After a very eventful summer, filled with concerts, events and the hot weather, I am writing this entry awaiting the autumn season. How is everyone doing? Currently in Tokyo, there's a new influenza going around which has been making headlines. I'm hoping for a new vaccine! During the summer, there were many artists I was able to re-connect with and it has been very exciting! Also, the most recent news is that we just shot a new music video for Exist Trace.  It hasn't been released yet, but it will be available for all of you in the near future.  From the editing and compilation of the video, it looks like it will turn into something very exciting so please look forward to it!

Gotta get back to work, later guys!

Hello Everyone, Kame-sen'nin here, it's been a while! I've been so busy lately and one of the reasons why I have been so busy is because I have been working on getting this new site ready for you to enjoy. What do you think? I'm sure all of you are thinking that the new page has a different feel to it, maybe some of you are confused, is this the same J Rock TV?! To top it off, most of you are probably wondering why is there so much VAMPS on the site? VAMPS is going on tour in the states soon so if you get a chance, please go check them out! They are so cool, their shows are definitely an experience of a lifetime.

Anyways, there is so much I would like to talk about here and update you on but I cannot put together such words and explain everything! But please do play around with the site, and check back for more updates!

PS: J Rock TV will have a booth at Anime Expo (AX) in Los Angeles, CA this week, July 2-5. If you are attending, please stop by the booth to say hi!

Hello J-Rock TV Fans!
Like my previous entry, I'll be writing about one of my top favorite bands, Kuroyume.

Any of you guys know Kuroyume?
I simply can't express enough how much they mean to me. That's because they're the first group of musicians I was privileged to work with. If I hadn't met them, I wouldn't have been introduced to this industry at all, let alone be where I am today. The J-Rock TV that you're all visiting would not exist if it weren't for Kuroyume. In that sense, they receive top stars.

Let me start by briefly introducing them. When they first made their debut they were a three-piece band, with a guitarist, bassist, and vocalist, but by the time they started to attract attention they were a two-piece band, with a bassist and vocalist.

At the time in the Japanese Rock Industry, their thick and strong voice (just like the beginning of X or Luna Sea) was rare. They attracted more and more fans of their style, their original vibrato that complimented their style of overlapping falsetto, and shouts from time to time. With this style of singing, this band over powered the popularity of other visual-kei bands.

"A bands image reflects on their performance at live shows" is their style and they sure stuck with it. They refused almost all television performances, and focused on live concerts especially in 1997 through 1998, they performed nearly 230 shows, in just one year!
Of course their technique brought upon their popularity, but the somewhat dangerous flavor the group exposed is what grabbed the hearts of their numerous fans, who wouldn't let go!

As they grabbed the hearts of more and more fans, they suddenly announced how they were going to stop performing live shows and didn't mention for how long. Does this mean that the group will be breaking up?
Let's jump forward to 2009, they have re-united for a concert titled "Kuroyume: The End~Corkscrew A Go Go! Finale~" "Corkscrew A Go Go!" is the tile of one of famous concerts during the most popular times. They have reunited to put together yet another live concert, and will then soon depart to go their own ways.

Even after ten years, today they are 100% hardcore rock, which to me is so respectful! I can write about them for entries after entries, If I keep writing about how much I respect them, this blog entry will never end!

If you get the chance to, I encourage you to listen to them, they will chill your bones! On a side note, Dir en Grey's Kyo is Kuroyume's Lordi. That about wraps it up, stay tuned for the next entry!

Hey everybody! Kame-Sen'nin here.
Here at J-Rock TV we get a lot of requests, advice regarding the site, fan mail for the artists, etc., and we want you to know that we appreciate all of you who take the time to write.

Just so you know, I serve as the mailman and personally deliver each fan letter you guys submit, so rest assured that the artists are getting your letters. The artists mostly receive Japanese fan mail from fans here in Japan, so they're often surprised to see fan mail in English from other parts of the world. Most of the artists can't speak English, though, so if you want to make sure the artist understands your letter, we offer a translation service where we'll translate your letter into Japanese, and deliver both your original English letter and a translated Japanese version.

When requests and advice for the site come in, we always try our best to give you guys what you're looking for, but sometimes we get complaints, too. "Why don't you have BUCK-TICK on this site??" and "It's just insulting not to have X JAPAN on this site" are a couple examples that come to mind.

Regarding complaints like these, we want you all to know that we understand exactly where you're coming from, and we feel the exact same way. If this site was just a fan site, or if our company Interceptor Inc. wasn't doing business right at the core of the Japanese music industry, you can bet that BUCK-TICK and X JAPAN would be on this site, along with whatever other artists we felt like putting up. But unfortunately, neither is the case, and we can't just put whatever artists we want on the site. It gets a little complicated with licensing rights and legal issues, so we apologize if we're unable to put your favorite artist on the site.

But as far as I'm concerned, this blog you're reading right now is just my personal blog, so here I'm pretty much free to write about whatever I want. So I thought I'd start a little "An artist that makes me proud to be Japanese" series in this blog, and write about all my favorite Visual Kei and J-Rock artists which we otherwise might not be able to put up on the site.

So for the first entry in this series, let's start with X JAPAN! Of course, I'm sure most of you reading this are well aware of who X JAPAN is, so I'll keep this short.

One fact every Visual Kei fan should know is that, here in the Japanese music industry, it was X JAPAN who first created the Visual Kei genre. In fact, it was HIDE of X JAPAN who first came up with the term "Visual Kei." Beyond X JAPAN's own individual fame, the EXTASY RECORDS label, established by YOSHIKI of X JAPAN, produced many big name artists and caused a big movement in the Visual Kei scene.

Among the J-Rock and Visual Kei artists active today, there are a huge number of artists who respect X JAPAN. X JAPAN is truly an artist of legendary status. At the time of this writing, X JAPAN has recently become active again and is touring around the world, so we still have a lot to look forward to. If you have the opportunity, I strongly encourage you to experience their music live sometime.

Well, that about wraps up today's entry about X JAPAN.
See you in the next entry!

P.S. Earlier in this entry I essentially told you that we're unable to put certain big name artists on this site because of licensing issues, but I should clarify that this is only the case for right now. As this site grows larger and more popular, artists start to come to us and ask us to put them on the site, and all your favorite big name artists will, too, when this site becomes popular enough.

To make that happen, we're going to keep doing our best to bring you more and more content and cool stuff on the site, but we absolutely need your support. So let's work together to keep this site growing, and make this into a place where J-Rock fans from all over the world can come to connect and enjoy Visual Kei together! OK, now I'm really done, later guys!

Visual Kei artist Kasumi paid us a visit at our office today. Kasumi hasn't been here in a while, so it was good to see him again. For those of you who may not know, Kasumi was the vocal for Visual Kei band SMILE. We've got one of SMILE's music videos (darlin') here on J-Rock TV, so if you're interested go take a look!

Anyway, I wrote that Kasumi “was” the vocal for SMILE because they disbanded late last year. Soon afterwards, though, Kasumi made his solo debut as Kasumi Shinjo. Incidentally, Kasumi hired us to make his first solo music video, and he came over today to see the preview.

Kasumi was happy with the preview, and only some minor revisions were needed. After finishing up with the preview, we showed Kasumi the J-Rock TV site (he had a lot of fun reading everybody's posts on the J-Rock TV forum), and we made an oath that we would go overseas and do a concert event together outside of Japan! So we hope you'll all continue to give us your support so we can make that a reality!

By the way, if you're wondering why Kasumi is covering his head in the pictures, it's because nobody was planning on taking any pictures, and Kasumi's hair wasn't set properly because he was wearing a hat (that's right, J-Rock artists get hat head, too!).

I told him his hair looked fine, but artists are always sensitive about that sort of thing. He said he couldn't let the world see him with bad hair, so we present to you covered-head Kasumi! But I guess that's sorta cute, too.

We'll upload Kasumi Shinjo's new music video to the site as soon as we're done with the final revisions, so be sure to check back soon and take a look!

Later guys!