Lost in J-Music Media & The Origins of Visual Kei

Refer to that topic, but I wanna go more deeper.
Please drop any “unknown” band information in this topic.

Also I am still searching to the real origin of “visual”.
Since there is a band called “visual scandal” which was formed in 1979~1980.

This topic is for the hidden gems from 1980~1995, to discover much more about the real origin of “visual”. Hide used it, however there were more people using the word “visual” around that time, since there was a band called Visual Scandal. So Hide surely saw the word “visual” somewhere and decided to use it too.

To that kind of “origin” I would like to go back. So anything which leads to the true “grounders” of visual kei, please drop it here.

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15 posts were split to a new topic: Rare J-Music Media

I split this topic into two topics so we can focus on the original prompt @Rui presented. If you have discoveries or any information about visual kei bands after 1995, you should leave it in the Rare J-Music Media topic instead. That same information, but for anything before 1995, should go in here.

So if I’m understanding correctly, this topic should be more about unknown visual kei bands, the first visual kei bands, the origin of the term visual kei, any unknown VHS finds, etc. and the other topic I split out should focus more on “here’s this obscure song/band from a few years ago that I found on an auction and this is the cool stuff on it”.

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yes thats correct, thank you😊

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As far as borrowed english nuance of visual in music area it was in many places in pop music, ex: popular 80s uta-hime and pop magazine called visual, visual magazines etc.
So in the 80s showa era you have lots of that borrowed english and visual overall seemed like a popular borrowed term.

In my experiences hanging around the people from that era like ex.ziggy, X, United, etc. They never really use the term glam as borrowed english in conversations but def did use LA metal and such as a term when bringing up proto vk era :thinking: beyond that it was all Japanese terms.
Could hide have seen some minor band in Tokyo? Possibly, but at that age he was in Yokosuka (pretty far away for a lil kid.) So unlikely and he was already coining and drawing out Y.ST. stuff from a super early age it seems from the museum exhibits I saw.
Likely the pop culture regular usage of Visual to describe multiple things could have influenced him as well as others, plus people in Yokosuka speak and use English alot more because of the American base.
Pretty easy to see direct line from Yokosuka Saver Tiger using Visual & Cult on their fliers/promos to then him being in X and Yoshiki tweaking that and the big break into mainstream from X unto media term etc.
Anything else becomes speculation tbh.

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Then it surely should come from the pop culture then.

When I ask older bandman they always say we never used the word “visual”.
But I always asked myself, then why there was/is a band named “visual scandal” and why Hide started to use it? So it should have been popular around then.

However when I showed that Saver Tiger flyer… bandman kind of said “Well it was a kind of popular word back then”… :rofl:

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focusing on some super obscure band is just big speculative jump~
pretty much covered it in last reply haha ^v^ all these years in the scene in multiple genres can only see that as the natural evolution → showa wasei eigo → saver tiger → X → magazines covering the mainstream boom X created.

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No I asked some bandman who where active in the early 80ties tho.
But somehow it feels they want to give all credits to Hide and not really wanna talk about how things simply really were😅
Xjapan only got covered because the shoxx founder was an xjapan fan… wonder what happened if he never was am xjapan fan :joy:

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am in two bands that have members active from the 80s proto era and both talk about how things were often and no one is really god-washing hide tbh, but everyone gives respect were it is due. How things were is a bit of a different subject then the origin of the term also.
It seems rather like you may have a bias of not wanting it to be some major artist/band though? or rather it is fun to find minor things etc.
in Industrial music there are people who hate on Trent Reznor because he is the face of it maybe haha. I enjoy searching for things too and if the hunt ends it is no longer fun.

X was already established as the hot band to see and already cracked into the major market the year before so~
X got covered because they were the hot new thing that completely broke the walls finally that others were chipping away at.
If the media didnt pick up the Visual Kei term from an X fan media guy that would have been interesting though!
Some overseas fans have a bias against X as often it is with the top dog in a niche genre but gotta give credit to em at least, like how I dont like to listen to the stones but respect their history.

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