Martin
Global Moderator
HWI Management Team
Posts: 3,339
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Post by Martin on Apr 3, 2014 18:44:10 GMT
Well,it is as I feared. Today I got the dreaded card through the post asking me for money before the Royal Mail will deliver my album. And once again they have added that £8 "handling charge". I'm getting fed up with being ripped off with out newly privatised postal service. Where is the competing service that the privatisation was supposed to make possible? I know the EU was behind it of course, you can't have a national monopoly that operates in only one country, but where is the competition and how can CDJapan ensure that the cheapest competitor handles the mail they send me? Martin D Hi Martin Nothing to do with privatisation, you would have been charged the £8 prior to this happening.  Cheers Martin |
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Post by martindn on Apr 3, 2014 20:56:19 GMT
Well, Martin, I heard they are now making a profit whereas before privatisation they were losing money. They must be doing something different. Perhaps being a lot more diligent about catching people importing things, but I thought that it was HM costumes and exercise that did that.  Martin D |
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Post by gordon on Apr 3, 2014 22:31:32 GMT
I am afraid that I got hit with the £8 charge and the Vat this time as well,but I had been lucky until now.
Gordon
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hammer
Junior Member 
Posts: 56
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Post by hammer on Apr 4, 2014 7:45:55 GMT
Hi everybody, yes me to, £12.01 extra to pay, but I would say, it was worth it for the pictures in the booklet alone! Glad everybody enjoyed Dublin, it looked a great show. Looking forward to seeing everybody in the near future, I hope. Mike
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Post by martindn on Apr 4, 2014 9:57:02 GMT
Album finally arrived this morning.
Martin D
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Dave
Administrator
HWI Admin
Posts: 7,699
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Post by Dave on Apr 4, 2014 12:23:32 GMT
Hayley and Yukari Miyake will appear on NHK TV on April 8th and will sing "Inori" togeher. You can find some more at below but all are written in Japanese. www.nhk.or.jp/program/utacon/Hello Maya, I'm glad to see that Hayley will soon be back in Japan in concert, on TV and of course with another album release there! I didn't know about the TV appearance so I will move your detailed post into a new thread in the "Hayley in the Media" board where we usually discuss them. Many thanks for the information and for kindly offering to record it for us. Cheers, Dave |
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Post by grant on Apr 4, 2014 17:29:17 GMT
Hi everybody, yes me to, £12.01 extra to pay, but I would say, it was worth it for the pictures in the booklet alone! Glad everybody enjoyed Dublin, it looked a great show. Looking forward to seeing everybody in the near future, I hope. Mike I collected mine this afternoon. I agree, the pictures in the booklet are stunning. Incidentally, I have both the standard and delux versions and can confirm that the pictures in the booklet are identical. Only the cover is different. Best wishes Grant |
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Post by Bamafan on Apr 4, 2014 18:08:36 GMT
Here's a quick pic from the Gate City Plaza website (where Hayley will be giving her free concert):  -Taylor  |
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Post by Libby on Apr 4, 2014 20:30:46 GMT
Do her regular editions normally come with lyrics? And are the CDs the SHM (or whatever), too, or is that only the special editions?
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Post by Bamafan on Apr 4, 2014 20:42:51 GMT
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Post by martindn on Apr 7, 2014 21:26:07 GMT
OK, I'm not going to do a full review. It is a nice collection of songs from throughout Hayley's international career. I enjoy it immensely and am glad I bought it, despite it costing with customs duty and handling charge, approximately four times what I would expect to pay for an album in the UK. It is Hayley and she is worth it. Lovely pictures of Hayley in the sleeve, and her new logo which I hope will be continued. I suppose I have to find something wrong with it.
And unfortunately I did, being the nit picker that I am The lyrics booklet. Some of the lyrics are somewhat inaccurate, and there is no excuse since Hayley's diction these days is superb - you can hear every word. And I'm sure that is true in all those other languages she sings in too.
It starts to go wrong in track 7 Scarborough Fair. Did she really sing "She once was a true love of mine" rather than He, and "tell her" rather than "tell him". Not to my ears. And it gets worse. There is a whole verse in the booklet that Hayley doesn't sing at all, in fact to my knowledge never has sung "Tell her to reap it in a sickle of leather...". I Have
I have heard this from other singers , such as Siobhan Owen, but to my knowledge Hayley has never sung that verse.
On to track 11, Bridge over troubled water. This has the opposite problem the whole of the second verse that Hayley sings is missed out (When you're down and out....). I suppose it sort of makes up for the extra verse in Scarborough Fair.
But the piece de resistance for me is I Believe, track 13, as song I have always loved. This lyric is only vaguely correct. It makes me wonder where the version in the lyrics booklet came from. How "a never ending fear" became "I wonder which one's for me" is incomprehensible. And there are many other errors. To my mind the lyric that Hayley actually sings is far more focused and coherent. "I see where you are coming from cuz I used to be you" where is that in Hayley's version. I have to say I much prefer the lyric that Hayley sings. It is a powerful and moving song, whereas the lyric in the booklet takes away most of its power in some sort of relatively meaningless mishmash.
And something I have come to appreciate, especially since I lost my wife, if how many songs about bereavement Hayley sings. They have been a great comfort to me, and tally in an amazingly accurate way to my own experience. What other singer can do that? This album has nada sousou, a wonderful song on this subject, but there are many others.
Tsubomi, which is not on this album, is a song that I though was OK, I enjoyed it but never really understood. I do now. I always knew it was a song about bereavement, but until I was bereaved myself never understood how profound this song is, perhaps the most profound song Hayley ever wrote or performed. What do you make of the first line "Only now I know of time" Yet now I know exactly what she means. since bereavement can change your whole understanding of what time is, and how eternity is outside of time. As I said it is very deep.
And all that stuff about still feeling your loved one around you after they have died, and seeing them more clearly than ever is absolutely spot on. I can't think of any other song I have ever heard that has described that so well.
Overall this is a nice album, and I'm glad I have it. Well done Hayley and well done Decca. Now how about some new stuff?
Martin D
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Post by Simba on Apr 7, 2014 21:54:50 GMT
Thanks for that Martin, I had to go over the lyrics again to see what you meant, and saw it in a whole new perspective. Very deep lyrics, did Hayley write the lyrics to all songs of HSJS?, I've always liked Hayley's lyrics, they're simple in words yet so deep in meaning. I can feel the genuineness of her emotions through her lyrics, never fancily poetic or unnecessarily meaningless. I think it's a wonderful best of album too, I can see how Summer Rain is finding it's way in almost all (if not all) of her Best of Albums, it's undoubtedly my favourite of Hayley's songs. Infact all of her best of songs are literally the songs I'd suggest people to listen to, with an addition of listen to the wind and some others. It's nice to see that Hayley's favourites and mine are very alike of her songs. This knowledge alone makes me excited for the next album, because if what Hayley likes is what I like, then definitely it's going to be stunning. EDIT: Great Audio Quality, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwHtXolgouo Thanks to franklin we got this amazing video of her performing for the first time. I wonder why she had all these songs unperformed all this while! One of my favourite performances of recent times, I thought Hayley did great! |
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Post by Libby on Apr 9, 2014 4:41:00 GMT
Thanks for that Martin, I had to go over the lyrics again to see what you meant, and saw it in a whole new perspective. Very deep lyrics, did Hayley write the lyrics to all songs of HSJS?, I've always liked Hayley's lyrics, they're simple in words yet so deep in meaning. I can feel the genuineness of her emotions through her lyrics, never fancily poetic or unnecessarily meaningless. We've argued about this on the forum for some time now. Some seem to believe, and sometimes insist, she wrote every word herself. I'm pretty sure these aren't her own original lyrics though, because they are all pre-existing songs. From what I gather, Hayley's versions were translated to English, and then she most likely had a hand in helping to translate it in a way that she liked and that made sense. I certainly don't think she made up a whole new song to an already existing song. I don't think the Japanese fans who are familiar with the songs would like that. In HSJS 1, it specifically lists a certain person who helped Hayley write the lyrics in this way. In HSJS 2, it appears that she may have done it mostly herself, since it doesn't list the other lady's name there. So, I think the answer to your question is: Yes and No. |
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Post by Simba on Apr 9, 2014 7:37:20 GMT
Ofcourse I know the lyrics are translated, I wanted to know if she did it all by herself, because it isn't the literal translation. But I guess you answered that too |
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Post by martindn on Apr 9, 2014 10:51:09 GMT
Yes, I agree with Libby. I suspect that the version of "I Bleive" in the lyrics booklet is a lot closer to the original Japanese than what Hayley sings. Some of the words are the same and some aren't. This is perhaps a bit of an eye opener about where these lyrics came from, translated from the Japanese and then tweaked b Hayley. If that is an example, I have to say I love the way she has change the lyric to make it more focussed and meaningful.
Martin D
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