Hello! I saw Melt-Banana play tonight (10/17/22) and it was fantastic!
I'm happy to share there will be more photo albums from now on! My new phone, a Galaxy Z Flip 4, is very helpful and takes pretty good close-up photos. I'm proud of these, enjoy!
Here are the photos I took at the show, I was front row:
If there's anything you must know about me it's that I constantly find myself interested in the weirdest things for long periods of time. One of these being the early 2000s Japanese kids show Popee The Performer, which I have been obsessed with for over half a decade now. It has been an interest of mine long enough for me to try to do some digging to get merch, but as you can probably assume by the fact that you've 1. likely never heard about it, or 2. have only heard about it in niche internet communities, it is extremely hard to find moderately priced merchandise for.
If you're not familiar, Popee The Performer was a low budget 3D animated Japanese kids show that ran for one year between 2000 and 2001. It had three seasons at 13 episodes each which together come to the grand total of 39 episodes + a New Year's special. The show was created and produced by the husband-and-wife duo Ryuji Masuda and Wakako Masuda with music by Osamu Tezuka. Ryuji was responsible for the plots and directing while Wakako handled the visuals/art/design. It was broadcasted on the kids' station in Japan exclusively.
The simplicity of the designs and premise of the show are truly due to the lack of budget. The Popee Fandom Wiki supplies that the budget of each episode was 100,000 JPY, or around 920$ USD. The plot itself is about a 17-year-old circus apprentice named Popee who is being taught the craft of performing by a purple masked wolf named Kedamono. Popee is notoriously hard to work with and often gets into situations that parallel that of Tom & Jerry in America. There were originally only two characters, the aforementioned Popee and Kedamono, but as time went on and the show progressed there were a few additions including a frog, Popee's biological father Papi, an alien, and a sentient wagon with the head of an elephant. Each episode is self-contained, and the characters die at the end of each one. There is no dialog and most of the noises are royalty free common ones to cut cost. While the show was made for kids in Japan, its contents may be shocking to American audiences. It never saw a release of any kind outside of Japan which makes the secondhand merch from America imported, and thus more expensive.
On my many-year-long mission to obtain Popee merch I always ran into the worth vs. price issue and never ended up buying anything. That is until I recently discovered Buyee, a Japanese proxy service. Buyee is a website where you can search through many Japanese sale websites and purchase things VIA conversion and have them sent from the seller to a warehouse and then to you. I was able to find an awesome deal on there for a Popee theme song CD that also included the limited-edition full soundtrack CD and a pair of Kedamono's boxer shorts. As it was a bundle, and all sold together it was around 30$ USD. A STEAL! The theme song CD Sells for around 70-100$ USD by itself and the full soundtrack CD w/ Kedamono shorts are currently listed for 80-100$ USD
The shipping fee for me was around 20$ on top of the 30$ I spent on the item, so around 50$ in all. The shipping is paid after the item is received at the warehouse from the Japanese seller, so if the seller cancels you are refunded. You cannot be refunded if the item gets to the warehouse and you cannot pay the shipping fee, though, so be careful! I am very excited about my deal but do your research regarding proxy services before making a buy like this.
They unfortunately did not come with their original keychains and secondary OBI paper strips, but they were purchased by the seller at a secondhand shop, so they are in amazing condition despite the missing keychains. They came with everything else they were supposed to upon release, even stickers in the case of the theme song cd!
On July 17th I went to see MC Chris on his farewell tour and ended up falling in love with the openers in the process
The first opener was a local musician, Mayor Wertz. His nerdy music never failed to make me smile, dance, and clap! Like most nerd rap (or similar) it employs the juxtaposition of reality and expectation. This is most apparent in songs like 'Please Leave by Nine' (which you can listen to here) which is about hosting a party and wanting to pass out at 9 PM. It was genuinely funny, lighthearted and relatable. My favorite song he played had to be the finishing song 'Dad Life', though, which is a remixed version of the Home Depot theme with lyrics about things that dads do. It was hilarious. Every time you started to think you could predict it, it'd hit you with an unexpected funny one-liner and keep going. You can listen to Dad Life Here.
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Hello everyone, it's been about a week since I published my first and only blog post, "Ghost Bees' "Demo 2007": The Found Album, And the Elephant in the Room", which goes into detail about twin folk duo Ghost Bees and their history and lost media legacy. Since posting this I have made some discoveries I think are worthwhile to mention in a new post.
First and foremost, I'd like to announce that I have started a new page on my blog dedicated to cataloging every single mention of this band on the web which includes live videos, archived audio performances, music downloads, photos, interviews, etc. I have tried my best to archive all the sites I feel like are vulnerable to takedown, so hopefully none of the links become broken over time. Everything linked here is also linked on my archive page! Please check it out.
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Cover Art by Melissa Federowicz
I figured as my first post here on Bargain Bin Basement I'd explore a more personal and anecdotal piece of lost media that I myself am responsible for uncovering: The topic of today's post is twin folk duo Ghost Bees (also known under their new project's name Tasseomancy, not to be confused with the Ghost Bees album of the same name), and a brief overview of their history, as well as their lost (and found) content.
(PLEASE READ MY UPDATE POST AFTER THIS, AS IT HAS MORE UP-TO-DATE INFO REGARDING THESE LOST SONGS)
In my freshman year of high school, I was in the market for new music to listen to. Spotify was and still is my streaming platform of choice, so I made it a goal to pay attention to the music it was suggesting me. After a while I was recommended a song on an album called Tasseomancy by Ghost Bees. I did not really think much of their music other than the fact I liked and streamed it because it seemed too niche to have that much more information. That was until they disappeared from all streaming platforms a year later. I didn't notice at first, but I eventually started to wonder why songs like 'Vampires Of The West Coast' and 'Tear Tassel Ogre Heart' wouldn't come on shuffle anymore!
See, Ghost Bees was made up of a twin duo: Sari and Romy Lightman, who originally created the project around 2005/2006 and would go on to write/release a single album in 2009 under the name. It honored their great-great grandmother Clara Chernos, who appears on a cake in the album cover while also touching on other folklore they were deeply connected to. Chernos was very intertwined in the art of Tasseomancy, or tea leaf reading due to it being one of her only forms of income and passed it down to the entirety of the Lightman's family. This explains the frequent use of the word in their music ventures.
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Hello! I saw Melt-Banana play tonight (10/17/22) and it was fantastic! I'm happy to share there will be more photo albums from now on! ...
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