Refraction

I’m about to spend $70+ dollars on three CDs. Of course, they are CORE OF SOUL CDs, so that justifies the cost.

I don’t want to explain to my mother why she’ll have to pay the customs fee for me, though… >_<

Today marks one year to the day that CORE OF SOUL broke up.

I’m still working on that discography. The trip to Quebec last summer delayed my acquisition plans a bit, and then there was that whole surgery thing. Of their albums, I’m still missing Natural Beauty and RAINBOW; as far as their singles go, I still need “Make Me a Woman”, “Purple Sky”, and “AGEHA”. Then there’s the DVD, of course.

And when I get there

How did I manage to stumble across this group which enjoyed only a moderate success in their home country? An mp3 rotation, of course. “FULL MOON PRAYER” and another song—likely “Angel” or “Natural Beauty”— had been offered up for download. For whatever reason, I resisted listening to them for a while—possibly, I’d had other things to do, but when I finally did, I couldn’t help but think, Why did I wait so long?

Volume 上げて歌うよ

It’s hard, even for me, to understand why COS affected me the way they did. Their music would not have been extraordinary by any music critic’s standards. It was a safe, mainstream alternative pop-rock style. I happen to be a fan of that style of music, but there were a ton of other bands that had a similar kind of thing going: Do As Infinity, F.I.R., maybe even Garnet Crow.

夜の月光と共にあなたの窓に届け

None of those groups, though, had Fukiko Nakamura on lead vocals. Her voice encapsulates youth, energy, and joie de vivre more perfectly than any other singer I can think of. From what I’ve read, the girl has a real stage presence (and I believe it!) Even though I don’t understand the songs the first time through (or the second, or the third, for that matter), she sings with such intensity that I’m compelled to translate them.

過去の罪をお許し下さい

Those lyrics have nearly always drawn me in. I’ve often found that the lyrics of the song I’m translating echo sentiments of my life at the time, so that in effect COS songs could make up the soundtrack of my life. Yes, I probably need to listen to more music, but there you go.

私から声を取らないで命を持って行かないで

There’s hope for me yet, though. Fukiko is starting a solo career under the name “LOVE”, and she’s due to release a digital single soon (or has already released it; there seems to be disagreement on a forum about this, probably since none of us are fluent in Japanese)—there’s even a preview of it up on her official site.

Sites like CDBaby.com should seriously not exist. I got there after looking up a singer I heard perform recently; now I’m addicted and just surfing and listening and reading reviews like mad.

How indie music is ♥

So I’ve submitted an online support request to the company, and got a canned response telling me to do all the things I did yesterday. The thing is —
Read the rest of this entry »

I knew I shouldn’t have picked up that mp3 player from Best Buy, but it was only $50…

Of course, now, two months later, the thing has completely crashed on me and freezes at the startup screen.

I got it to replace my aging (but STILL WORKING [except for the volume button], AND NOT FROZEN) 64 MB player. Now I think I might be going back to that one after all, since, guess what: it plays music.

I’m going to go back to my Samsung players now, kthnxbye.

A theme I downloaded from somewhere. I needed a change, and well, since I’m just too lazy to design my own layouts, I used a free theme.

On the other hand, if you liked one of the other ones better, you can still change the theme to something else.

I am debating whether to go to HMV and buy Jean Leloup’s CD along with Regina Spektor’s for $30. Something tells me HMV will go lower on Jean Leloup. 😛

Surpass Hosting has a $1 for a year of hosting deal called ONE LOVE.

This is almost too good to pass up to buy hosting for a CORE OF SOUL tribute site (and LOVE fansite–中村蕗子’s solo artist name). 😀

But I need to think up another domain name, though… hrm…

Je pars demain : mes amis, 保重! On se reverra en mai. ではまたね！