Cornelius: Classic or Dud?

Apparently he's been given the boot now, sorry "stepped down"

https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/tokyo-2020-organisers-want-composer-who-apologised-bullying-stay-2021-07-19/

wow. i'd seen the reports but had no idea the composer everyone was talking about was Cornelius - pretty horrible.

yeah it's really weird that a lot of stories don't even mention that he's Cornelius

He's a pretty niche interest outside of Japan tbh

yeah it's really weird that a lot of stories don't even mention that he's Cornelius

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, July 19, 2021 10:11 AM (forty-four seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

i was just reading an article about this and it was mentioned in passing like 2/3 of the way down

Fuck, pretty horrible.

yeah can't imagine he's too well known in the Western world anymore, still a fairly big deal in Japan thanks to Metafive. I wonder how this is being received over there. when this first started making the rounds a year ago one thing I heard a lot was "bullying in Japan has always been out of control"

That's true but this story is fuckin wild

when reading it I assumed it had to be exaggerated, like how do you get away with all that and just casually talk about it in an interview like a fucking psychopath. is he a uniquely awful person or is this one of those "everyone knows the deal" sorta things? idk how even to parse this

Wikipedia does say that he initially "claimed past articles contained exaggerations or mistakes that he had not corrected" (the linked article is in Japanese). Even if that's true, the fact that he wouldn't bother to correct them....

holy shit, i don't know what to say about all this. in some ways i sympathize with the possible overexaggerating story...and i can believe that bullying culture is fucking bonkers, all over the world. people do horrible things, just like their parents did to each other. but holy shit, feces and masturbation. that's a no no

Even if that's true, the fact that he wouldn't bother to correct them....

how exactly do you do this? I don't know how this works when you're not actually being accused of anything, but rather were the one just revealing all this for no reason. like it reminds me of old WWF stars like Ric Flair who talk about their sex lives in ways that imply they've committed a lot of sexual assault but also are possibly just made up or exaggerated. but going back and saying "okay, the masturbation thing isn't true" is not really a good look either. and based on the original story it's not exactly clear if he's the one doing these things or if he was merely witnessing them, and obviously just saying "it wasn't me it was someone else" is kinda shitty too. idk what to say, it's all beyond the pale horrible and the dude is fucking crazy for saying any of this in the first place.

why are we giving him any benefit of the doubt here?

e Ric Flair who talk about their sex lives in ways that imply they've committed a lot of sexual assault but also are possibly just made up or exaggerated

why possibly? i can't even fucking imagine how toxic the world of 80s wrestling was

https://oymdkgo.blogspot.com/2021/07/inquiry-into-behavior-of-keigo-oyamada.html

i mean read how fucking specific and detailed these charming anecdotes are

this ric flair?

tw: sexual assault

http://grantland.com/features/the-wrestler-real-life/

Yeah. If he'd maybe shown the slightest hint of remorse 20 or so years ago, I could maybe rehabilitate him in my own mind? Just not seeing any way to separate this from him this far into his life. Its interesting his own words returned to destroy him.

I saw the headlines on twitter and thought it would be referring to horrible but fairly "standard" bullying, but "forced one boy to eat his own faeces and masturbate in front of other students" is horrifyingly awful and way beyond anything I was anticipating. I also thought there would maybe be room for understanding in terms of, say, imagine it was a culture like a UK boarding school or I dunno, the army - where the culture itself is so rotten you find yourself forced to go along with the tide in order not to be targeted yourself, and vile behaviour is normalised - but from some of those old interviews he seemed to still find it pretty funny. Really fucking disturbing.

Wonder if Metafive will become Metafour in response to the bad publicity?

why are we giving him any benefit of the doubt here?

obviously because I like him a lot as a musician and everything I've read about him seems so at odds with this that my mind is naturally trying to find some way to reconcile it. I mean he talks about it with such a jovial tone, almost as though he's trying to impress the interviewer, and some of the stories are from 2nd grade, so it definitely feels possible that this ain't exactly an accurate account of what actually happened. that said even if you give him a lot of wiggle room he's still a fucking psychopath for talking about it like this in the first place.

I also thought there would maybe be room for understanding in terms of, say, imagine it was a culture like a UK boarding school or I dunno, the army - where the culture itself is so rotten you find yourself forced to go along with the tide in order not to be targeted yourself, and vile behaviour is normalised - but from some of those old interviews he seemed to still find it pretty funny. Really fucking disturbing.

tbf public schools in Japan do seem to be that sort of culture, in the interview he makes it sound like he was one of many people fucking with these kids & there's the kicker at the end where he implies they'd still be friendly with each other which suggests some degree of "that's just how it is here". feels shitty trying to justify this but it's just such a weird and unexpected thing. I'm glad he's finally experiencing some sort of consequence at least

Yeah, sorry, I actually only mentioned the culture thing at all because it did seem to be relevant to an extent, I didn't make that clear. Even with remorse it wouldn't remove culpability, but the older interviews didn't even show much remorse, if any.

That some of this schooling was in "the countryside near Machida" (per blog post with translated interviews above) brought back to mind this mass murder of disabled people in the area
https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/13581711

I worked in public high schools in the area for a couple of years and loved it. There are all sorts of different public schools though. Also the word "public" doesn't appear on the page. I'm wondering if he was in some sort of boarding school, fwiw?

I looked up his bio and i wonder what a Shibuya area (Setagaya) kid was doing in school way on the other end of Tokyo. Also I didn't know he was married to Takako Minekawa.

can't wait for the olympics

I didn't know he was Miki Berenyi's second cousin! And also that her mum (not his) was in You Only Live Twice.

he gets around!

i don't think it is worth much if he was in boarding school. All of it just blows my mind to bits.

I wonder how this is being received in Japan...is he getting a lot of backlash or are people saying "that's just how it is here" ?? like we've been through this cycle but here you're talking about a guy telling on himself in a 25 year old interview about stuff he did 5-10 years before that...idk how something like that gets received

I saw Cornelius had been dropped from the Olympics for childhood bullying incidents but I hadn't seen what those incidents were until now; I really can't fathom that this shit didn't sink him 25 years ago.

I know everyone's understandably focussing on the forced masturbating / faeces eating but "taped a cardboard box around a student's head and poured chalk inside" jumped out as particularly malign and dangerous (assuming a certain level of chalk was in use.) sounds like it would create a sensation not too dissimilar to being waterboarded

that's just how it is here

My public primary school in the US was pretty much exactly like that, developmentally disabled kids had their pants pulled down, were forced to eat bird shit, had wrestling moves "practiced" on them... I witnessed all of that with fascination and also fear, because when the disabled kids weren't around, I fell squarely into the category of "target" for such activities. I've met, in our adulthood, a few people who did such things to me then (i.e. stomping on my bare feet while wearing baseball cleats) and in their minds A. we were friends back then B. everyone did it to everyone and C. school was a blast and you're remembering it wrong. So I find Cornelius' open admission about what he did surprising, but what he did totally unsurprising.

I wonder how this is being received in Japan...is he getting a lot of backlash

there was the pressure on him to step down from the olympics, i think that sure counts as a lot of backlash. it seemed like he'd been facing some minor backlash over it recently after someone dug up those interviews, before he got tapped to contribute to the olympics, which lead to the backlash really blowing up

ya I definitely remember a lot of horrific shit happening between my freshman and junior year that often just got laughed off, stuff that in retrospect was torture/sexual assault. I remember this one very big dude (who later got a massive football scholarship) trying to hump me in the shower as a "joke" and I actually kinda forgot about it until now. I see him every now and then and we have a good chat but in retrospect that was massively fucked up

school was a blast and you're remembering it wrong.

This line of thinking is exactly why I will never, ever take part in any "reunion" for any period of schooling. In fact, I won't even step foot in the town where I went to high school (not that I ever really have any need to do so, but still).

Between the sexism rows at top level, the widespread popular opposition to holding the games, volunteers quitting en masse, athletes announcing they're not coming, and this, the Olympics have really been plagued and I can't help thinking the joke is on the (cliche) Japanese dogged insistence to go ahead with organizing them at any cost.

I'm raising this cause everyone is focusing on Cornelius personality, it's his thread of course and far more serious than embarrassing, but how does an organizing committee for such a large event not assess the reputation and honorability of the key artists involved ? And you get bitten in the ass for your absence of checks a couple of days before the score is due ?

he was only announced to be contributing to the opening ceremony a week ago, and my impression is that this stuff wasn't common knowledge before but someone had dug it up not too long ago & he was getting some backlash online in japan right as they announced he was contributing to the opening ceremony, which made it really blow up. absolutely terrible judgement by the organising committee but it's been disastrous the entire time - even just bringing cornelius in at the last minute is evidence of how badly it's been planned. originally sheena ringo was in charge of the music for it, which would have been perfect, but in late 2020 a new head of the organising committee was installed, who scrapped all the existing plans & forced the existing creative team out. that new head then resigned a few months later after making derogatory comments about a female comedian.

Thanks for those precisions, I had only given a cursory look to the whole affair and I was under the impression he had been working on those scores for some time.

i'm sure he'd been working on stuff for it longer than just this week, but considering the late announcement & the general chaos that's engulfed the planning for the ceremony since covid, i doubt it would have been more than a few months at most.

originally sheena ringo was in charge of the music for it, which would have been perfect, but in late 2020 a new head of the organising committee was installed, who scrapped all the existing plans & forced the existing creative team out

this is the worst and most grievous revelation itt imo

It would be kind of awesome if Cornelius was only given one week to compose the olympics music

Well someone will have to now!

the year the olympics song was just one long trombone note, held as long as possible, getting a little bit more flat with every 5 seconds that pass

the Olympics are a disgusting grift even by sports standards and the IOS are criminal scumbags is how I break it down to an extent

here's just the guy to do it, Karl

https://www.discogs.com/artist/101306-Toshihiro-Koike

oh yeah? how is his lung capacity? i assume as a pro 'boner it's pretty good, but this performer would need to have legendary pipes

can't even imagine what the Cornelius Olympic theme would sound like, all I can picture is the Wii Shop music

Now just in: turn of the director of the opening ceremony to be shown the door over an antisemitic joke in 1998 (!) and a new flurry of official apologies that sound kinda comical themselves by now: "In the short time remaining before the opening ceremony, we offer our deepest apologies for any offence and anguish this matter may have caused to the many people involved in the Olympic Games, as well as to the citizens of Japan and the world". Not sure what difference it makes and how much better everyone feels.

2nd Metafive record has been canned.

"The 2nd ALBUM "META ATEM" (hereinafter referred to as 2 product numbers), which was scheduled to be released on August 11, will be discontinued.

Along with this, the release commemorative talk event scheduled at Tower Records Shibuya will also be cancelled. Please.

In addition, the regular radio program "METAFM" broadcast on InterFM897 will be discontinued due to band activities."

Not surprised... Such a shame. But a lesson to all.

I suspect "discontinued" means "will be released in a few months when this dies down".

the nature of this whole thing is just weird, if he hadn't been tabbed for the Olympics I don't think this would have blown up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5xwwpNwQ70

new album in 2 months

6/28(水)  ニューアルバム「夢中夢 -Dream In Dream-」リリース決定！

6/28 (Wed)  New Album “Dream In Dream” release confirmed!https://t.co/8KUeRIxLCr#夢中夢 #dreamindream #cornelius #コーネリアス #keigooyamada #小山田圭吾 pic.twitter.com/mcwDriKeeu

— Cornelius Info (@cornelius_news) April 25, 2023

that's nice. i really used to like this guy. saw him in concert twice, some of the best concerts i've seen in my life. i don't really see a need to get into how much my queer autistic ass was bullied when i was in school, but i'm probably not going to give this one a listen.

totally understandable of course. I'm not really sure how I feel about it myself, I thought about it when a lot of the Marilyn Manson shit came out and it was revealed that the dude gave a ton of interviews in the 90s where he just admitted to a bunch of over-the-top crimes but no one took it seriously because that was sort of his persona. was this just something people did in the 90s? give interviews where they tried to be as edgy and over the top as possible? obviously this interview was out for decades before anyone even thought to make a big deal out of it. but yeah it's all so blatantly horrible, I can't really listen to any of his stuff the same way anymore.

my suspicion is that it's somewhat true, he probably was a big bully or hung out with people who were, the specific stories I think may have been embelleshed though. I remember hearing that some of his classmates came out and said he was exaggerating some things. also I'm not sure how much we should hold an artist's shitty teen years against them when they're in their 50s. it still feels wrong wanting to hear this. but I'll listen anyway.