Rebecca Black went onto the Tonight Show and stated that she would donate part of her hit single’s sales to help Japan’s recovery from the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster as well as to her school. Awesome.

“Friday” stats:

43,576,32 views

69,159 likes

586,828 dislikes

AKB48′s ‘ε‰ΖŽu’́ (Oya Shizuka) was seen sobbing, when at a fan meet and greet, she received very little attention in comparison to the other 47 girls. She’s famous so she really doesn’t have it as bad as say the girl that has no friends that sits in the back row of class, but it’s still a pretty harsh scenario with all the the pressue the industry places on its idols. I’d offer a hug but I’d probably be charged for it.

Video of the moment here. She breaks down from it all a bit after the 4 min mark. (T_T)

[A.A.A]ŽόŠ§AKB 101105

AKB48′s latest single “Beginner” is currently #2 on Japan’s Billboard 100.

Disclaimer: I was kinda drunk when I typed this and 20mins late, but here are my notes from my mobile in all their erroneous glory!

Despairs aug 4th slims sf
Crowd only five rows deep. JRockRevolution dude fittin outside trying to get comped in.
Shit, I don’t know any thing from after Kamikaze, lol
15 min intermission at the 8:45 mark wtf
Baaaaai! is this korn? 8:59p hella feed back, going with it
Reset hahah. Oh shit again, sorry. Reset x 2
Karyu hella strummin tryin to keep the crowd going, lots of pitch shifting, nice recovery, crowd is hollerin… Nope hey guys. Our computer crashed. Wtf
Here we go, free style Karyu. Oh poor despairs. Zero is mad. Tsukasa is bowed. Karyu is pissed, looping the intro riff.
Comedy. Karyu just walked off. Hizumi is filming the crowd. Zero is misting, arms crossed. Karyu returns. Here we go 9:07p
Baaaaaii!
Track not so bad… they’re playing with hella anger
Forbidden! Fuck yeah!
Hollow!
SIXty‡NINe time!
Born!
Rocked
Hella good slow jam qne it becomes you…
Hizumi: I was inspired by deep deep sea at rest…
Ear hustlein: Nani kore? < Shaggy looking dude with hoe
Super short track!
More redeemer and after stuff I don’t know about
MIRROR!
Garnet!
Curtain down… oh shi- no Murder Freaks, ƒtƒ@ƒVƒYƒ€, žOƒmŒŽ, quarter void… Nooooooooo
950 walk off…
Signing.
We’llllll fuck.

Damn, LA gotta a way better show =/

Baby daddy ‰λ-MIYAVI- is bringing his guitar to North America and rocking on a new tour. Select dates will have events which include meet and greets and all that fare.

NEO TOKYO SAMURAI BLACK WORLD TOUR 2010

-North American Leg-

2010/6/10 San Diego, House of Blues EVENT
2010/6/12 Los Angeles, Club Nokia Live
2010/6/13 Anaheim, The Grove of Anaheim
2010/6/15 San Francisco, The Fillmore EVENT
2010/6/17 Vancouver, Commodore Ballroom EVENT
2010/6/18 Seattle, Showbox
2010/6/19 Portland, Roseland Theater
2010/6/23 Chicago, House of Blues
2010/6 /24 Toronto , Sound Academy
2010/6/25 Boston, Harpers Ferry
2010/6/27 N.Y., The Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza
2010/6/29 Washington, 9:30 Club
2010/7/01 Atlanta, Masquerade
2010/7/03 Dallas, House of Blues EVENT
2010/7/04 Houston,House of Blues EVENT

Source: MySpace / Official

Today (in Japan) is ƒ€ƒbƒN‚Μ“ϊ (MUCC Day)! Released today is their latest single –ρ‘© (yakusoku/promise) which comes in three variants, the standard limited, vanilla, and an anime covered one. Anime version is for ‘MŒυ‚ΜƒiƒCƒgƒŒƒCƒh (Senkou no Night Raid) for which the single is the opening theme for.

VAMPS duo HYDE and K.A.Z are returning stateside for a few select dates before moving on to the rest of their world tour.

As seen on their blog:

VAMPS LIVE 2010 WORLD TOUR

NORTH AMERICA

• FRIDAY, OCT. 1 – AVALON HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES
• SUNDAY, OCT. 3 – THE GREAT AMERICAN MUSIC HALL, SAN FRANCISCO
• SATURDAY, OCT. 9 – ROSELAND BALLROOM, NEW YORK CITY
  (same weekend as the New York Anime Festival and New York Comic Con)

EUROPE

• TUESDAY, OCT. 12 – SALA APOLO, BARCELONA
  (Spain’s National Day, a public holiday)
• SATURDAY, OCT. 16 – ESPACE GRANDE ARCHE, PARIS

ASIA

• SATURDAY, SUNDAY, OCT. 23, 24 – SHANGHAI INTERNATIONAL GYMNASTICS CENTER, SHANGHAI

SOUTH AMERICA

• SATURDAY, NOV. 6 – TEATRO CAUPOLICAN, SANTIAGO

Source: VAMPS Official / VAMPS MySpace

Creator’s of the Rock Band franchise had approached Jrock Revolution asking which Japanese rock bands fans would want to see added to their playable track list. A great opportunity for Japanese music to entertain us, those who don’t live in the land of the rocking sun. Yes. And hell no. Harmonix has glossed over (perhaps accidentally) the fact that JRR is a site dedicated to the promotion of primarily Visual Kei bands. As a listener of VK (I’m listening to 9GOATS BLACK OUT – TANATOS while writing this), I’m not self loathing here, just simply pointing out the fact their question needs to go out to additional people. Results from the JRR fan poll:

1. the GazettE
2. Dir en grey
3. X JAPAN
4. MIYAVI
5. GACKT
6. An Café
7. D’espairsRay
8. Nightmare
9. L’Arc~en~Ciel
10. Versailles ~Philharmonic Quintent~

source

Okay, if Rock Band is going to add a VK Shock Pack with primarily VK artist, then hell yeah! But what I do know about the Rock Band folks is that they try and cover as many genre’s as possible to include as playable tracks as long they are fun to play and, well, rock. If Harmonix is looking for Japanese rock, they looked in the wrong place. Why not talk to the JaME folks or cruise last.fm? Well both are not exclusive to the US Japanese music fanbase. Judging from the reaction to Beatles: Rock Band, global community input would be a plus.

I decided to grab some data from Last.fm.
Ranked by number of listeners and using the larger of numbers for bands listed under different spellings:

1. L’Arc~en~Ciel 11,774,711 plays (184,009 listeners)
2. Dir en grey 22,851,599 plays (180,294 listeners)
3. ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION 9,646,907 plays (157,400 listeners)
4. the pillows 9,488,349 plays (142,707 listeners)
5. X JAPAN 5,395,297 plays (116,097 listeners)
6. GACKT 11,093,197 plays (115,575 listeners)
7. Maximum the Hormone 5,879,766 plays (91,725 listeners)
8. Polysics 2,931,644 plays (87,277 listeners)
9. Nightmare 2,885,468 plays (84,215 listeners)
10. ‰λ-miyavi- 7,955,352 plays (81,931 listeners)
Miyavi 4,348,297 plays (55,203 listeners)
11. Shiina Ringo 5,713,815 plays (80,611 listeners)
12. ƒ€ƒbƒN 8,041,826 plays (78,557 listeners)
13. PUFFY 1,243,935 plays (69,196 listeners)
14. D’espairsRay 7,065,326 plays (65,559 listeners)
15. the GazettE 7,508,947 plays (50,781 listeners)
ƒKƒ[ƒbƒg 7,679,897 plays (63,238 listeners)
16. OLIVIA 2,408,932 plays (62,947 listeners)
17. Mr.Children 3,890,571 plays (61,640 listeners)
18. Dragon Ash 1,382,356 plays (61,568 listeners)
19. B’z 3,797,961 plays (59,996 listeners)
20. GLAY 1,831,737 plays (55,517 listeners)
21. Versailles 1,945,444 plays (43,559 listeners)
22. ‚­‚ι‚θ 3,500,454 plays (36,226 listeners)
23. An Café 1,407,565 plays (32,879 listeners)
ƒAƒ“ƒeƒBƒbƒN-ΰΫΰθ“X- 2,559,837 plays (33,589 listeners)

I just grabbed random artist that tend to be popular in the US. Well not random, I didn’t include hip hop, R&B, or pop which would pepper this list with Ayumi Hamasaki, Utada Hikaru, Kanno Yoko, Johnny’s, and Hello! Project’s. I picked bands that Rock Band would consider.

L’Arc is listed as #9 on JRR’s poll while here they are #1 with three times as many listeners as The Gazette which is their #1. Adding non-visual artist pushes only four of their poll’s artists out of the top 10 which proves that JRR’s poll is still influential and shouldn’t be discounted.

Many Japanese artist are adored outside Japan and I’d love to see them in Rock Band.
I sincerely hope that Harmonix isn’t using only JRR’s community as their only source of possible artist suggestions.
Harmonix, hit up JaME, they tend to cover a wider variety of genres. Also cruise last.fm.
And to the folks at JRR, I still love you! Keep spreading the word on the music we love!

And for me, bands (non-indies)I want to rock the fuck out to on Rock Band:
Dir en grey, MUCC, Blue Hearts, BUCK-TICK, The Tigers, Kuroyume…
Though my last.fm may tell you otherwise.