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Traxan

Was Motorhead popular in Japan?

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You've all heard about Lemmy's passing by now, I'm sure. Kinda hard to avoid it. They were godly huge in Europe, but I heard very little about Japan from the band and can't remember any tours. Were they popular over there, or was Lemmy a little too, ah, distasteful for the Japanese?

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I know a lot of the Japanese punk and metal bands I follow on facebook and twitter have mentioned his death and how they were inspired by Motorhead so I do think they were popular with the crowd who listens to foreign/english language rock music. 

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Motörhead are very popular in every metal, and some some degree, punk circles, but as far as I know they weren't nearly as big outside of the metal/punk community in Japan, as in e.g Norway, Germany or USA. Not that I really know shit, though. Brilliant band.

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I know they meant well but that was kinda painful. Seeing VK guys cover Motorhead, though, is pretty funny.

 

VK? Tokyo Yankees were basically a Japanese Motorhead copy band.

 

Umes English wasn't great, but I thought it was a fine cover.... Ace of Spades ain't exactly hard to play.

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Of course Ace of Spades, or Motörhead in general, isn't hard to play, but that's beside the point. A cover song isn't automaticly good because you know how to play the song. It has almost nothing to do with it. Motörhead was as much about the attitude as the riffs and music themself, and unless you have some kind of a badass attitude to your yourself and your band, you sholdn't even consider covering Motörhead.

 

I've heard quite a lot of Motörhead covers and I have yet to hear one that's actually good. They're mediocre at best. And I think the Tokyo Yankees cover was pretty bad myself.

 

In general there's a lot more to covering a song than just knowing how to play it, which is why it's so hard to cover even the simplest songs.

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Was that last sentence hard to understand?

 

Let me try one more time: In general there's a lot more to making good cover songs than just knowing how to play it, which is also why it's so hard to make good covers of even the simplest songs. Which again is the reason why 95% of all cover songs of bands such as Bathory, Misfits, Motörhead, Darkthrone, Sex Pistols, Ramones, Venom and whatever band you want to add into the mix rarely surpass mediocre. For most part they don't even manage to reach mediocre. They just suck.

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