Howdy all! Last week, I asked for some suggestions on what to blog about, so Lew and Joe asked how I got into J-Pop/Rock. It’s not really that long or interesting of a story, but they wanted to know. So, please excuse me while I fangirl (get overly excited, squee, and babble on about a certain subject) over some of my favorite music and musicians while I relive those early days.
I guess I got into Japanese music the same way a lot of people do: anime. I grew up with the Americanized version of Sailor Moon, then Pokémon and Digimon and Cardcaptor Sakura and all of that came along. But it wasn’t until I was sixteen or seventeen (around the time I started looking to the Internet for friends instead of hanging out with my sister and her friends) when I began searching for fansubs and the original versions of the shows that I started my brief voyage into the world of J-Pop, then my descent into J-Rock.
It wasn’t just anime exposing me to the music, but also the friends I was making by hanging out in anime chatrooms. (Do you even remember those? The Yahoo chats? Oh how I miss those days.) It takes a lot for a theme song to entice me into looking it up, so I was a total n00b to the music compared to most of the people I met. So, I listened to every song people recommended. For example, one of the people I hung out with was a rabid fan of Neon Genesis Evangelion, so for a while, I knew every song (and every version) in that series because he would insist I listen to them. It wasn’t that I enjoyed everything I heard, but I was open to the possibility that I might like it.
Then, I got into YouTube. Back in the day, before Google and Vevo and all of the legal stuff, YouTube was a wonderland of obscure music. Plus, it was great about recommending things based (no matter how remotely) on whatever you were watching instead of just suggesting whatever happens to be popular that week, which is how I found my way into J-Rock and all its lovely subgenres. I had my first brush with bands like Dir en grey (awesome if you like metal), Buck-Tick (kind of an 80s vibe), Versailles (symphonic metal), and Miyavi (guitarist). From there, I just kind of dug around on my own to find things that I adore. It also doesn’t hurt that most of the beautiful women are actually men (a fangirl topic for another day).
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It was just something that happened. There was no big plan involved. It was just a new obsession stemming from an old one, like a slow descent into madness. We all have these types of love, so tell me about yours. What’s your random obsession that makes people wonder how you got into it? And how’d it happen?
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Oh man, I do remember the old Yahoo chat days! I hung out in the RPG rooms. So much fun. I think it’s cool how one fandom can lead to another. With anime and J-Pop/Rock, I see a direct connection (cool pics, btw). My own random obsession is with pro-wrestling. It all started with superheroes, really. As a young kid, I loved Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, etc. When I first tuned in to the WWF, it was like watching real-life superheroes colliding in the squared circle (and many wrestlers were presented like superheroes in the 80’s and early 90’s). I’m still a fan 25+ years later. The “sport” has changed, but it’s still as entertaining as ever.
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I can definitely see the commonalities between superheroes and wrestlers. It’s neat how one thing leads to another.
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My curiosity has been sated! I used to watch a ton of anime back in the 1990’s, and I also remember the glory days of internet chat rooms and message boards. Some of the best times, and best friends of my life came from that period.
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Yay! And definitely a time of bestest friend finding.
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