Welcome to Gaia! ::

I agree more or less...its so sad because these are the self same kids who wouldn't touch the punk/goth subculture with a ten foot pole until it became the trend to be "subversive."
Painful part is, none of these scene kids really know anything about the authentic gothic and punk subcultures.
They just yoink elements out of context and wear the culture like a cheap mask. And they dont know better than to let marketing moguls lead them by the nose and rape their wallets ruthlessly and needlessly.
I'm still remembering seeing shirts with fake plaid ties sewn on. I pity the person who actually bought a shirt like that.

A cantankerous part of me says "they can do it like we all did, search for it, spend some time and effort to get to know your fandom, invest yourself in it rather than going to your suburban mall and picking up a copy of Cure to squee over and say you love Miyavi when in reality you don't know jack about the genre and the culture it rose out of"

And I dont think Jrock doesnt have a chance here...Jrock won't necessarily sound like American rock and it shouldn't...or else I and many others wouldn't like it.
VK in particular may never take off as America's hospitality to such difference isn't that great, but Japanese artists do get credit here and the future is still untold, maybe a band with roots in VK can take off.

I just hope that the integrity of the band and their work can be maintained if and when their popularity grows in the states.
The way the hype machine works around here is that they usually cheapen and sterilize things to sell to a mass audience. People jump on board to be up with fads.
The music doesn't come out of this process unscathed. They'll be milked and manipulated to fit American standards, with all relevant links to unique Japanese culture bleached out and conveniently discarded.
Its happening with all the other culture we've imported like anime and manga.

I really only have a problem with HT cause of how cheap and meaningless it's become.
To live a subcultural lifestyle at one point was to know who you are and take no prisoners and be comfortable with your choice. There was a kind of spirit of self sufficiency, and a community that understood values.

Today, the way HT interprets subculture is something you can buy and discard like used kleenex. You can be punk for a day, oooh look how subversive you are. Forget that the punk subculture and mentality isn't just about wearing plaid and leather
Kids who shop at HT are usually:
a) scensters who are as quick to pick up a fad as they are to drop it as soon as the american marketing machine tells them something else is popular
b) kids dressing up for some kind of fleeting ocassion in which they metaphorically and physically put on a persona, a costume to be other than who they really are

I dont know how many self respecting people who ascribe to the lifestyle of punk or goth or what not in earnest shop at HT...

HT's hawkeyed marketing honchos wouldn't touch VK with a tenfoot pole unless they thought they could milk suburbanite kiddies for all their worth for it.
What they really think when they see VK "OOH. MONEY."
Not "OOH, what an interesting culture! This is fascinating, let's promote the understanding and exchange of art and culture!"

Cantankerous old me wants VK to stay a subculture, yeah it'd be nice to see these guys live every now and then, but until America can tolerate and understand other cultures without shitting on it, then I'd prefer fans to have to do a little footwork to get what they want. At least this weeds out the people who don't really care.

Yeah, Im posessive about my fandom because I'm serious about it. I grew up with it, I want the magic to still be there years later.

I think jrock has the possibility of becoming bigger if not HUGE in the states. Saying that it doesn't have a chance in America is assuming a lot.
I think it is a part of the basic Japanophile trend these days.
If the marketers didn't see things like anime and manga taking off, they wouldn't look to Japan for their music.
And the fact that the demographic for Japanese music is just about the same as the one for anime and manga, well, there's your proof of the fad right there.

And to clear things up, I dont hate America 'cause its popular to hate America.
I have a rather liberal political standpoint, yes. But I don't like the basic proponents of lasseiz faire, unregulated big business and a society that runs on nothing but profits. It causes a lot of problems across the board for society and the people in it. It makes the rich richer, the poor poorer, shrinks the influence of the middle class, it makes sure that only the ideas of the ruling class are inseminated and reiterated again and again so that no one objects to a status quo that works to keep those in power in power and those without power in their places.
We don't see how widespread and pervasive the effect of such a throttling of our market and media by the self same people (yes, the most powerful corporations also control our media people. Go research Viacom and Clearchannel) because we've become to mired in a culture of money money money and pseudo individualism.
Its an intolerant society that is more plutocratic autocracy than a democracy. We take cultures, don't spend the time to understand them, butcher them and sell them for a profit, then we expect all other cultures the world over to adopt ours without question.

Its not a cool system, it ultimately dumbs people down, numbs them, blinds them to society's problems because the media keeps on flashing pretty lights to keep us distracted from what's going on right under our noses.
We're being taken advantage of, one and all.

Other than my beef about America's problems...
all I want is for Japanese culture to be taken seriously, to be respected.
Not to be something you can go buy and dispose of later.
I dont want Japanese music to be misunderstood by a society that doesn't have the same cultural context as the country that gave birth to VK.
There's a reason why we don't have VK here, to strip a cultural phenomenon of its roots and stick it in a society hostile of difference and change is not encouraging understanding or appreciation.
I don't want jrock to have the value of just another commodity.
I don't want the public to snicker and go "oh its that japanese music again...the stuff those ANIMU fans like...the gay music right, where the boys dress up like girls."
I want to encourage understanding and respect, is all, and the way things are being done now, its really not promoting anything but money mongering.

There is indeed a big chance that J-Rock could become used and abused through HT. Just look at Naruto. I'm not saying the show is bad, I'm just saying that I hate it when the little forth graders who have known nothing about Japanese animation before hand are like "LOL, NARUTO IS SO KEWL!"

It sickens me to think this may happen to J-Rock. I'm all for spreading the fandom, but not for squeezing it for all its worth until is just dies like every other fad.

The reason Hot Topic is selling J-rock stuff is because people have been asking them. People go to their site and request to see J-rock items in stores. So they start putting J-rock magazines, shirts, and CDs into their store. If enough people want it they will sell it because there's a profit in it. They didn't pull it out of the blue.

this is true, i happen to work for the company, and that is actually how it happened.....it was the same way for anime as well....popular sells, thus the reason for merchandise from bands like my chemical suck a** being in there.....

K? I think that was Kagerou.

I have every issue of Cure since... December of last year? Sometime around then.
Only have two issues of Shoxx though. ^^;