Japan Jukebox blog: the debut!

Welcome to the brand new Japan Jukebox blog!

I've been meaning to create something like this for a long time. I think it will provide a nice place for us to connect with our listeners in a more laid-back way.

A quick recap for anyone who isn’t familiar with us:

Japan Jukebox is a weekly radio show broadcasted on KRVS 88.7FM. It’s a station based in Lafayette, Louisiana. KRVS also broadcasts us online to a worldwide audience, as well as hosts our shows on-demand. Our show airs every Monday at 11PM (US central time) with encore broadcasts airing Saturday at 3AM.

We started the show back in 2013. At first, the show started with myself and my brother, Cody. As time went on, and the task of creating an interesting playlist every week became a bit daunting, we had several of our friends help us by creating “guest playlists”. Our most frequent contributor was our friend Zack from Houston, who became a regular DJ on the show and the third member of Japan Jukebox.

So, what to expect from this blog? Well, basically I want to give the members of Japan Jukebox a place to share their latest Japanese music finds, recommendations, or other interesting things.

It should be fun. We’ll see how it goes.

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The end of Japan Jukebox

I've neglected this blog for a while, but have been wanting to revive it. I guess the first thing I should address is the ending of our radio show Japan Jukebox, though it is long-overdue. We ran Japan Jukebox from about (over?) 10 years with a new episode every week. It was a labor of love for us, because Japanese music has never been just a "hobby". It has been part of our lives for as long as we can remember. I enjoyed sharing my favorite music and finding a lot of new bands to share on the radio, but the weekly process was pretty overwhelming. It was rare that we would have episodes queued up for broadcast. It was almost always week by week, with the episodes finished and uploaded in the 11th hour. And of course life happens. I have gotten married, had children, become busy with work, etc. With less time to focus on Japan Jukebox, I couldn't guarantee the quality of the show. So, a while back, I limited my role. Without Zach and my brother Cody, the show would ha...

Live report! "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" NINE MILES & Kaminarigumo + Yoshiaki Manabe

On July 14th, Cody and I attended Kaminarigumo's & Yoshiaki Manabe's "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" at Koenji HIGH. This was a particularly special show, because it featured the very first live performance of Yoshiaki Manabe's (from the pillows) "NINE MILES" solo project. For this new incarnation of NINE MILES, Keiji Ueno from Kaminarigumo takes charge of the vocals. Ghoma (also Kaminarigumo) provides keyboard. To start off, I'll write about how the return of NINE MILES and the album "Into the light again" came to be. The revival of NINE MILES started in early 2023 when Yoshiaki Manabe was asked to join Kaminarigumo's summer tour as the support guitarist. Manabe thought it would be an interesting idea to play as NINE MILES as an opening act, and asked the other members if they'd like to do it. He thought it would be nice to have a tour t-shirt for the occasion, so he asked his bandmate from the pillows Sawao Yamanaka ...

Record Store Day 2021

Sunday, June 13th, was Record Store Day 2021 in Japan. I took the following Monday to make a trip to Tower Vinyl in Shinjuku. “Tower Vinyl” is a recent addition to the large Tower Records Shinjuku branch. The store spans four floors with Tower Vinyl being the highest. Tower Vinyl is Tower Records’ first vinyl record exclusive store in Japan. You’d think that Tower Vinyl would be Japanese record heaven, but most of the store is western music. The new Japanese records are contained to a pretty small section and they have a sizable “used” Japanese section. I couldn’t find much that appealed to me in the used section, to be honest. It looked like a lot of enka from the 80’s. Actually, I was most excited to visit after seeing some great deals on Tower Records’ online store. Some of the records on my hit-list were on sale for around 80-90% off. But when I found one of the records I wanted with a full price sticker, I asked the staff if the online sale prices a...

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