satisfies them the same way "pop" music satisfies the general public, but even beyond that, it's like anime come to life. More flashy characters for them to play with, that's all. They're not music fans, so very few of them look beyond the catchy tunes. :/

Usually you can chalk that up as a case of buying what sells/bootlegs. Those Miya records guys don't just rip off EVERYTHING....just the bigvk stuff. ;D So if you want anything good you're on your own.

I confess, I too am horrible with genre classification. Yes, I know the basics (VK, oshare-kei, eroguro, and Nagoya-Kei) and I do agree that Jrock is becoming a simple generalization (I confess to also using it as a generalization, but my musical tastes have a broad range so it is simpler to state that I like Jrock or just Japanese music than to explain it in full detail)
I completely understand where you are all coming from and your standings on VK. The majority of my musical taste does harbor itself in VK, but I find that it's hardly based on the visual aspect. I find it difficult that you find all the bands to be copying each other and sounding the same. I can easily identify individual bands upon hearing them.
I also admit that I did discover Japanese music through anime, or rather through a friend who presented it at our liesurly anime club. It quickly grew to become a much greater love of mine than anime and manga, frankly I could go without anime and manga for extremely long amounts of time without even thinking about it. I was the Japanese music liason for the club until my contributions were no longer appreciated and I quit.
For me the classifications go much deeper than just VK=costumes and fangirlism (eww), hell no. I do enjoy the visual aspect, but I most certainly do not rely on VK creating "characters" out of the band members in order to be entertained. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Now, yes, Psycho Le Cemu is probably my only exception because that was very entertaining.

In conclusion, I do not think it simply goes to only one side of the argument. Yes, Jrock is becoming a simple generalization, sadly, but the sub-classifications are not becoming quite as 2-dimensional.

@Konstantine-sama - I found your comment about L'arc en Ciel very amusing. I do not follow them faithfull as a fan, but I do enjoy listening to them periodically (and I do have Smile, burned for me by a friend). Have you ever heard AcQuA EP? You might enjoy them based on the bands you listed. I too really enjoy some of Camino's songs. I find it hard to believe that conventions would not sell more pop-rock bands. Then again, I have never gone to a convention.

Not sure if i have much to contribute to this discussion.

I used to use the term Jrock alot back when i first started listening to band who are generalized into such group. I did not hear about them from anime, but rather my friend who is very big into music of any language xD.

I do like visual kei, but i dont just automatically like any band that looks pretty and has cool outfits and hair. Its totally the music i look for. And if alot of the bands i like happen to be visual kei then so be it (which their not) lol. i think the biggest like-age? xD i have for a visual kei group would be an cafe. Havent listened to their stuff since bou left, but i really liked their music. And alice nine. But the other more widely-known bands.. not so much.

anyways. I do hate these fangirls youll see around conventions, crowded aroung the "J-rock booth" clamoring on about all the diru posters and who is hotter. -.-

And it does bug me, that they assume "Oh you listen to JROCK? Then you must love diru, despairs ray etc." which isnt necessarily true.

ugg.

And i also get peeved when i hear those bands playing in hot topic and then girls dressed in gothic lolita outfits march in and start screaming by the music section. fangirls x.x

I think i kind of lost where i was going with my thoughts lol. ramble ramble.. ^^;;

On a side note.. Konstantine-sama,
That made me smile a bit, I havent met anyone else that listened to bump of chicken before. lol