High and Mighty Color

Some kids from my school played a couple of songs at the Bunkasai (culture festival) and one of them was a cover of a song by a band called High and Mighty Color. It stuck with me and felt sort of familiar. I didn't know why at the time, and I'm still not sure. But it was a catchy tune.

In Japan, there's a video rental chain called Tsutaya. They're sort of the Japanese Blockbuster. Because of the differences in the music industry in Japan, the video shops also rent CDs, including singles. After the rental disks are getting old and no one is renting them anymore, Tsutaya sells them used - cheap. The average CD single in Japan is well over 500yen, and usually gets close to 1000yen, or about $9-$10. Albums are about ¥2500 - ¥3500, depending on the number of disks or if there's a DVD included (a common practice). Imported CD's from America are usually cheaper than domestic CD's. It's crazy. If you ever wondered why you were paying $40 for an import album from Japan, that's why -- they're freakin' expensive.

Anyway...

I was at Tsutaya going thru the used music bin and I found 3 High and Mighty Color singles, along with some singles by Miz (aka Mizrock, aka Watanabe Mizuki) and some Bump of Chicken and Orange Range disks. The singles are ridiculously cheap, like maybe 3 for 100yen or 10 for 500yen. REALLY cheap. So I grabbed 10 disks and took them home.

The singles included the songs "Run*Run*Run" and "Days" (which was the tune my students covered) and I fell in love with those tunes immediately. The b-sides were ok, too, though not as good as the main songs. I picked up some other stuff by them and found their videos on YouTube. They're getting popular in the States because many of their songs have been used in various anime (most notably "Pride" in Gundam Seed Destiny).

HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR - Days
Uploaded by spencer41

Thanks to my friend Patrick (woo! Texas!), I heard about an upcoming concert... so Saturday evening I'm going to Osaka to see High and Mighty Color live! Very excited...

high &mighty color - RUN RUN RUN
Uploaded by futzlecker

If you're into a sort of blend of maybe Linkin Park blending with maybe Kelly Clarkson's better stuff(?) - I dunno, it's Japanese so these genre distinctions blur into all sorts of weirdness - you should check them out. It's power pop with a weird overtone of American rap-rock/post-NuMetal. They're from Okinawa and feature a female vocalist and a male rapper (who tends to use English lyrics).

Oh, and Maki, the singer, is adorable.