In the hands of this American before it's on sale in Japan. The world has turned upside down, I tell you. Guess it's all that red, white and blue on the cover.
A couple pics of the interior:
Cute. Though not sure I'm actually a fan of the stars & stripes motif. Seems a little overdone.
I got the special edition with the DVD. The regular version has a blue cover with a slightly different cover photo. Not sure what it's like on the inside. It obviously doesn't have this:
Tantalizingly, the DVD portion is labeled "Volume 1". Obviously, that implies more volumes planned.
Full review coming very shortly!
Back in Japan, we had already heard " Pioneer of Frontier " on the radio for two weeks ago. Even this is a cover of Tamio Okuda, it fits perfectly into Puffy. I think this has very Puffy-sh sounds with good lyrics (yom1970 translated them into English). For me this song is an another version of " That's the way it is " and I like it better than " All Because Of You ".
ReplyDeleteAs for the live performance of " All Because Of You ", AmiYumi sang it with Japanese English pronunciations like always. As you suspected Avril might have joined the CD recording.
First impression is I agree, "Frontier no Pioneer" sounds like a real Puffy song. I know it's Tamio Okuda's song, but so were a lot of their early songs. I think it's a much better song than "All Because of You".
ReplyDeleteI also agree about the pronunciation on "All Because of You" - I just listened to the live version vs. the CD and just as I said in the earlier post, you can especially hear that the way they pronounce "you" is totally different. I've never heard a native Japanese speaker pronounce that word the way they do on the CD, and they pronounce it the Japanese way live. Maybe they were heavily coached in the studio, but I still think that Avril may be singing a backing track, at least on the chorus.
Well, I will write my impressions in more detail (and in a more organized way) in another post.
Vince here,
ReplyDeleteBoy! A lot of 'stars & stripes' imagery here.
Hope it's meant to be 'campy'.
You know what I mean.
This is way late, but I just ran across a cover image of a VHS release containing video clips by Ayumi Hamasaki:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.discogs.com/release/819058
Have you ever seen this, Jeff?
Ha, no, I hadn't seen that. I suppose it could be coincidence. Or maybe even the same photographer. Don't really know. Or, maybe they did lift it. (And by "they" I mean the management.)
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it's a tribute. Think of how many homages to the "Meet The Beatles" LP cover are out there. That would make more sense, though, if the ABOY photo alluded to her debut album and not to a comparatively obscure VHS compilation of related videos. AND if Puffy hadn't released their first single about two years before Hamasaki. We're not talking an early influence here.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I've never listened to her music, I gather that Ayumi Hamasaki has been a major force in Japanese pop music, well liked and influential. So maybe this was just a tongue-in-cheek tip of the hat to her. In any case, I have major trouble accepting the coincidence hypothesis. (Maybe the same photographer, but at least it's not the same bath tub!)
Btw... and not to fan this particular flame... didn't Hamasaki do a song (or an album) titled "My Story"?
I guess it could be an homage, that probably does make more sense. It's a strange homage, though - they're paying homage to a video clip collection from 10 years ago? I could understand them reconstituting an album cover, like they did for the US release of "Nice", but a video clip collection?? Kinda weird.
ReplyDeleteWell, I am not a big fan of Ayumi Hamasaki - I'm not one of those people that just likes all Japanese pop equally (sounds like you aren't either). So I hadn't seen this before, and it *is* pretty old. Wish I'd known about it when I was writing about ABOY, would have been neat to post.
btw, I forgot to answer your last question - a quick Google search reveals "My Story" was an Ayumi Hamasaki album, but not a song. She's pretty well-known even among her fans for being a bit narcissistic. So it's not surprising that she'd name an album that.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of a generic term even in Japanese, though, so I doubt it means anything that Puffy has a song of the same name.
Yes, I'll buy that. I'm not one of those people that sees suspicious coincidences *everywhere*!
ReplyDelete