Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

Sadly, things have gotten stagnant here at the Pagoda. Trying to complete my first novel probably doesn’t help matters. I only recently passed the 100,000-point mark on Monday evening, a mark I should have passed at least six weeks ago, and was hoping to have completed the first draft by then (I still intend to have it done by Labor Day).

So, this means an end of an era. This will be the last post at Stuck In A Pagoda.

Thankfully, a change of scenery and a light at the end of the tunnel are within sight. Follow me….

The following was just sent to myself (amongst)) others from Stooges bassist Mike Watt. Please disseminate this far and wide.

---

if anyone has information, ANY INFORMATION!
please, please, PLEASE as soon as possible contact
Eric Fischer at:
nycentral13@gmail.com
cell phone: +1 646 932 1907

PLEASE FORWARD AS FAR AND WIDE AND AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!!!

IGGY AND THE STOOGES
EQUIPMENT STOLEN ON AUGUST 4, 2008
OUTSIDE THE EMBASSY SUITES HOTEL
208 SAINT ANTOINE OUEST,
MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA

all equipment was in a rented penske 15 foot yellow truck
with u.s. (michigan) license plate number AC46493
and the theft had to have happened in the morning,
between 6:30 and 7:30 am

there’s a web page at:

http://www.hootpage.com/stoogesstolenstuff/stoogesstolenstuff.html

that will soon have pictures and updates to more stuff found missing

Item Country of Origin Serial Number

Red roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Red Gibson 1963 EB-3 bass (this is mike watt’s bass!) USA
No serial number

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Reverend Flying V guitar - Volcano black USA #08001

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Reverend Orange guitar USA 03416 ZSL7

Black fibre case containg: USA No serial number
Gibson red SG short scale bass USA No serial number

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Marshall Vintage/Modern Amplifier UK M-2007-07-0926-2 RoHS

Black roadcase containing: USA No serial number
Marshall Vintage/Modern Amplifier UK M-2007-07-0927-2 RoHS

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #1 Slant:
M-2007-05-0149-0

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #2 Straight:
M-2006-49-0380-0

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #3 Slant:
M-2007-05-0150-0

4x Marshall 4×12 Cabinets (with Tuki cover) UK #4 Straight:
M-2006-49-0381-0

Orange Calzone road case containing:
Guitar pedal board and pedals USA/Japan No serial number
Assorted leads USA/UK No serial number
2x mic stands Germany No serial number
Assorted strings and spares USA No serial number
plus:
2x Boss TU2 Chromatic Tuner
Boss CH1 Super Chorus
Fulltone OCD Overdrive
Crybaby Wah
Peterson Strobo-Stomp Tuner Pedal
Whirlwind A/B Boxes
Whirlwind Cable Tester
and many many istrument cables
various tools ( screwdrivers, soldering iron, pliers, etc… )
tambourine and maracas

Cardboard box containing:
Assorted replacement drum heads USA No serial number

Gretsch Silver Sparkle Catalina drum kit USA No serial number
26″ Kick Drum No serial number
13″ Rack Tom No serial number
18″ Floor Tom No serial number
4x Cymbal Stands No serial number
1x Snare Stand No serial number
1x Hi Hat Stand No serial number
1x Drum Throne No serial number

Eden D810 Bass cabinet USA D810RP4 0703E5001

Eden D810 Bass cabinet USA D810RP4 0703E5002

Cardboard box containg:
Eden VT300 Bass amplifier USA 0601E5115

Cardboard box containg:
Eden VT300 Bass amplifier USA 0507E5033

Floor Fan CHINA No serial number

Floor Fan CHINA No serial number

Green clamshell suitcase containing:
Yamaha snare drum JAPAN No serial number
Yahama kick pedal JAPAN No serial number
Zildjian Mega Bell cymbal USA No serial number
Zildjian 15″ Hi-Hats USA No serial number
3x Zildjian 18″ 19″ 20″ crash medium cymbals USA No serial number

Brown Epiphone guitar case:
Black Epiphone EB3 short scale bass KOREA F300503

PLEASE FORWARD AS FAR AND WIDE AND AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE!!!

if anyone has information, ANY INFORMATION!
please, please, PLEASE as soon as possible contact
Eric Fischer at:
nycentral13@gmail.com
cell phone: +1 646 932 1907

can you believe this shit?

When I reviewed all three of SCANDAL’s singles back in May, I concluded my review by noting simply, “A full-length album from these young ladies cannot come soon enough.” Given the reactions of some of my comrades and readers, I am not the only one.

Well, to paraphrase one Stephen Morrissey, “soon” is now. Or at least August 8th:

Bonus points for emulating the Beatles’ Let It Be album cover.

CD Japan, YesAsia and HMV Japan are your hook-ups.

It’s been a busy time of novel writing and trying to decide on a new design here, so my apologies for the inactivity here.

Two parts of my musical world collided when I stumbled across this on YouTube yesterday: A video combining screencaps from Berryz Koubou’s “Waracchaou yo BOYFRIEND” PV with one of Peter Schickele’s better PDQ Bach creations, the “1712 Overture”.

I saw Mr. Schickele when he was touring behind the 1712 Overture album in 1989, and this was one of the pieces he did that night, “The Farmer On The Dole” from the Four Folk Song Upsettings (which would end up on a later PDQ Bach album).

Stumbled across this clip while doing a little research for the Vinyl Pagoda Project. Don’t know what the TV show was or when this clip aired, but here Ayumi Hamasaki teams up with old-school J-Pop legend Akina Nakamori for a rendition of the latter’s controversial 1978 single “Shojo A”.

Yes, we will be hearing from Naka-san in the process of the VPP. but probably not until I decide on a final blog redesign for here. (If you can help, please e-mail me.)

ETA: Kd, formerly of Iro Iro Aru Sa!, tells me that this clip is from Ayu’s television show AYU READY?. which aired on Fuji TV for about a year and a half, and live collaborations like this were a regular part of the show (see her comment below).

I’m experimenting with a theme that may or may not be fully adapted to this blog, and may also be used on another project I’m planning.

There’s also going to be a couple of special changes coming to this blog this week.

That’s all for now. Sorry for being out of circulation the past week; hopefully everyone is still out there ’cause I’m still in here.

ARTIST: Tetsuya Ryu
SINGLE: “Okuhida Bakujyo” c/w “Se Se Rago No Yado”
STYLE: Enka
LABEL: Trio
SOURCE: retail single, 3B-177
YEAR: 1980
DOWNLOAD: Full single (ZIP file, 256kbps mp3)

From what I have been able to gather - which unfortunately isn’t much - Tetsuya Ryu wrote the song “Okuhida Bakujyo” (”Longing For Okuhida”) on his own (lyrics and music) and found himself having what is apparently his only hit single, selling over 130,000 copies. In a culture (the Japanese pop world) where the stars are supposed to look as good as they sound, Tetsuya Ryu looks like the Japanese edition of Joe Average: the kind of person that works his butt off as a salaryman during the week and then goes out on the weekends to grab the mic at his favorite karaoke house and belt out a few tunes. In short, a seemingly unlikely pop star.

Both “Okuhida Bakujyo” and its B-side, “Su Su Ragi No Yado” (”Inn Of Babble”), are typical, pretty, male-led enka ballads, heavy on the emotional vocal. In 1980, the year this song came out, he was named Best New Artist on Besuto hitto kay?sai, earning him some Japanese TV appearances like this one:

The song seems to show up only on compilations, but of late there are three other CD singles that this gentleman has released in recent years on independent labels, including a remake of “Okuhida Bakujyo”. Apparently this remake appears on the soundtrack to the film The Cats Of Mirikitani, which aired recently on PBS.

While Ryu hasn’t been able to duplicate the success of his 28-year-old hit, it’s apparently still a karaoke favorite in Japan:

If anyone knows anything else about this guy, I’d like to know.

The scan of the picture sleeve is courtesy of Snow Records Japan..
Please read the disclaimer if downloading the mp3 files.

“There should only be one version of the National Anthem - Jimi Hendrix’s version from Woodstock.” - Henry Rollins

The Vinyl Pagoda Project will resume Sunday night or Monday morning (just in time for Tanbata) - I was going to post one of the installments late night but didn’t have the energy, and I’m going to be away with my fiancee most of today. Be safe out there, will ya?

Finally had a chance to see the new Berryz Koubou PV for the first time. I’d heard about the monkey suits from other entries in the IW neighborhood but decided to wait until I actually saw the video.

Musically, it sounds like the group is going to go into reggaeton territory until a typical Tsunkuian left turn happens and we get some heavily regional sounding J-Pop instead. The song in general is definitely the stranger/funnier side of Berryz - closer to the Berryz of “Piriri To Yokou!” than the Berryz of “Jiriri Kiteru” or “VERY BEAUTY”.

Those monkey suits, though… yikes. I’m sure it was inevitable given the song’s title and the banana motif (Sorry, I can’t resist this joke: Were there guards keeping JunJun away from the set?), but I hope that there’s a version of the dance shot PV coming where they’re in their more normal outfits.

Nakanomori BAND announced their breakup through their website on Sunday. News from Tokyograph here, and a reaction from pengie at unchained here. As a fan with all of their albums in my library, this is bad enough news to begin with. What makes this sadder is the breakup was precipitated by the forced layoff the band was under for the past couple of months because lead singer/guitarist Ayako Nakanomori at least a third of a way through a prescribed/predicted six-month recovery period following throat surgery; initially the other group members were going to tide themselves over with side projects until then, but now it seems that, unless that statement was a P.R. holding pattern, at least one person in the band changed their mind.

All musical instruments are fragile, from the oldest Stradivarius violin to the newest off-the-rack Fender Stratocaster. But the human larynx is the most fragile instrument of them all. The best way to combat or prevent such abuse is to learn how to sing from the diaphragm (chest voice) rather than from the voice box itself (head voice). Sometimes vocal training can actually help a person who tried to sing untrained recover or even improve their vocal power: In her pre-She’s So Unusual days, Cyndi Lauper rehabilitated her singing voice, which had been shredded from multiple nights fronting cover bands, by studying for a couple of years with a vocal coach who specialized in teaching rock and pop singers opera techniques. I think Henry Rollins underwent some similar vocal training in the mid-90’s, judging from the change his singing voice went through between the Weight album sessions in late 1993 and the Come In And Burn sessions in 1996. In between those two sessions, Rollins did a guest vocal on Mike Watt’s first solo album, but his voice is a rather harsh, throaty rasp on that track; his vocals from Come In And Burn onward have shown Rollins to be in much more control of his singing voice. At least one of his Rollins Band albums, Hard Volume, was recorded while the singer was both under deadline and suffering from strep throat, and his Black Flag diary/memoirs Get In The Van recounts several instances when he either blew his voice out onstage or did several consecutive weeks of one-nighters while battling laryngitis.

Of course, bad habits can also lead to the detriment and even the loss of vocal power. Smoking (both tobacco and marijuana) and drinking alcoholic beverages are the most common enemies of the voice box. Many singers - and rightfully so - prohibit people from smoking around them, but others will claim that smoking doesn’t effect their voices. In moderation, those vices may actually enhance some voices - Bob Dylan’s trademark vocal tone was partly the product of smoking both tobacco and pot, while a short layoff from lighting up led to the sweeter voice he had on his Nashville Skyline album. On the electronic press kit reproduced as a bonus feature on their When London Burns DVD, Deicide’s Glen Benton candidly credits the deepening octaves of his vocals to “cigarettes, Jack Daniels and marijuana” (vices he would give up in late 2006 on the advice of a doctor).

In excess,such vices can be fatal to the larynx: legendary operatic tenor Enrico Caruso smoked cigars regularly and paid the price of an onstage throat hemmorage for it, while on the totally opposite end of the spectrum, punk rock performance artist GG Allin, who started out his recording career in the late 1970’s with a more melodic, Iggy Pop and Stiv Bators-influenced vocal and delivery, recorded his final studio album with a voice that was horrifically ravaged from years of unrepentant drug and alcohol abuse. Even the casual use of cigarettes and alcohol can have fans of an artist up in arms, as Ai Kago’s original stalkerazzi-outed underage smoking incident in 2006 proved.

Diet can also have an effect, desired or not, on the voice. Many experts advise singers against consuming any kind of dairy product before recording or performing, owing to the buildup of mucus caused by even one glass of milk or slice of cheese. Of course, consuming the odd dairy product could also assist in deilbrately making a voice sound less worked on, something David Lee Roth (according to his own memoirs) discovered during the sessions for Van Halen’s first album. According to Roth’s memoir Crazy From The Heat, when their producer Ted Templeman discovered that Diamond Dave had avoided cigarettes and dairy prior to recording the lead vocal for “Jamie’s Cryin’”, Templeman ordered the singer to go outside and smoke a joint, and sent a studio runner out to get Roth a cheeseburger. Roth went outside, ate the cheeseburger, smoked half of the joint, drained a can of Coke, and came back in to record the vocal for one of VH’s best loved early album cuts.

I don’t know what kind of vocal training Ayako Nakanomori had (if any), or if she had any habits that could have resulted in her vocal problems. By that, I do not mean to imply that she was a smoker, only that she could have done or gone through other things, like poor diet choices, a stressful situation, or some sort of bad cold, that could have made her voice susceptible to getting a cyst on her vocal chords in the first place. Hopefully, she’ll overcome her original setback, just as she’ll have to overcome the sudden breakup of her eponymous band when she resumes her music career.