(no subject)

[petronia]

...Except the personal playlist burn turned into the following, due to some of the songs having made their way onto former compilations:

La'cryma Christi - Screaming
hide - Honey Blade
Inoran - Conception
X Japan - Rusty Nail
Gackt - 12gatsu no Love Song
L'arc~en~ciel - Driver's High
The Yellow Monkey - Sugar Fix
Lareine - Fuyu Tokyo
Glay - Temptation
Penicillin - Nightmare Before Xmas
Cali=Gari - Tadaima
Luna Sea - Inside You
Siam Shade - Glacial Love
X Japan - Forever Love

It'd be a Christmas album of sorts, if it weren't for the songs about oral sex.

(It also never ceases to amaze me how pretentious some of these people are. ^_^ Four or five of these songs are in the six-minute ballpark. Emotive rock, not techno-trance-remix of this that and the other. 'Forever Love' is nine minutes (forever indeed), granting that the very concept of cutting his ballads down to manageable size must have given Yoshiki swooning fits all over his glass piano. The wonder of it is that it doesn't drive one insane. Genius, she sighs.)

Comments

[juuchan.livejournal.com]

I can't remember a Forever Love version that was over 9 minutes...unless you're using the "since it's a concert recording, we won't cut out the four minutes of cheering and screaming even though the casual listener will be increasingly frustrated" Last Live version.
Which, I believe, is a tugging-at-heartstrings way to let a person sample jrock, provided one bothers to go learn about X Japan. But then again, that's X Japan for you. X Japan's songs usually round out around the 6-10 minute mark, but then again, some of their best work lies there.
And really, Yoshiki would throw a bigger hissy fit if someone tried to cut down Art of Life. I really wonder how long it took to convince him to make a radio edit for that thing.
Oh, and I think hide said Honey Blade was a song about forbidden love, since he was inspired to write it after watching a movie about incest. Quality hide, oral sex on the side, no?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

My rip of the original album clocks in at 8:45. ^^; I meant the genius comment, though. Listening to Toshi's stratospheric voice is like goggling at a kite in the sky (I sing alto, the chorus of Endless Rain strains the top end of my vocal range and makes me drop to the next octave down), and nine minutes barely puts a crick in one's neck.

A song called Art of Life should never have a radio edit. Some forms of pretension need to be given their due, really. :P

...Is that what Honey Blade is supposed to be about, then? I always found the lyrics to that song rather disturbing. As opposed to Sugar Fix, which is also about oral sex, but which just cracks me up.

[juuchan.livejournal.com]

Ah, I stared at my playlist for a while before figuring that you meant the original 8:45 version. I call it the classic version, as opposed to the Last Live version is always heavy on rotation because Toshi's singing is so good and smooth for most of the song, and very much on pitch despite the fact he's crying throughout most of the song. That's what made me go "Wow" and pick the Last Live performance as the best performance of Forever Love (if not for bittersweet sadness of it, and my Japanese speaking friend swears Toshi changed the lyrics when he sang, for Yoshiki-- I couldn't tell, mainly because I can't speak/understand Japanese). Nine minutes isn't too bad, and for all purposes, I'd excuse The Last Song's 11 minute length, because one simply must. It's The Last Song, after all. Art of Life is what I'd call a symphony, because the definition seems to fit. Loosely. ;p
I am also in the alto range, so I can't sing Endless Rain without dropping an octave (I used to think I could sing X Japan songs in the same octave...oh, how I was mistaken). Most of the people I know don't go that high. We can't really laugh at each other when we start dropping out at "Let meeee for-GEEEEET / all of the haaaaaa-ate, all of the saaaaaadness" part. His voice reminds me of the days when I'd stare at the sometimes blue sky and wonder how high one could go. That man's voice....*.* shouldn't be humanly possible (I'd say the same for Yoshiki's drumming, but I know nothing about drumming). X Japan song vocals must be high pitched or else hearing the singer is very difficult. I point the finger at Yoshiki for writing the music like that, and the somewhat painful performance of X with Luna Sea to point out why when you're low-pitched, even singing the rock songs from X hurt.
Yoshiki is a genius, I agree. Anyone who writes music as well as he does deserves lots of cookies. Even my dad, a typical diehard classical fan (for some reason, every Chinese parent knows something about Mozart/Beethoven/Bach's works) admitted that whenever Yoshiki wants to stick a piano in a song, whatever it is, it works. Wanna add a classical piano right in the middle of a rock song? Sure. Pretty too. Makes me wonder why some people get to be virtuosos at two instruments.
I think Honey Blade's lyrics are somewhat disturbing, like the way Genkai Haretsu's "just therapy" line amuses me. ^^But this is hide we're talking about. There's always a hide song talking about sex, or something relating to it. Beauty and Stupid, for instance. Rocket Dive, too (I think he picked up "Adios" from staying in Los Angeles for too long). LEMONed I Scream is simply...psychedelic, for the lack of better words. Easy song to play though, and quite charming. And it's actually in a normal key, which I can't say for Yoshiki.

[flamebyrd]

I have practically every Laruku song ever made in this directory I got from Phillip, but I hardly ever listen to it. Anyway, so I hunted out "Driver's High" and my first thought was "... Initial D Megamix?"

Scary.