Golden Bomber Appreciation Post

No Music No Life look for Golden Bomber

Wow, it's really been a year since I wrote about Golden Bomber. How should I say this, they did change my view on some things. Even though sometimes their jokes are too mo lei tau for me,  they somehow manage to keep me interested. Their stuff cheers me up during my worst times and more recently I think they gave me a bit more confidence. They rose to fame as the air band that performed Memeshikute which topped the Oricon ranking as number 1. How did such a comedic act of the visual kei industry manage to get the number one spot? Let's be honest, visual kei has always been underground and independent and it feels like for the first time, something underground became mainstream. For those of you who have listened/watched Memeshikute, you know how catchy and addicting it can be.
I really should buy their latest album, No Music No Weapon. I don't know how their cover ties in with the overall concept of the album, but that's kinda expected with Golden Bomber right? I sampled their stuff on iTunes. I think most of their songs sound pretty good. Maybe a few of them don't click well with me. For the most part, I don't feel like Kiryuin Sho is recycling his old songs and just vomiting out stuff. He has a clear cut image of what each song is going to be about. Like for Dance My Generation, it was a throwback to 80's Japanese dance music and to the type of partying lifestyle, but disguised under the lyrics about a guy wanting to catch the attention of a girl. It throws reference to also the economic bubble in the history of Japan where everyone was struggling to get a job. Maybe Sho is trying to make a statement about today? Despite how funny and well put the video was, I couldn't help, but think Sho may be hinting at something.

There's a lot of respect for Sho being that he is the brains of Golden Bomber. He can sing, compose music, write lyrics, and play instruments. I wouldn't be surprised if he said that he directs the PVs as well. Golden Bomber's music has a fairly wide range of genres going from pop rock to ballads to a bit of metal if I believe. I like Sho's vocals personally and it doesn't sound like the overly auto-tune kind of sound. I wonder a lot of times where he gets all his ideas to write lyrics. They have a very well played out story in a lot of their PVs. Behind all the laughs and exaggerated acting, I think Sho's a hard working individual. 

Utahiroba Jun is my favorite member out of everyone. I think his image is that of a nervous and timid person, but he actually is a very good MC for shows. He seems like a very sweet person based on his show, Junko no Heya, and a DVD segment called Exciting Date Plan: Utahiroba Jun. Junko no Heya is a show where Jun interviews guests from popular visual kei bands. He had YOMI of Nightmare for the first episode which I'm sure attracted a lot of viewers. The format and setting is really simple. You can tell by a hand made dartboard Jun "designed". It looks like everything had to be thought up and done by Jun which I think he did a pretty good job at. At times he was genuinely nervous resulting in the slurring of words, but over the course of the episodes he seemed to become more comfortable. Please Jun, do more MC work in the future. And good work on creating dance moves for Golden Bomber.

I don't have a lot to say about Darvish Kenji. I think if I was able to understand his blog, I would probably understand him more. From what I know, Kenji with face paint and without face paint is two different personalities. With face paint, you get a wild Kenji taking on the role of the clown in the band. Well don't they all act like clowns you may ask. Kenji is even crazier. Perhaps he has the most difficult role in the group because you can now attach nudity, mindless screaming, and crazy moves to his image. For a lot of people, I think most would refuse to do these things in fear of ruining their own image. Kenji seems to be pretty damn comfortable in it. Though I think he gained most of his fangirls from his makeup-less shots. Wow, he really is an ikemen under the face paint.

I was at first a big fan of Yutaka Kyan before I switched to JunJun. Kyan reminded me of Stephen Chow and I like to think Golden Bomber are Stephen Chow's successors in the Japanese music industry. Kyan gives me the feeling of the guy that flails his arms to get attention accompanied with a lot of shouting. Like in a clip I saw of the 2011 Japan Expo, it was clear that nobody in the group spoke French. Kyan took out a piece of paper with French pronunciations to read off of. To everyone's delight, Kyan and the audience began to shout "pasteque" over and over again. (It means watermelon.) Sometimes I just like to hear Kyan talk. He gives off a bit of suave and cool feel out of all members.

I hope everyone can give Golden Bomber's music a try. Maybe you can fall in love with their silliness.