They do things differently in Japan
Posted by Martin on 26 September 2008 - 10:01pm.
You only need to watch the first 20 seconds of this video to pick out the salient points:
1. What, in heaven's name, is that guitarist playing? Did he really think that this would look cool?
2. The drummer's hairdo. A kind of lunatic goth/ponytail hybrid. Does it have a name?
3. The band calls itself Buck-Tick. Nice. What were they thinking?
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Just a stab in the dark
I'm guessing they were thinking: "We've formed a pop group; let's be a bit wacky. It's what the public – especially the Japanese public – expect of a pop group."
What were you thinking, Martin?
Yes, that makes so much sense
Are you a Buck-Tick fan then?
Hell, yes
Aren't you?
I Confess
To going a little weak-kneed at their thirteenth album, Mona Lisa Overdrive.
Mighty Lawnmower
I think there's general consensus that there are good band names and bad band names. I would suggest that Buck-Tick falls into the latter category. Here are some other bad names (off the top of my head):
Bad Scan
The Kitchen Utensils
The Drug Bugs
Mighty Lawnmower
Orange Syringe
Awkward Entrance
etc., etc.,
Spread Beaver
Now thats a band name,
Nearly as poor as OASIS.
Can't believe I've done this but...
... I looked up:
1) The origin of the name at http://www.calavera.com/btzone/history/1984.shtml where it says they "decided to change the name of the group to 'baku chiku' but spelled it Buck-Tick, meaning firecracker in Japanese". I feel it's not for us to judge Japanese band names.
2) That weird guitar was not exclusive to the band. This kind of "stabilizer neck" was thought to improve sustain and allow a lower action than otherwise possible. It may have been the Sinclair C5 of the guitar world, but it appears to have been well intended.
3) The drummer's hair is the traditional style of the Japanese Shogun Sub-Sect Kazuko-Hoki from which his famly is descended.
(NB In the best 99% True tradition, one of these is entirely made up.)
Baku chiku or Firecracker
Baku chiku or Firecracker are both eminently preferable to Buck-Tick. Isn't it the attempted anglicisation that makes it so naff? I think if I'd wanted to sell records abroad (outside of Japan), I'd have stuck with Baku Chiku.
Sorry, I would have written all of this this in Japanese, but I'm having keyboard problems right now ...
Fair Point
I guess the pretence at Western cultures is roughly equivalent to the attempts of
to appeal in, er, Gothland.
I bet
it took the guitarist ages to get that 'thing' as a lefty.
Who the hell edited this rubbish?
It makes MTV look sedate by comparison.
Perhaps it's personal
Buck-Tick is not a million miles away from Deer Tick (male deer are called bucks). These unpleasant little arachnids cause untold misery here in upstate New York due to the fact that they transmit Lyme's Disease, a potentially devastating disease of the nervous system (although an inordinate fondness for Japanese Bauhaus impersonators has yet to be described among its symptoms).Only been here a few years but I've already found a tick in my armpit and one in my nether regions.
I own a Buck-Tick album...
admittedly given to me by a fanzine writer in Japan, I'm going to dig it out and give it a listen!
Thing is over there, it is the height of fashion to use western words as band names, brand names, T-shirt slogans, advertising, signs, labels - everything! Problem is that they are in dire need of an army of proof-readers as some of the spelling mistakes lead to unintenional hilarity.
It even has it's own name - Japlish or the more politically correct Engrish.
http://www.engrish.com/
I suppose it's like people getting tattoos of Japanese or Chinese characters, thinking it spells their name or something cool like "power" or "energy" when it really means "beef chow mein and egg fried rice please".