Huh this makes sense now
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2025
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Yes this Greentext introduced me to Casiopea and jazz fusion, Mint Jams is still my favorite album of theirs. Other notable works of the genre include Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way, Masayoshi Takanaka’s On Guitar, and ISSEI NORO INSPIRITS’ BEAUTY.
It’s that way in almost every country that isn’t America or America-light. Japan does it in over-the-top performative ways, but pretty much everywhere else, people care about random strangers, people invest time into their days and activities being nice just for the simple pleasure of human stuff and taking time to be a human and be pleasing with other people. Food, gifts, clothing, respect and value for travelers and gestures of good-will. If you’re from America, it feels “normal” here but something is clearly missing, and if you ever spend any length of time overseas you see exactly what it is and how badly wrong things are here, that it is missing.
I’m not trying to be prejudiced about it, just saying that every culture has its good stuff and its failings and not giving a shit about other people or life in general is definitely an American one.
If you’re from America, it feels “normal” here but something is clearly missing, and if you ever spend any length of time overseas you see exactly what it is and how badly wrong things are here, that it is missing.
What's missing is walkability and "third-spaces." Seriously. We are building our cities wrong as a matter of policy and it is absolutely destroying us.
See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/29/extreme-car-dependency-unhappiness-americans
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/2/the-negative-consequences-of-car-dependency
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2024/03/05/all-the-ways-that-cars-harm-our-communities-well-almost-all
Europe took a long stroll in that direction too, but there are some major differences. First, most of their cities were established before cars. Second, they're making more of an active attempt (in some areas) to be walkable again.
In short, in America 75 years is a long time. In Europe, 75 miles (120km) is a long way.
First, most of their cities were established before cars.
That's true for America too, and isn't an excuse. American cities were not built for cars; they were demolished for cars!
For example, downtown Houston, TX in 1957:
vs downtown Houston, TX in 1978:
That's so absurd it almost doesn't seem real
(from my european perspective)
American cities were not built for cars; they were demolished for cars!
You can actually see this in any small town that hasn't seen significant redevelopment since they first paved the streets. Old houses are really close together, small lots, fairly dense development and its only a couple of miles from any part of town to any other part of town, so pretty walkable/bikable by nature
Are those the same location? I can't see any common landmarks
There are some blatant disinformation peddlers on Lemmy and it seems like Grue and yimby should have that reputation because the developed area in the second pic barely overlaps that of the first. How could this be anything but intentional?
Here's a side-by-side with as close as I could get with current imagery:
Identified in each is the 1910 Harris County Courthouse which is many blocks away from the are of the second pic.
Here's a comparison of the two and an intermediate perspective from modern imagery. The approximate area of the two pics are outlined in different colors, and a few buildings that are common in all three have been lettered. These are now some of the smaller buildings in the downtown area. It makes sense that lower-density / less-efficient buildings would be replaced with more modern structures (though one of them was replaced with a park 💚🌳). The implication from initial juxtaposition of the original pics that a bunch of tall buildings were torn down to make parking lots is a flat out lie.
This is an amazing analysis. I really appreciate how you located where the empty parking lots were, and now I can see them in both images. Yep, it definitely looks like the downtown area has only developed somewhat and that nothing was torn down.
I still believe somewhat OPs claim that areas were expanded more for cars than for walkability, but yeah a different set of images would be needed to cement that
Same location, look for the tall white tower with the vertical stripes and balconies, which is in the middle of the bottom photo. Top photo is slightly more zoomed out.
What's 75 years in metric?
2.3652 gigaseconds
I’m Canadian and we’re very America lite.
I grew up in a small town and I miss being young and spending so much time getting to know my neighbours or random people at the diner.
People feel less friendly the last few years, but when you get to know people they are nice. But that consideration for our fellow man is weak lately.
This is why I moved out of a metropolis to a small mountain town. We have our share of assholes and dipshit tourists, but a lot of people genuinely care up here and it's much easier to be of that mindset when you're around people of a similar ilk.
Honestly trumpism killed a lot of that spirit in the small town (and its surrounding towns) that I moved to. Now I'm working on moving back to the large city because then I can join some clubs and maybe find some sense of community that was lost thanks to the "fuck your feelings" crowd.
I've also now had 2 job changes due to layoffs in a row, so I want to move to where there's more job opportunities for the next time a workplace decides to do without me, and not find myself up the proverbial creek and forced to accept another job with an hour+ of commuting each direction
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Not sure what it has to do with America, but the European countries (or people's relationship) I've lived in are extremely far from being that nice.
I’m in Germany, which feels pretty unfriendly to me (and I’m from Connecticut), but there’s still a back current of something. I don’t know if it’s best described as a sense of community, solidarity, or shared humanity, but I work at a bakery (culturally comparable to a diner, imo, and I worked in the US at a few diners) and the clientele as a rule sees me as a person in a way that they didn’t always in the US.
It’s also the first place I’ve worked in a city that didn’t have an oppositional relationship with the local homeless population, because my boss treats them like people, and doesn’t allow anyone to do any differently.
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I sell on ebay and while I don't go that far out of my way I do put a little thank you stamp on the packing slip, make sure everything is packed correctly and I go out of my way to make sure that the item is shipped either same day or next day if they order later in the day. People are always grateful that they get their items so fast. I often sell spare parts for things off of already broken items, but even things like cassette tapes I imagine that they want it for the weekend or it's for a gift for someone.
Oh I love this one. It introduced me to Casiopea and they're a PHENOMENAL band. Which sent me into a hole of finding more stuff like that, and now I love J-Jazz.
Recommendations? Not even limited to J-jazz — I used to do a lot more active music searching and I'm trying to get back into that, part of which involves asking random people who like different music than I do for recs
If you want something a bit different, Gypsy Jazz is really fun. Kinda a jazzy swing sound with a touch of bluegrass/americana mixed in.
My dad's super big into it but the band I always remember is Harmonious Wail
I'm not a huge Japanese jazz aficionado, but this is some stuff I've found over the years and enjoyed:
- Himiko Kikuchi - Flying Beagle
- Masayoshi Takanaka - All Of Me
- Jiro Inagaki - ファンキー・スタッフ (Funky Stuff)
If you like jazzy stuff in general, maybe you'd like:
- Lund Quartet - Lund Quartet
- Portico Quartet - Memory Streams
- Colin Stetson - All This I Do For Glory
- BADBADNOTGOOD - IV
- Snarky Puppy - Lingus
Satellite Lovers was a nice band. Their music sounds so carefree.
https://everynoise.com/engenremap-japanesejazzfusion.html
Everynoise is the website for exploring genres. Warning: Time will fly.
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Oh man thank you for reminding me of casiopea. Haven't listened to them since like early high-school I think. Back into weekly rotation now!
Now I'm curious which tea they got
I'm curious if they left a positive review
I haven’t bought a record in a while but I used to buy a ton and buying used from Japan was always my favorite. It wasn’t like this if you bought from corporate stores obviously but almost every time I bought from just some dude on yahoo auctions or discogs or ebay or whatever I would have a similar experience. Handwritten note, candy, good luck charm from a shrine, etc. almost made up for the astronomical shipping
One time my friend ordered a book from Russia and got similar treatment except they got tea. We made it and it was the most horrible tea we had ever tried in our lives. It came with a sweet letter though so the sentiment was nice
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That album fucking rules. Can also confirm the Japanese vinyl store experience, they love to add personal touches.
Japan does jazz really nice. Look up Soil and Pimp for a more spicy metal jazz experience.
Fun fact: Casiopea released an album last year. It isn't nearly as good, but still cool.
I watched a great Japanese animated film last year about a jazz musician: Blue Giant. Can definitely recommend.
Listening to Dolphin while playing Wave Racer 64
Huh, that’s actually pretty cool music.
A lot of the people doing video game music in the 80s were Casiopea fans, so there is a big overlap between their stuff and game music.
Their track "Countdown" being a very cleae example.
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I think I ordered a Ratatat vinyl from the same seller, or Japanese discogs sellers are just the best. They sent me a free 1970s Japanese city pop vinyl and a bunch of stickers for fun.
That is a good album. Those cats jam, and jam well.
I ran into a live performance they did in 1985 the other day while i was doing yard work. It was really good, they're all phenomenal musicians. The crowd response was nutty, it was cool to see/hear that many people loving the hell out of the music and the band.
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