Onban Kikou - Vol. 1 Ch. 2 - Nights of a Clandestine Record Seller
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Not that many covers this time, except Rubber Soul. Does anyone recognize the post on the upper left in the basement? Anyway, it's been two weeks since last chapter, but the next one(s) might take longer (I'll be busier the rest of the month). And these chapters can be quite long as you see. I'll upload on Wednesdays whenever they're ready. I might also do the first one or few chapters from Otomachi Record to give you an idea of how it is, though my main focus is on this manga which is currently being serialized.
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Oh those square volumes that I didn't notice the first time are their own thing. Oh and you've even mentioned them.
I'll make the page. What would you say the relation is? “Pre-serialization”? “Shared Universe”? “Same Franchise”? Edit: Page made. In the end, none of the above. I think “Alternate Version” works the best. Open to being convinced of something else. “Shared Universe” certainly if there ends up being any crossover.
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Thanks for the chapter! A nice change of setting on this one.
A couple tidbits:
A lot of western music circulated behind the Iron Curtain in bootleg formats - tapes (magnitizdat) were easier to make, but bootleg records could be made for 78 players on old X-rays. Latvia in the late '60's and early '70's appears to have been much more lax than Russia would have been, though, so having a western record doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility there. The removeable cover may be a legitimate technique from the era, but I also suspect it's a nod to the Beatles' "Yesterday and Today" album in the US, where early copies had a second cover pasted over the original (the so-called 'butcher cover').
The Staggs appear to be a fictional band, unfortunately - I see no entry for a band from this era on Discogs (which tends to be pretty comprehensive). Similarly, no Tetra label appears to exist in this era. And even allowing for some spelling variation I can't come up with a composer named Kravinsky, Latvian or otherwise.
Further rabbit hole - I do have some excellent recordings of modern classical music on Soviet era labels from the mid-'60's on, once the technology caught up - Melodiya was the USSR's state label, but a number of the nominally independent countries also had their own very well regarded labels (Hungaroton and Supraphon in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, for instance). Unlike popular music, there was some exchange of classical artists and recordings across the Iron Curtain throughout the '50's, '60's, and '70's, to the point where several western labels licensed and issued Soviet recordings and vice versa. I also have some recordings made as joint efforts, and one somewhat surreal disc of the Soviet Army Chorus and Band on tour in the west performing, among other things, 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary.'
A couple tidbits:
A lot of western music circulated behind the Iron Curtain in bootleg formats - tapes (magnitizdat) were easier to make, but bootleg records could be made for 78 players on old X-rays. Latvia in the late '60's and early '70's appears to have been much more lax than Russia would have been, though, so having a western record doesn't seem entirely outside the realm of possibility there. The removeable cover may be a legitimate technique from the era, but I also suspect it's a nod to the Beatles' "Yesterday and Today" album in the US, where early copies had a second cover pasted over the original (the so-called 'butcher cover').
The Staggs appear to be a fictional band, unfortunately - I see no entry for a band from this era on Discogs (which tends to be pretty comprehensive). Similarly, no Tetra label appears to exist in this era. And even allowing for some spelling variation I can't come up with a composer named Kravinsky, Latvian or otherwise.
Further rabbit hole - I do have some excellent recordings of modern classical music on Soviet era labels from the mid-'60's on, once the technology caught up - Melodiya was the USSR's state label, but a number of the nominally independent countries also had their own very well regarded labels (Hungaroton and Supraphon in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, for instance). Unlike popular music, there was some exchange of classical artists and recordings across the Iron Curtain throughout the '50's, '60's, and '70's, to the point where several western labels licensed and issued Soviet recordings and vice versa. I also have some recordings made as joint efforts, and one somewhat surreal disc of the Soviet Army Chorus and Band on tour in the west performing, among other things, 'It's a Long Way to Tipperary.'
Again, it looks vaguely familiar, but it's not quite detailed enough to click with me, and with only the one shot of that particular poster, I'm stumped for the moment.
Right, that's tricky. It's not 'pre-serialization' as in "a version of the story from before it was published", as they're completely different stories; but as in stuff that he made before his 'debut' (デビュー前の自主制作漫画). And 'shared-universe' well... kind of, but not really? It’s focused on a record store in modern Japan similar to the one in the first chapter, and it deals with music & records, mentioning a lot of real-life stuff which overlaps with the real album covers drawn here. Technically both take place in our world, but does that really count?
Although most stories here are also standalone, there’s some degree of connection. Next story is also in the 70s but there’s a small link with chapter 1 at the end. Whereas I haven’t seen any outright connections to Otomachi here. So not in name at least, but I’d say a few of the designs are taken from it. Minori from Otomachi Record wears a NEU! jacket like Mayana. They also resemble each other a little, and the store owner somewhat resembles Koyomi's grandpa too. And another girl from Otomachi, Izumi, also wears the same outfit as Koyomi does in chapter 1. Their looks are all slightly different though.
Like he said in the interview, he wanted not only to focus on a store in Japan but to tell stories from all over the world, so he made a new store given this is a different, serialized work. It feels maybe like a spiritual successor or a distant cousin. I don’t really know how you’d “officially” classify that. It's a bit different from things like Devilman 'sequels' or Jojo parts for example.
Funny you should mention that. Volume 2 has another chapter with these characters again, and it’s exactly about bootleg X-ray records. And I didn’t know about the Beatles thing, that’s interesting! The Staggs are indeed fictional though, and mainly inspired by the Beatles (and a pun on Beetles & Stags I believe). But as luck would have it, I actually barely know anything about the Beatles, though the author’s a big fan. Anyway, another reason for making them fictional in addition to stuff mentioned previously, is that it’s a good idea in case of foreign licensing. The Shiori Experience manga hasn’t seen a US release (I believe, partially) since it would also require paying for image rights for Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix… Oh, and Kravinsky is also fictional; name possibly inspired by Stravinsky, while the person on the cover has the same features as Karl Marx.
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Did you see what happened to An Ordinary Light Music Club (“Girl meets Rock!”)? The MANGA Plus page had to be pulled! (They were just translating lyrics faithfully up until that point.) God. What an abuse of copyright. Should be reformed.
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Copyright is weird (he said on the scanlation site...), in part because there isn't a good international standard for some things and national laws differ widely about things like images of public figures, and in part because there are multiple layers for some mediums. A recording may have a bunch of different rights holders (music authorship, lyrical authorship, arranging/production credit agreements, publishing rights, recording rights, performer rights) that have to be accounted for.
Unfortunately, the music industry has a loooooong history of being very protective of any rights they get their hands on - I remember the 'money good, Napster bad' RIAA vs. MP3 days at the turn of the millennium, but if you want to go way back, you can read about the Gershwin family and how litigious they were for decades. Hendrix's estate is an illustrative (though also depressing) example as well - I have a collection of most of the posthumous releases of his work into the mid-70's, and it's a gradual spiral down from his likely intentions for the album he was working on at the time of his death to scraps left on the cutting room floor getting passed off as 'songs'. Every time the rights to his legacy changed hands (and they did several times prior to 2000), the new holders would make another pass to try and squeeze some more milk from that cash cow. The current estate seems pretty protective of anything related to him (as does Cobain's), so yeah, using those images would be problematic in the west.
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