KAME'S HUGE (tiny apartment) J-ROCK BLOWOUT SALE!!!11!!1 EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!11111oneoneeleven!!1omgwow

Oh hello there, Not Greatest Denizens! It's Kame, your once prodigal webmaster here to present a HUGE (tiny apartment) J-ROCK BLOWOUT SALE EVERYTHING MUST GO omg!!!!1111!! WOW SUCH CDS MUCH SALE!!!!11!!!! Those of you who have been stalking the site well enough for long enough know that for the last five years, I've been living in the great and glorious city of San Francisco where I have made a life of rolling my eyes at tech bros and crying over my rent check every month. Well, as enviable a lifestyle as I know that is, I decided I was ready to move on from a land of endlessly riding public transportation that is always broken and smells of human waste (sometimes, those two points are related!) So the time has come to sell off most my belongings and go commune with some tree spirits in southern Honshu for a year or two. Why would I move to Japan but go live in a place where I can't go see every single Buck-Tick show ever and creep through Acchanchansama's trash every night? Duh so the tree spirits will realign my chakras or some shit and I'll finally be more spiritual than all the rest of these California ultra-spiritualists put together* (#lifegoals). Anyway, on to the sales:

Everything will be shipped from California (tokens of fake spiritualism may be included for a small extra fee). Shipping within the US will probably cost around $5-$10 (this is an estimate, not a gurantee) through USPS, more if you live outside the US. You may also choose domestic or international shipping options through UPS, but I'm not familiar with their prices so feel free to research. Email Cayce to place an order as you normally would through Not Greatest Shopping Service and Cayce will connect me with you. I'm not including my email on this post for spambot avoidance.

Orders MUST BE PLACED BY JULY 7 (wow such capslock). After that everything is going into storage. I can still take orders after that, but it might take a year or two to fulfill them.

 

Crack 6 – Fight Without Frontiers (album, 2005)

Autographed. Out of print. Obi included. Crack 6 is Chisato from Penicillin doing his not-Penicillin thing. This album was one of their first releases and is out of print. Hot shit. Did I mention it's autographed? By the whole band? Duuuude. 500 yen.

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Malice Mizer – Merveilles (album, 1998)

2nd pressing. Obi included. Along with a fragment of Gackt's plastic soul. 600 yen.

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Malice Mizer – Bara no Seidou (album, 2000)

2nd pressing with slipcover. Obi included. No Gackt, but this album will inspire you to dance circles under the moonlight as you toss rose petals onto the fake gravestones you purchased at Target last Halloween and who needs a Gackt soul for that. 500 yen.

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Moi dix Mois – Dix infernal (album, 2003)

2nd pressing. Includes obi and concert advertisement from 2003. Fun fact: if you use images from this album's booklet on your honors chem report about getting high on dextromethorphan, it makes your highschool classmates veeeerrrry uncomfortable. 500 yen.

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Plastic Tree – Parade (album, 2000)

2nd pressing. This is the original Warner Music release that went out of print in the early 2000s. Not the priced down re-issue. What's the difference? I have no idea. I've never seen the re-issue. But hey, you can own a piece of Plastic Tree history today!!! (Not to mention a treasured relic of Kame's angst ridden teen years)** The case is cracked in front (see photo), a remnant of the astounding professionalism that was once known as JpopHouse. But the CD is in spiffy condition. 400 yen.

** Don't let my sarcasm throw you off. This is a seriously good album. I'm only selling this angst relic because I somehow ended up with two copies of it. IT'S THAT GOOD.

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Plastic Tree – Aoi Tori (single, 2002)

2nd pressing. Out of print. Does not include obi cover with fangirly photo of Ryuutaro's hot lips from the 1st pressing. 300 yen.

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Poplar – Amaterasu (album, 2005)

Autographed. Includes obi and band sticker. Poplar was (is?) a rock-rap duo (plus badass kimono clad female guest vocalist) from Kyoto. Search "neopoplar" on YouTube for more information. Probably out of print since the label doesn't appear to exist anymore. Autographed by all members. 300 yen.

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Mechanical Panda – Fake (single, 2005)

Autographed. Out of print. A rare specimen of the illusive species all-female visual kei bandus. Autographed by both kickass lady members. That is a literal statement, not a euphemism. 200 yen.

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*Ok so true story: One of my neighbors is a Freemason. His partner, who lives with him, is kind of sort of a practicing Pagan, but as she put it, "it's really just a matter of celebrating the holidays, nothing more." They are both lovely, dear people and not who this story is actually about.

Because they also have two roommates. A gay couple, one works in tech and the other used to be in musical theatre or something and now he does under the table voice lessons. Like, can you be any more San Francisco than a gay couple consisting of a techie and a musical theatre guy? Maybe. But they'd have to be polyamorous bi-racial.

Now for some reason, Ex-Musical Theatre Guy can't wrap his head around Sortof Practicing Pagan having anything to do with Paganism, without belieivng that she is a full-blown Wiccan witch lady. She kept trying to correct him on this for a while, but eventually gave up and now just lets him believe that she's out on the back porch brewing potions and summoning the Goddess at odd hours of the day when she's really just watering the catnip.

Well recently, Ex-Musical Theatre Guy found out the dirty secret: that the Freemason is a Freemason. There had been roommate tensions brewing already, and this just took the cake. So Ex-Musical Theatre Guy confronted Sortof Practicing Pagan about her boyfriend's evil treachery. Accusing him of lying about many things and getting up to all sorts of occult evil nonsense, like everyone knows the Freemasons do.

"And you, as a good Wiccan witch, ought to be a aware of this," he added.

So Sort-of Practicing Pagan then called up her Freemason boyfriend to demand why he hadn't been putting his evil powers to use all these years, since eveyone knows Freemasons have evil powers.

"Now hold up," I ask, "why is your roommate ok with your made-up status as a spellcasting Wiccan witch, but not ok with your boyfriend's made-up occult practices?"

Well, it turns out, because Wicca has the whole do-no-harm-to-anyone thing going on. So apparently Ex-Musical Theatre Guy is only comfortable having any associations of the occult around him if he can fully believe that the practitioners are bound to that rule. You know, for casting all those catnip Goddess spells that are totally happening on the back porch. Right. Now.

So the Freemason began casually leaving Freemason books visibly sticking out of his bookbag by the apartment's entrance. The Ex-Musical Theatre Guy kept quietly hiding them from sight by piling shit on top of them.

"So does your roommate have some kind of religion or faith that makes some occult shit ok, but others clearly evil?" I asked the Sort-of Practicing Pagan.

No one knows. It seems he's just... sprititual in some vague way. He's got spirit guides and stuff. He was going to the Unitarian Universalists for a while, "but then suddenly she stopped that and know one knows what happened there." (dun dun dunnnnn)

Now he's apparently got a prayer tapestry of some Hindu protector deity hanging on his bedroom door, I was recently informed. Presumably to keep the evil Freesmasonry spellwork out.

People, this is what roommate drama is capable of turning into in Northern California.

The January Wardrobe Post

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And now, for a very special illustrated guest post from Kame!  As the title of this post indicates, it was scheduled to be published over a month ago, but was delayed due to Kame's development of an unexpected mysterious illness. Like every good Californian, Kame sought ultra spiritual treatment first and foremost, but received nothing but the confounding diagnosis that she had been "possessed by evil." Clearly, she needs a guru. However, she has since recovered. Thank you for your support.

And now, we are overjoyed to bring you The Post in Question, in comic form.

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[Note from Cayce: for those of you who found Japan on the map five minutes ago, Furukawa Tomo is the vocalist and leader of Guniw Tools, the weirdest rock band in Japan. If you are unfamiliar with Guniw Tools, go on YouTube and watch multiple videos immediately. One is not enough.]

Leave a comment below. Lolitas welcome!

That Guy Knows Who Buck-Tick Are

Kame's back again! (soft of.)  To recap: for those of you who have been following This is Not Greatest Site since the beginning, you may recall that Kame was the original website designer, or, in hokey 90's terms, the original webmistress.  She quit the webmistress position at the end of 2009, and Cayce has been managing the site largely independently since that time.

Why did Kame quit, you ask?  The short answer is, the Silicon Valley hotshots gave her an offer she couldn't refuse.  Now she's located in the Bay Area, where she occasionally samples Jack Dorsey's curated whiskey collection, among other duties...and now those duties include a return to the NGS team as one of our international correspondents.

To celebrate her return, this week at NGS/Blog-Tick, we're running a Kame special! Over at NGS, you can read her extended article on Harajuku fashion in the USA, ten years after the visual kei boom. Here on Blog-Tick, Kame is going to tell you a story about That Guy.

All the pink text was written by Kame. You're welcome.

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Oh hey Blog-Tickers. Kame here. This writeup is way overdue, now that I realize the Skinny Puppy concert was like, a month ago, but when I told Cayce the story (a month ago) Cayce asked me for a writeup and I'm a little scattered with deadlines, but hey I wrote it anyway! Just for you dear lovely readers!

Anyway, the story.

Skinny Puppy played at the Fillmore in San Francisco last month, and Tokyo Dark Castle buddies BAAL were there as the opening act. So I was totally out showing Tokyo goths how to party San Francisco style, right? (That’s right, Genet and Toll shooting the shit and discussing their last app ideas over artisanal craft cocktails inside a bar with reclaimed wood and brushed chrome interior)

WRONG!

I missed the concert. In fact, I was holed up uncomfortably at a work dinner, just two blocks down from the Fillmore. Did I cry? Yes, I cried. (Not really. But I made angry noises)

Why did I cry? I cried because I don’t particularly enjoy socializing with my coworkers. But in situations like this, when I can’t escape, and crying isn’t really socially acceptable, I resort to drinking.

Why do I resort to drinking?  Why, because I’m a Buck-Tick fan, and Buck-Tick have taught me that drinking not only solves all problems, but will also make me as sexy as Acchan-chan if I do it enough.

Normally, I’m a happy drunk. But this time, I was more like a “fuck you and leave me to my (non-Franzia) wine” kind of drunk. But then the (non-Franzia) wine made me think of Acchan-chan, which made me happy, and once I was happy I could pretend like my coworkers are fun, so I drank more!

I only mention I was drunk as an alibi.  Because if I weren’t drunk, why would I have been speaking to That Guy?

Who is That Guy, you ask?  You shouldn’t have to ask.  That Guy knows eeeeeeeverything. You know, about that band. Before you did. And that club. Before you went there. Except you never went there because that party isn’t going on anymore.

Except he doesn’t really know much of anything, but everyone else at the office knows less, so they just believe him, and he rides around all puffed up on his falsely cool ego.

That Guy is in his early/mid thirties and has a large and very professorly-like beard. He overpronounces everything he says, just to emphasize how educated and articulate he is. “Overpronounce” is a word I quickly made up just now, because I can't think of anything else to accurately describe the annoying and asinine manner in which he speaks.

He knows more about the world than you do, because he goes to Burning Man every year and does a lot of drugs and thinks that roughing out a dust storm because he paid a crapload of money to go out to a giant desert with no running water and “experience things” makes him manly. He also eats regularly at Michelin rated restaurants, because he has money, and because you haven’t truly experienced the world until you’ve eaten at a Michelin rated restaurant.

(Cayce Pollard will never eat at a Michelin rated restaurant. They are dangerous.)

Anyway, That Guy looooves to talk about industrial music. I don’t know why. I never knew, before meeting That Guy, that “pretentious” and “Nine Inch Nails” fit together so well in the same sentence. But apparently they can. In fact, there are not one, but two “DJs” at my office who own the entire NIN discography on vinyl and will tell you about it at any given opportunity.

By contrast, That Guy doesn’t actually DJ. He makes half-hour long remixes of Daft Punk's “Get Lucky” on his MacBookSomething and talks about all his cool DJ equipment with the other DJ guy with the NIN discography.  The other DJ guy with the NIN discography works in marketing and marketing wasn’t part of this dinner.

So tonight, it was just me and That Guy, talking about industrial music.

“Blah blah blah KMFDM blah blah,” says he.

“Back when I was living in London I knew a guy who toured with KMFDM,” says I. “Or wait, shit, was it just Raymond Watts he toured with? I get that confused sometimes!”

“Why would you ever get them confused?” asks he. (Girls are so cute when they are confused! They do not know as much about industrial music as I do!)

(We can actually just stop the conversation here.  He’s already revealed he doesn’t know as much as he says he does—apparently he doesn’t know that Raymond Watts was once a member of KMFDM! But that wasn’t where I was going. This time, I was gonna trip him up for real!)

“Because they did a project together with Buck-Tick!” I said, pulling my trump card.  He fell for it, hard.

“Ah, yes, Buck-Tick!” he said.

“Oh?” I asked, “you know of Buck-Tick?”

“Of course I know Buck-Tick!!”

“How do you know of Buck-Tick?” I asked.

“Because they're a great band!!” he said, an edge of defense rising in his voice.

“Tell me more about Buck-Tick,” I said.

“Classic French industrial noise group,” he said, his voice puffing out casual condescension.

“They’re Japanese.” I said.

“No they’re not.”

“Yes they are.”

“Nuh-uh! French!”

“Japanese. Been around since the eighties. Big name over there. Used to do their hair up all weird?”

He jumped in his chair. “Oh, I was thinking of someone else then.”

“Bullshit.”

“Hey, fine, I don't know Japanese bands, ok?”

“Ok.”

“I mean, I don't know all that many Japanese bands. I know the good ones of course. Melt Banana, ever heard of them? And oh, my favorite is this one called... aaah... Yamantaka Sonic Titan. They’re this very progressive, experimental group. Very creative performances. I tell you, it’s a real experience to get to see a band like that play live.”

Down the street, BAAL was still playing live with Skinny Puppy.  If I listened very carefully, I thought I could almost hear U-taro’s guttural screams echoing out into the night (girls are so cute when they scream!)  I thought of asking That Guy why, if he liked industrial music so much, he was here at this company dinner instead of at the concert.  Instead, I asked myself the same question, and began to cry into my (non Franzia) wine.

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Note from Cayce: Yamantaka Sonic Titan are from Montreal. That is to say, they’re Canadian. That is to say, they're not Japanese. They style themselves “Noh-wave,” and yes that means what you think it means. Japanese pop culture references plus low-fi shrieking in warehouses, here we come.

In fact, many years ago, back when people wore leggings as pants, back when handlebar mustaches were considered acceptable day wear even for men and women unaffiliated with the gay leather bar scene, Cayce once saw Yamantaka Sonic Titan play live at a hipster warehouse party in Montreal. Like, a real hipster warehouse party, in a real warehouse squat.  As in, the warehouse didn’t belong to the hipsters, they just decided to show up and turn it into a party pad, rusted sinks, broken windows and all.

At this party, the “bar” was a plank of wood set across two sawhorses, and the drinks were just lukewarm bottles of Boreale pulled out of a jumbo-sized cooler.  The “DJ booth” was a record player on a rickety table someone had picked up off the side of the street up Rue St. Urbain during moving weekend.  The record on the player was Siouxsie and the Banshees’ A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, and the only thing that separated the audience from “backstage” were a few bedsheets strung up with clothespins.  Yamantaka Sonic Titan headlined the show, dressed in handmade paper headdresses and cheap nylon Japanese festival coats. They did funny things with light projectors and cardboard set pieces, made a lot more noise than music, and the crowd adored them.

Calling all Blog-Tickers in San Francisco!

And now, for an unusual announcement.

KAME'S BACK!! (sort of)

For those of you who have been following This is Not Greatest Site since the beginning, you may recall that Kame was the original website designer, or, in hokey 90's terms, the original webmistress.  She quit the webmistress position at the end of 2009, and Cayce has been managing the site largely independently since that time.

Why did Kame quit, you ask?  The short answer is, the Silicon Valley hotshots gave her an offer she couldn't refuse.  Now she's located in the Bay Area, where she occasionally samples Jack Dorsey's curated whiskey collection, among other duties.

Anyhow...currently, Kame is working on some plans for a new j-rock-related project that you will just ooooh so love, and she's interested in meeting up with any Blog-Tick readers who might be in the area. Want to learn all about it? You can talk to her in person this Saturday at Dir en grey's show at the Regency Ballroom.

Can't make it to Dir en grey's show? You really should talk to her anyway. Interested? Contact Cayce, and Cayce will connect you to Kame (like a phone operator, but not.)

Going to the show, but too shy to approach her in person?  Get over it!  She's really friendly!

Look for the small, short-haired blonde wearing a polka dot headscarf and this dress:

and this jacket:

A likely place to spot her will be by the bar, getting sloshed on Franzia. Because that is what classy Californians do.

Actually the Franzia is a lie. We don't even know if they sell Franzia at the Regency Ballroom. Kame will probably be drinking voldka sodas, and complaining about Franzia. Not that it matters.

So yeah. Blondie in a polka dot dress...like Debbie Harry but younger and with more Angelic Pretty and sad to say, probably not quite as cool as Debbie Harry...but, she built this site eight years ago.  Go say hello.  You won't be sorry.

By the way, the cake is also a lie.