Interview with an ex-visual kei record executive

Myuu

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http://www.hellodamage.com/top/2010/03/ ... executive/

SATOH-SAN: But let me tell you something really important. Visual bands – when they start – they have the big hair and costumes, but that is usually not what hey WANTED to do. They want to get famous and play rock music, yes, but the costumes and makeup is a burden to them. Just something to do to get fans, out of desperation. As soon as they get big, they lose all that stuff.

TDR: So it’s not like “Evil corporate label makes band water down their style to cater to mainstream?”

SATOH-SAN: No, quite the opposite. The band guys can’t wait to ditch the hair and costumes. That stuff is heavy to wear. Besides, they want people to appreciate the music, not just the looks.

::gaku::
 

flowersofnight

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This was fascinating, thanks for posting the link. Biggest revelation: that most labels just have one guy who really writes all the bands' music o_O

All the stuff about the labels really makes me wonder how Midi:Nette ever made it as a standalone (?) entity. But then again, Malice Mizer seems to have been an exception in pretty much everything they did.
 

Garnet in the Eden

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Visual kei has always been so boring to me. I was never interested in Malice Mizer's costumes or anything like that... I just don't get it. I think it's really stupid and naive really. And the fans always seem to buy into the whole "the costumes convey the world they are trying to portray!" stuff when it's clear that primarily, the costumes are simply to draw attention so they get more listeners.
 

Einherjer

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oh so this means RES wasn't into cross dressing. what a relief :grin:
 

shazzer

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Hmm some stuff is interesting but sometimes the executive is not really telling the truth. To be honest, the dude that has to write for a lot of bands in a label. On the one hand, it is his job but on the other hand, what about people working for newspapers? I had a teacher who worked for 3! different newspapers for which he had to write several articles per week, he had to do our classes and other work.
My film lecturer wrote books, screenplays, reviews, newspaperarticles. Many writers write one or two books per month just in case they might write one that is good enough for being printed. People in my department had to write 300 pages for their creative writing course. Somehow I wonder why they weren't drug addicted. If you do need drugs for finishing texts you have the wrong job.

Edit: also saying that most jrocker are not really bright and have a difficult background is a bit hmmm. Ok, some jrocker give really funny interviews, in which they show the reader that they are somewhat illiterate but quite a lot of them are quite clever.

Besides that, I would feel sorry for the person who was in charge of all Key Party Bands. What was his concept? Get a bunch of wiredos and make them scream in many different ways? ::meev::
 

flowersofnight

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shazzer wrote:
To be honest, the dude that has to write for a lot of bands in a label. On the one hand, it is his job but on the other hand, what about people working for newspapers? I had a teacher who worked for 3! different newspapers for which he had to write several articles per week
But he didn't write them under other people's names, right? XD
 

shazzer

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Hmm he had a couple of fake names because some "celebrities" blacklisted him. (he once got kicked out of the tour bus of FC Bayern München because he got on the nerves of a couple of soccer players).
 

Haruna_Kamimura

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Jeez, that was pretty revealing. Thanks for posting it!

But, damn! Can't resist it! I must buy every maxi-single, lol.

I don't know if distibute this or not. It'd cause a lot of butthurt, because most of my vk-fan friends are a lot like the agressive kind.
 

Dogfight

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As for as I am concerned that article is an obvious hoax. First of all the man never reveals his real name. That's the first give away that this article is an authority appeal. There is no way we can know whether this is a real industry executive or some random jerk off the street. It s the perfect way to lie! You can claim just about anything and simply someone big and important said it was true. Next most of his claims are completely unverifiable. Which makes this whole article unreliable claims coming from an unreliable source. Not only that but many of his claims are contradicted by commonly known facts.
 

adonis

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Wow, Pretty interesting interview!
Gosh, I didn't know about the ANTI-FAN thing, it's quite scary and completely pathetic! ::kisaki::

Great, now I know what means SE =D
 

VKHistorian

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I'll warn you, this is going to be a long post and it will probably make me look quite petty and nitpicky. (and if this turns out to be an elaborate trolling attempt or something (unlikely, but still...) then I will look like a total fool as well)

I saw this a couple of days ago. Considered posting it here but didn't because I had suspicions it would start an argument. :grin: Visual Kei is a dodgy topic at the best of times, and I didn't want a flame war on my hands.
Me... I'm committing it to memory but ignoring it for now. I've read comments by some people discarding the entire interview as lies and other by people who assume it's all true, and I'm not sure who's being more daft. Yes, it's pretty convincing and a lot of it makes sense, but I don't feel it can stand as concrete fact on it's own merits for a few reasons...

1) Probably the most important thing is that this is an anonymous interview. We have no idea who 'Mr Satoh' is- he didn't name the company he supposedly belonged to and he gave away no other personal details. There is no way we can check this guy's legit. And even assuming he is who he says he is... what are his motives for doing this? He may be 100% genuine, or he may have an agenda the size of the moon. How do we know either way?

2) He claims to be risking his life/health (it's never made completely clear) to whistle-blow. This is a bit suspicious for two reasons. Firstly, the claim "They'll harm me if they find out about this" sets off my alarm bells because, unless you're calling out a dictator's corrupt regime or giving away classified government information, I don't buy it. Companies can be corrupt as sin, but I find it a big stretch to believe that it's par the course for them to kill or injure anyone who falls out with them.
The other point is that if we assume Mr. Satoh is completely honest, it begs the question as to why he's spilling all this out in some random blog- a blog which just sat on his information for nearly 2 years, as it happens. If I was going to risk my health to whistle-blow, then I would want to make sure it was worth my while. I can give him the benefit of the doubt with regards to going foriegn (according to him, ALL Japanese media is equally corrupt) but... why not talk to a foriegn newspaper, or at least a tabloid or magazine? Why not talk where you know you'll be heard by loads of people who care about what you have to say? Why choose an obscure online blog? It doesn't make much sense.

3) One of the strangest things about it is that it is both detailed and vague. Mr. Satoh seems very clear about what happened, but he doesn't say very much at all about when it happened, how often it happened and who in particular was involved. He drops names all over the place, but if you look you'll see that, usually, whenever he mentions specific people it's either to tell you an established fact you knew anyway or to give you some pointless trivia that is in no way relevant.
The weird thing about this though is that when he does name names, it's well... a bit random. First of all, he comes very close indeed to dropping Yoshiki Hayashi and Dynamite Tommy- two people who could probably sue him to hell and back if they wanted to- in it up to their necks, yet refuses to talk about a specific case relating to an unnamed band in case he gets hurt. Also, on the one occasion he does make a clear accusation towards a specific person (Kamijo), he falls flat on his face. If you're trying to back up your point by pointing out how every artist on Sherow sounds like Malice Mizer then excuse me if I begin to doubt you, because no artists on Sherow sound like Malice Mizer. A couple of them take influences from Malice Mizer in terms of visuals, but all bands take influence from other bands so that means nothing.
Apparently bloody Chariots had a short stint with Sherow, for crying out loud, and if you think they sound like MM you would be best off investing in a pair of ears.
To be fair though, I blame the interviewer for this more than Mr. Satoh. It wasn't Satoh's fault that the interviewer didn't even try to press him for names and dates, never attempted to trip him up and rarely pointed out claims that sounded dodgy. Now it's fine to be casual and chatty and joke about jockeys and marmots in a casual interview- but this is quite a revelation Satoh has here, and the interviewer should have made an effort to prove to the audience that he was telling the truth- especially as it was an anon interview, and therefore less reliable.

4) MM and Midi:nette. Yeah, this is random, but this article seems to suggest that nobody can start their own record label in the VK scene without a bigger label taking partial control of it. Nowhere can I find any evidence that Midi:nette has anything to do with either Extasy or Free Will (the two companies which apparently own everything), so it clearly can be done. Also Malice Mizer themselves... now maybe it's just me, but they, with their numerous genre changes, were way too elaborate to be a band just churned out for money, especially if the person writing for them was also writing for tons of other bands. Also, if you've got a cash-cow bands to write for and market to the lowest common denominator (in this case, fangirlies) then why would you make them more complicated than necessary? Why change their genre or give them over-elaborate concepts when you don't have to? Think about it.

Also I've looked, and I can't find anything about Columbia having anything to do with Free Will or Extasy Records either. Just to say before someone asks.';)'

5) How exactly do you go about blacklisting someone from music? If they choose to start again with a different band and under a different name then how do you stop them? Also I can't see any evidence of people being prevented from leaving companies by choice. PSC are clearly corporate as sin (there isn't much said in this interview that I wouldn't believe of them- they recycle stage costumes and don't even bother trying to hide it) and Miyavi managed to leave them in one piece. If you can get out of PSC you can probably get out of anywhere without having people stand in your way too much.

6) Not a criticism, but Mr. Satoh doesn't seem to deny that some bands don't all fall into these label traps (apparently some people get violent over head-hunting attempts, for example), and I would be very interested to know who.

For the sake of fairness, here are some of the things I do believe- often because they're as good as stating the obvious.:grin:

1) The part about headhunting needn't even have been mentioned. Everyone knows that happens- and not always by companies. Sometimes yes, it's professional talent scouts, sometimes it's bandleaders from rival bands. But it goes on. Nobody can question it.
I'd also say that this is, indeed, a possible reason for a lot of the fickleness in the VK scene.

2) There is corruption in all industries, not just media related ones and certainly not just in Japan, although the East Asian music industries are pretty notorious. Look at Korean pop labels- some of them are known to have slave contracts similar to what is outlined in this interview. And practically all major record companies are known to be corporate-minded and disliking of creativity. Is it really so much of a stretch to think that some niche or indie companies have the same sort of mindset? I don't think so.

3) Some of the points made in the interview do make sense. For example, the idea that bands get forcibly broken up after a few years if they don't do well enough does make sense, because a lot of bands do break up soon and reform. The lack of personal information that gets given away also matches up.

So yeah, I'm not discarding it by any means, but I'm going to forget about it until/unless someone else comes forward and makes the same claim, because this interview could add credit to that. But as it stands, it's not solid enough to be taken seriously by itself. You get anonymous people making claims based on supposed 'inside knowledge' all the time, and half of them contradict the other half. The only difference between those people and this man is that this man is more elaborate and has managed to secure an interview. He isn't inherently any more reliable, I'm afraid.

Oh well. All I have left to say is that in one of the many Repo!The Genetic Opera backstage clips, Yoshiki was labelled as 'Evil Mastermind'. Hmm...
Just a thought to leave you with. :cool: [/i]
 

VKHistorian

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adonis wrote:
Wow, Pretty interesting interview!
Gosh, I didn't know about the ANTI-FAN thing, it's quite scary and completely pathetic! ::kisaki::

Great, now I know what means SE =D

I did. Anyone who's spent any time around sports fans will know about that.

There are two main football (as in soccer to US English speakers) teams round my area- Portsmouth (Pompey) and Southampton (Saints) One of the lines in one of the Southampton fan songs is "shoot the Pompey scum".:kisaki:. Yeah, it's mostly jokey, but sometimes... well, where do you think this ::foot:: emoticon comes from?
 

VKHistorian

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Dogfight wrote:
As for as I am concerned that article is an obvious hoax. First of all the man never reveals his real name. That's the first give away that this article is an authority appeal. There is no way we can know whether this is a real industry executive or some random jerk off the street. It s the perfect way to lie! You can claim just about anything and simply someone big and important said it was true. Next most of his claims are completely unverifiable. Which makes this whole article unreliable claims coming from an unreliable source. Not only that but many of his claims are contradicted by commonly known facts.

Exactly. I've always thought that it's possible to make people believe any old rubbish as long as you sound convincing and stick to your story long enough.
 

Geisha

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Garnet in the Eden wrote:
Visual kei has always been so boring to me. I was never interested in Malice Mizer's costumes or anything like that... I just don't get it. I think it's really stupid and naive really. And the fans always seem to buy into the whole "the costumes convey the world they are trying to portray!" stuff when it's clear that primarily, the costumes are simply to draw attention so they get more listeners.
This is probably true of many bands, which explains why VK is full of unimaginative copycats, but there are also bands who really do view their visuals as a way of getting a message across.
 

Berserk

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No wonder so many VK bands absolutely suck. One guy determining their look, writing all of their songs, and he's doing this for ten bands at a time? I believe it, though. It explains a lot.

Lazy-ass hacks.

EDIT: If this is a hoax, this guy is a pro-writer. This is too fascinating. Also, what Satoh says about the "bad boys" and "they do whatever is needed. And when I say ‘whatever’, I’m not talking about office work. That’s why I’m using a pseudonym for this interview!", it reminds me of when Közi mentioned in an interview the "sleazy Tokyo jobs" he had to do to support himself before Malice made it XD
 

Amatsu

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this is such bullshit. :lol:

It might be partially true, but it certainly can't be the whole business imo. :|
 

Berserk

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I think it's too specific and detailed to be bullshit.

Maybe it's not the whole business, but it doesn't sound like he's pulling it out of his ass.
 

Amatsu

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In any case, I'd like to hear what Elec has to say about this.
 

Berserk

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Yeah, me too. He'll probably put a reality check on it all.


But damn. I have to wonder how applicable that "contract padding" and "shadow-owning" bit is applicable to Mana :shock:

I never considered that owning all the different "companies" responsible for production could have that kind of sneaky, tax evasion perk.

This also makes me wonder more about the role Yukie Itoh has played over the years...
 
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