GNB is [i]loud.[/i] There's nothing noisy about Toukyou and Seishun Jidai.

I also didn't say "just noisy." I said "noisy and devoid of win," so bad noise. The pointless guitar fuckery works on some occasions (read: Num Ami Dabutz), but a lot of times it's shit. GNB uses noise almost exclusively at the beginning of tracks such as SKOOL KILL and Nippon Hakkyou. Save for those examples (which are used effectively for their gritty punk songs), GNB are not noisy.

Another point of clarification, because I can sense it might come up, is that Mineta sings in a rough way intentionally on some songs. Inu Ningen is not his usual singing voice. Listen to Yoru Ouji to Tsuki no Hime and Toukyou to hear Mineta, and in the former, Abiko singing beautifully.

GNB took me five times longer to get into than NG. Their acoustic tracks are my favorite though.

Back to number girl.

Did Mukai just make up the word "teppuu" (steel/iron wind)? Because I can't ever find it in a dictionary lol.

[quote="Marekenshin"]GNB took me five times longer to get into than NG. Their acoustic tracks are my favorite though.
[/quote]

Then you have no ear for melody. The acoustic tracks are the worst. There's no hope here. Enjoy ur mukaiz.

You can blame me for the whorefest of NG and ZB.

I like GNB. I really do. But I just prefer NG alot more. I think it fits my style more on a personal level than GNB. No doubt GNB has four extremely talented musicians. Mineta is really a great songwriter to be honest. But I feel as though I connect to Mukai's music in NG more than GNB's. I guess all the noisy guitars, distorted bass lines, destructive drumming and ear piercing yells found their place in my brain and blood.

ZB because it's just mad funky. :3

I should say that no GNB convo is complete with out Curren.

[quote="Jomei"][quote="Marekenshin"]GNB took me five times longer to get into than NG. Their acoustic tracks are my favorite though.
[/quote]

Then you have no ear for melody. The acoustic tracks are the worst. There's no hope here. Enjoy ur mukaiz.[/quote]

On the contrary, I have great ear for music, but I have to say that GNB is WAY more shrill, piercing, and noisy than NG, and it's hard to get into the "melody" of a lot of their songs as a result of that. I didn't say I didn't like the other songs, and preferring the acoustic tracks says nothing about what sort of ear I have for a melody, Jomei. It just means that I like those songs better, for whatever reason, mainly because of the vocals and more mellow guitaring.

GNB has everything you listed as positives for NG except that the guitars are loud AND purposeful.

I've tried super hard to like this band, and I've found a few really cool tracks, but the rest don't hold anything of interest to me. Thinliine referred to some intangible substance to their music, but, to me, it's absent more than it's there.

Call me if Zazen puts out an album of Num Ami Dabutzes, but, until that improbable day comes, I'll be waiting for the next Ging Nang Boyz double album that will invariably blow shit up.

[quote="Marekenshin"][quote="Jomei"][quote="Marekenshin"]GNB took me five times longer to get into than NG. Their acoustic tracks are my favorite though.
[/quote]

Then you have no ear for melody. The acoustic tracks are the worst. There's no hope here. Enjoy ur mukaiz.[/quote]

On the contrary, I have great ear for music, but I have to say that GNB is WAY more shrill, piercing, and noisy than NG, and it's hard to get into the "melody" of a lot of their songs as a result of that. I didn't say I didn't like the other songs, and preferring the acoustic tracks says nothing about what sort of ear I have for a melody, Jomei. It just means that I like those songs better, for whatever reason, mainly because of the vocals and more mellow guitaring.[/quote]


You're STILL mistaking loudness for noise. Also, don't put melody in quotes. If you can't recognize that GNB is more melody-focused, then you obviously have no clue what you're talking about.

Take Kimochi. Potentially cool song. BUT WAIT! Stupid random guitar noise and weak vocals. Nice going, Mukai. True genius. The Shiina Ringo version is pretty ace, but notice it takes someone who can actually carry the vocal melody to make it work. Also note the lack of wanky guitar bullshit. You can't possibly tell me that that anything in GNB is more dissonant than that crap.

[quote="Jomei"]Take Kimochi. Potentially cool song. BUT WAIT! Stupid random guitar noise and weak vocals. Nice going, Mukai. True genius.[/quote]

Yeah, random guitar noise sucks, huh? And how much did you love Num-Ami-Dabutz? Of course it works sometimes and not others. I'd agree with you that the dissonance on the studio version of Kimochi really hurts it...but then again, there are a bunch of examples where chaos like that works well. I point to: Friday Night, 6pon no Kurutta Hagane no Shindou, Tattoo Ari's solo, I Wanna Be Your Fuck, the breaks in the live version of Kimochi (with Ringo), the live version of Nekomachi.

It's hit and miss sometimes, but...the one of the main reasons one would be listening to Zazen Boys or Number Girls is because they can both A) handle and B) enjoy some of the chaos and dischord that's inherent in both.

I think the idea that Mukai can't write a decent melody...well, that's straight up bullshit. I've sampled some of Door (Mare sent it to me some days ago) and I've listened to Skool Kill, Nippon Hakkyou, and Nihonjin. While I thought Boys & Girls by Going Steady was pretty good...first impressions of GNB: Sounds like a group of annoying, druken twenty-something Japanese guys getting tortured with spiked baseball bats and fire. That's what I think. I'm not gonna judge anyone of you GNB-lovers for that though.

Seriously. Yeah, it took me a while to get into Number Girl. But at least I didn't think it was completely unlistenable at the time. Oh, and for the record, I think it's somewhat pretentious/not-so-smart to say that NG is extremely "difficult to understand". Do you know Japanese? Do you really know what messages Mukai is trying to convey with his song writing? Sometimes it's so cryptic, even native Japanese don't know. Perhaps you meant simply that it takes longer to warm up to the ideas Number Girl than many other bands.

But yeah. The last page and a half or so were filled with some heavy faggotry on both sides. It boils down to what we all know: People have different fucking music tastes, and it's pointless, futile, and a waste of time to try to convince them that they are "wrong" for enjoying a certain sound. It's like color or food preference. No one is "wrong" for enjoying green instead of blue, or strawberries over kiwis.

It's entertaining to debate the values, weaknesses, strongpoints, and everthing else about certain bands. Comparisons are fine too. Sometimes you can even gain inspiration (musically) simply from discussion. But when it turns into a bitch fight, with claims such as "Liking Mukai proves that you don't know much about interesting melodies", or other BS loaded statements that point at someone's inferiority because of their music taste...that needs to stop.

If you guys still wanna have a contest as to who can out band-fellate the other...make another topic for it. This topic should stick to Number Girl discussion.

Way to oversimplify what people have said. The reason the guitar works in Num Ami Dabutz is that the song isn't about the melody. It's a groove-heavy song, so the dissonance works in this case. Kimochi, on the other hand, works better when focused around the vocal melody (esp. if sung by someone other than Mukai), and the dissonance does not work.

Once again, I must point out that GNB is LOUD and perhaps abrasive, but if you would say that you don't hear an abudance of melody in their music, then you might as well tell me there's no porn on the internet.

Number Girl and Zazen Boys are much less about melodies than Mineta's bands, especially in the latter band.

I'll agree that it comes down to taste, of course, so I still see nothing wrong in my expressing my view that this band is highly overrated.

p.s. uber irony @ calling GNB drunks when Mineta doesn't drink, and Mukai performs drunk according to this thread.

[quote="GoldenRhino"]While I thought Boys & Girls by Going Steady was pretty good...first impressions of GNB: [b]Sounds like[/b] a group of annoying, druken twenty-something Japanese guys getting tortured with spiked baseball bats and fire.[/quote]

And I really don't think that there is much validity at all to knock Mukai's vocals in a comparison where you're backing Ging Nang Boyz.

Mukai really is a pretty damned good singer, especially in their old lives and stuff. the shit on the dvds i just got is totally awesome, and omoide 4 just kicks major ass.

And I take back what I said about his falsetto, Mare. It actually IS pretty good.

Mukai's voice is limited, do doubt. But what matters is that he does a LOT with it, way more than one might expect. And what's this nonsense about melody? NG songs have plenty of it, but it's mostly delivered by Tabuchi's leads, as opposed to Mineta's vocals driving GNB melodies. Melody might be a reason why it took a long time for me to like them - Number Girl is very centered around the driving rhythms between Mukai's strumming, Nakao Kentarou's bass, and Inazawa's drums. They're some of the slickest rhythms I've ever heard in rock music straightforward rock music. On the other hand, GNB does a lot of cool time changes and stuff, which gets them points. Though Zazen has a lot of that, too.

It's difficult to make direct comparisons because Number Girl and Ging Nang Boyz are BOTH the sort of bands you love or hate. As a final note, I hate it when people say one band is "louder" than the other. They're only as loud as I turn up the volume knob. And they're both very noisy at times.

[quote="Thinliine"]As a final note, I hate it when people say one band is "louder" than the other. They're only as loud as I turn up the volume knob. And they're both very noisy at times.[/quote]

Exception - Guitar Wolf: [url]http://www.austinundergroundfilm.com/2006/04/17/guitar-wolf-red-idol/[/url]

[i]Moreover, their ‘99 album, Jet Generation, has been proclaimed the ‘loudest album ever recorded,’ and bears a warning label concerning its sound levels, which are claimed to have [b]“exceeded the theoretical maximum volume possible on compact disc audio.”[/b] One finds, when exploring Guitar Wolf lore, that it quickly becomes difficult to separate this band’s myth from reality.[/i]

What can I say, except that I think you're all way off? Mineta is a superior vocalist. Some of his lives are rough, but, on record, Mukai can't compare. Just listen to Binkan Shounen-tai or songs like Toukyou and compare that to Mukai's best.

I still contend that there is very little melody in NG. I checked out Way?, which Mare sent me, and, while it's better than the average NG song, it is still pretty weak in my opinion.

I admit Zazen has more interesting rhythm than Mineta's bands, but the Boyz beat the Boys in terms of melody. Whereas there MAY be a few melodies in the guitar lines, there are multiple vocal melodies, bass countermelodies, and guitar melodies in Ging Nang Boyz and Going Steady. Songs like Hoshi ni Negai wo and Wakuseikichi Beourufu demonstrate this clearly. Anyone who listens to Mineta's band surely also notices the amazing vocal harmonies between Abiko and Mineta, a key aspect absent from Mukai's groups.

Oh, and GNB's albums ARE louder. At the same volume level, their songs are simply higher decibel. That is fact.

So now that we've established over and over that we disagree, can we drop the comparison?