Japanese pop star shaves head in apology – for night with boyfriend

As pop star misdemeanours go, Minami Minegishi's was tame in the extreme – breaking her group's strict dating ban to spend a night with her boyfriend.

Yet hours after a magazine published photographs of her leaving his home last month, Minegishi, a member of the wildly popular girl band AKB48, went on to YouTube to issue a tearful apology.

"As a senior member of the group, it is my responsibility to be a role model for younger members," she said, before ending the four-minute mea culpa with a deep, lingering bow.

The most striking thing about her apology, however, was her appearance. She had shaved her head, a traditional act of contrition inJapan, but perhaps a step too far for a 20-year-old woman whose "crime" was to have found herself a boyfriend – 19-year-old Alan Shirahama, a dancer in a boyband.

Minegishi explained she had decided to cut off her long hair immediately after seeing her photograph, her face hidden behind a surgical mask and a baseball cap, in the weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun on Thursday.

Her dramatic gesture underlined the strict rules to which Japan's young pop stars must adhere to project an image of unimpeachable morals.

In the YouTube video, which has been viewed more than 3m times, Minegishi said the assignation has been "thoughtless and immature".

"If it is possible, I wish from the bottom of my heart to stay in the band," she said. "Everything I did is entirely my fault. I am so sorry.

"I don't believe just doing this means I can be forgiven for what I did, but the first thing I thought was that I don't want to quit AKB48."

AKB48's management agency demoted her to "trainee level" starting on Friday, according to the band's official blog.

Full story here

RETROMANIA: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past By Simon Reynolds

Dummy magazine's "The 10 Best Modern Music Books": #1. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction To Its Own Past "There’s no doubting technology’s ability to reproduce and discover art and artists of the past has had an impact on the retrogressive eye of contemporary culture and music. Whether you agree with his polemical tract, Simon Reynolds’s era-defining book is as essential as it gets."

"The best book I read recently is Retromania by Simon Reynolds. It's fantastic. Reading Simon Reynolds is like getting in a warm bath"--Jason Schwartzman, GQ Style

Visit Simon Reynolds Blog

http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk/

Guardian Readers recommend: songs about teenagers – results

Youth is wasted on the young, as jealous old George Bernard Shaw once said. But that didn't seem true of the subjects of many songs you suggested last week. Anyway, with grownups hurling so many brickbats at them, who can blame teenagers for throwing the odd strop?

"It's only teenage wasteland." So sang the Who on Baba O'Riley. Though as RR commenter treefrogdemon says, "Why is it a teenage wasteland? Dunno." But incoherence is part of the teenager's lot, and anyone who's been 15 will feel the uncontained rage in the song, happily rescued from Pete Townshend's abandoned concept album Lifehouse (abandoned because only Townshend understood the concept).

Rock'n'roll began life as music for teenagers, and progenitor Eddie Cochran knew his audience. Teenage Heaven consists of a list of demands that will strike a chord with all disaffected teens: "I want to stay up all night … Just give me some time on my hands/ I want to make my own private plans."

Punk, like rock'n'roll, was to a large extent teenagers making music for teenagers. Hence Teenage Treats by the Wasps, east London youths whose musical career was on the skids before they were old enough to vote.

You've got to hand it to Atari Teenage Riot, whose eponymous debut single gleefully imbued the thrills of rave with the snottiest punk attitude. Rave plays a role too in the Killers' When You Were Young: it's half stadium rock anthem, with a Bruce Springsteen-esque nostalgia for mythical youth, and half house euphoria. And Dire Straits' Romeo and Juliet may be self-consciously "classic", but recasts the age-old tale of star-crossed teen lovers to the rock era in a way even Springsteen must have envied.

The Beach Boys' hymn to teenage solitude, In My Room, was an early attempt by Brian Wilson to create music he described as "teenage symphonies to God". The Beach Boys also recorded So Young, a cover of a 1958 hit by doowoppers the Students. The Ronettes' version is right up there, Ronnie Spector's voice full of not-quite-innocent heartbreak, Phil Spector's production all heavenly strings and choirs of angels.

The Teenagers' F*ck Nicole ("so teenage, so French" as RR regular Japanther says) is full of surprises: backwards verses, superfluous swearing and a Gallic Lou Reed detailing an adolescent career off the rails. But hang on. Japanese popstrels Scandal were nominated by Hoshino Sakura, who says Beauteen's about "being a teenager, pretty and love … the perfect antidote to all the teenage angst from the Smiths!"

No Smiths in this week's playist, but the Flamin' Groovies are in garage rock mode on Teenage Head, focusing on sexual frustration and aggression. First line: "I'm a monster!" And there's more cartoon parent-worrying from the Ramones in Teenage Lobotomy: "Now I guess I'll have to tell 'em/ that I got no cerebellum." A contender, surely, for the best lyric ever. And I loved RR commenter llamalpaca's description of adolescence as portrayed in the Regents' skinny-tie classic 7-Teen: "Knocking on the door of adulthood but not getting in."

Here's the playlist:

Baba O'Riley – The Who

Teenage Heaven – Eddie Cochran

Teenage Treats – The Wasps

ATR – Atari Teenage Riot

When You Were Young (Lindbergh Palace remix) – The Killers

Romeo and Juliet – Dire Straits

In My Room – The Beach Boys

So Young – The Ronettes

F*ck Nicole – The Teenagers

Beauteen – Scandal

Teenage Head – Flamin' Groovies

Teenage Lobotomy – Ramones

7-Teen – The Regents

* Listen to these songs on a YouTube playlist

* Read all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog, from which the songs above are selected

* Here's a Spotify playlist containing readers' recommendations on this theme

• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012

The Sociology of Culture: Everyday Life and the Construction of Meaning

Here are 2 chapters from 'The Sociology of Culture' which you will find useful for applying theory to your coursework and exam assignments. They are concerned with 'Everyday Life and the Construction of Meaning': specifically 'Music and Social Experience' and 'Consumer Culture'. Taking and using a few selective quotes from these sections will add a theoretical perspective to your individual studies and strengthen your critical analysis of cultural practices and products.

PopCult Mag: Online Magazine (Ideas)

Click above to visit site

PopCult is an on-line magazine simply dedicated to pop culture. It is worth a look to get some solid discussion of contemporary artefacts and issues as, for the most part, other magazines are writing about entertainment products, not necessarily "culture." What you typically get in the regular press are articles interviewing celebrities who just happen to be selling something: a new movie, a new CD, a new TV show, or just their own fabulousness. Consequently, most of the media that's described as being about "pop culture" is really about the personalities of famous people.

What comes across in PopCult is a genuine love and interest in popular culture, left-field arts, personal obsessions and a site that actually believes in what it writes about.

Featured Article

Click above to read full article

Extract:

Take a look at your local newsstand and here's what you'll see: racks upon racks of magazines that look almost identical. Whether they focus on music, fashion, cigars, fitness, women, or men, most magazines typically feature a grinning celebrity on the cover peeking out from behind squadrons of coverlines. It wasn't always like this.

From the "golden age" of magazine popularity in the 1920s-'30s and on through to the early '60s, even the most mainstream of magazines tried to lure in readers with distinctive design, original typography, and striking artwork. The cover was considered a canvas–rather than merely a billboard–by groundbreaking art directors like Mehemed Fehmy Agha (Vogue, House & Garden, Vanity Fair), Alexey Brodovitch (Harper's Bazaar), and Eleanor Treacy and Francis Brennan (Fortune). These and other designers of that era transformed magazines into works of art in themselves.

Culture & Identity: Section A Exploration

Cultural icon Morrissey discusses how the media is obsessed with insignificant issues and fails to make valid critical comments on the state of nation, the august riots, contemporary culture and the current music scene in an interview with clashmusic.com. Read it here.

Watch the video below and consider the cultural implications that the song implies and apply similar principles to your individual tastes:

Exploration Chosen Topic: Site B

“Every time you move through a built human environment, a trans-formed physical landscape, you are moving through something like a book or text, a collection of signs whose meaning derives from the intentions of those who made the environment what it is and the cultural ideals and ideas that lie behind those intentions. Simply by living in that environment, one learns and absorbs those meanings. One shapes ones life in accordance with the imperatives the landscapes contain.”

Cultural Studies:

A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION

MICHAEL RYAN

Consider this quote in relation to your 1,000 word Exploration and it may help you in analysing your personal cultural experiences.

If discussing Blur's Glastonbury 2009 performance you must consider: the place (environment), the historical implications of the performance (why they did it?) as well as the actual musical performance on the night. Only then can a TRUE interpretation of the cultural significance of the event be fully understood. 

Subcultures & Postmodernism

The mainstreaming of the 'goth' subculture

Groups: Goths

The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from the 19th century Gothic literature along with horror films and to a lesser extent the BDSMculture.

The goth subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion. The music of the Goth subculture encompasses a number of different styles including Gothic rock, Deathrock, Ethereal, and Neoclassical. Styles of dress within the subculture range from deathrock, punkand Victorian style attire, or combinations of the above, most often with dark attire, makeup and hair.

Source: Wikipedia

Ballet Rocks

Part of the Sky Arts "Ballet Rocks" series, choreographer Jenna Lee creates a dynamic and innovative routine for Bloc Party's 2004 breakthrough song "Banquet".

Blur '13': Songs That Saved My Life

Guardian writers are picking their favourite albums. Here, Miranda Sawyer relates how Blur's '13' helped her through the breakdown of a relationship.

"It pin-points that awful desperation in trying be happy when you're not, that desire to be out of the house and out of your mind when you're all messed up. And it shows that, if you really work, beauty can come out of chaos. It aims high – musically and emotionally – and, for me, it's an inspiration." Miranda Sawyer

Beyoncé v De Keersmaeker: can you copyright a dance move?

Works of art often reference other works of art, so is the Belgian choreographer right to accuse the R&B star of plagiarism in her new music video?

Initially, De Keersmaeker was pretty acid about the whole thing, saying that she'd seen local school kids perform her work better, and expressing amazement at the Beyoncé team's effrontery. "I'm not mad, but this is plagiarism. This is stealing," she told Studio Brussel. And up to a point you have to sympathise with her; the notion of the artist ripped off by the corporate machine is not an edifying one. Petty's attitude is certainly high-handed. "I brought Beyoncé a number of references and we picked some out together. Most were German modern-dance references, believe it or not," she told MTV, possibly under the impression that she was referencing the work of the late Pina Bausch, rather than that of the Belgian (and very much alive) De Keersmaeker.

Read more here.

And she may well be right. Watch Beyoncé's new Countdown video, directed by Adria Petty , and watch Thierry De Mey's 1997 film Rosas Danst Rosas (named after De Keersmaeker's company) and you can see remarkably similar moves in the two works. They're a tiny part of the whole, but they're there.

Media, Culture & 'Dumbing Down' - Morrissey - 'Songs That Saved My Life!'

Cultural icon Morrissey discusses how the media is obsessed with insignificant issues and fails to make valid critical comments on the state of nation, the august riots, contemporary culture and the current music scene in an interview with clashmusic.com. Read it here.

Watch the video below and consider the cultural implications that the song implies: