Category: Videos

Buddy Rich, John Bonham, Yoyoka Soma


The world needs hungry and talented drummers, even if most current music doesn’t employ real drums. There’s a story of past giants, as well as promise for the future laid out in these vids:

There is a self-intro from the girl on the Vimeo page where it was uploaded that wasn’t carried over to the YouTube version embedded above (and it’s a shame that Vimeo has never gotten to the level of reliability of YouTube, since it kicks ass in so many other areas):

My name is Yoyoka Soma. I am 8 year old Japanese drummer.

youtube.com/user/kaneaikaneai

When I was a just small baby, my parents had a home studio and there were various kinds of instruments. My parents were performing music activities as amateur singer-songwriters and they cradled me with their music. When I listened to their songs and guitar performances, I was eager to join them and couldn’t stop beating out a rhythm. That was why I started playing the drums. The drum was the first instrument in which I felt an interest in my life. My parents’ music peers often visited us to play together. I was glued to the powerful and dynamic performances by the drummers. At age 2, I was playing the drums as if I were playing with toys. At age 4, I started performing at concerts. At age 5, my family band “Kaneaiyoyoka” was formed by my parents. We have released 2 self-produced CD albums so far. Not only the drums, I also play the keyboard and perform as a vocalist. I compose lyrics and music as well.

My favorite drummers are John Bonham, Chris Coleman and Benny Greb.

As a drummer, I enjoy being groove, tones and try to support vocalists carefully. My dream is to be the best drummer in the world. In addition, I want to be an artist who can do anything: playing all instruments, recording music, mixing the sound and designing the CD album jackets. As I am aiming at overseas activities, I am studying English conversation. I want to become friends with people all over the world through my musical activities!

As HLAG is a contest only for women, I definitely can’t lose it. I want to be the best female drummer. Thanks to the great support by my family and fans, I can continue the practice and other musical activities. I want to show the best result of my daily practice and come out on top of this contest!

Social Network:
facebook: facebook.com/kaneaiyoyoka/
Twitter: twitter.com/yoyokadrums
web: kaneai.jimdo.com/

Auto-parking Slipper Resort in Japan

Alternate usages:

  • Segways for cats (light load bearing)
  • Go Go Gadget Rollerslips (heavy load bearing)
  • Tech-enabled procreation aid for rapidly aging population (G Parking)
  • Ad-hoc conveyor sushi party set

I wish Nissan would quit spending resources on clickbait and just make better cars… My RB-20 cries itself to sleep every night knowing that its great grandkids are (under) powering ugly hybrid bimbo boxes with whiny CVTs and ridiculous start/stop features.

The Defiant Ones

Took me a while to get around to it, but this is the best documentary, ever. So, so many memories that basically defined my entire youth. In the whole series, there is exactly one album I don’t own, and I’ve used every hip hop album and artist mentioned in a mixtape or live set at some point (oh the time I had before we had kids lol).

I kept buying CDs long after Napster and Audiogalaxy, mostly because of the huge difference in sound quality those days, but I’ve only averaged about one or two per year in the past 10 years.

And I still load the Chronic in between Kendrick and Gucci every once in a while, because it will always be the king of car beats.

Katakana English Song

Japan started a visa exemption program for Thais a few years ago, which successfully created a huge tourism boom. Japan is an ideal destination for Thais that have the money to go on vacation, because although their cultural relevance has been overshadowed by Korea in many sectors here (cosmetics, home electronics, music, tv series, etc.), their image remains strong in others (cars, high end cosmetics, top name electronics, food, manga, etc.), and was much stronger before.

In addition, Japan is perceived as a more friendly and alluring place to visit because of the language (which many Thais can speak a few words of), the food (local versions of which are widely available in Thailand), and the people (who are viewed as a bit stiff, but polite and helpful/friendly). That said, Japanglish is unique and can sound ridiculous, even to the Japanese themselves.

This is a great vid (thx Mark!).

Here’s an alt that will probably be used by my wife’s Japanese section at the uni for a performance at some point in the future, lol:

Our cat ate an enormous spider.

Our cats catch and eat almost anything around our house. I’ve seen them eat rats, mice, squirrels, sparrows, pigeons, geckos, skinks, lizards, frogs, and bugs. The only things they won’t touch are fish from the pond in front of our house and toads, so they really do know what is and isn’t good for them.

The huntsman spider in this video is pretty big, but I’ve seen bigger both inside and outside our house. They are pretty scary and amazingly fast, but I usually try and catch them to release them away from our cats.