re: this whole "naming" thing

For Kurt's sake, my pocket-sized Japanese dictionary defines "onkyo" as "sound, noise". It fits the bill, I suppose.

At The Candyman in Santa Fe, we'd stick Merzbow and Haino Keiji in Rock/Pop and Glenn Branca in Classical so we could sneak them in under the owner's nose. I discovered yesterday that Tower Records in Osaka (the Amemura branch, anyway) has a particularly brilliant filing method: if it's Japanese, and doesn't specifically fit into their J-jazz or J-punk sections (or the somewhat hazy "New Music" display up on the jazz floor), then it's filed alphabetically under J-pop. The results of this are amazing: Merzbow is literally a foot and a half away from Morning Musume (better known to some as the Pocky girls).

-me