Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

And now, the series that the naysayers have dreaded, the elitists have feared, and the music lovers have waited patiently for…

I had promised to write a series on the viability of getting Morning Musume in America (yeah, know they have fans in England, Canada, Europe, South America, and wherever else on the planet broadband internet access is available, but even the Beatles weren’t The Motherfucking Mind-Blowing Genre-Destroying Badass Revolutionary Musical Force Known As The Beatles until they first stepped off that plane at JFK Airport 44 years ago…) for quite some time, but all good things take time, and with a series this important, I was not about to go off all half-cocked, especially with the Radicalquislings of the world breathing down one’s neck. That having been said, let me point out right now that even once I’ve set these ideas to (virtual) paper, I’m liable to think of things that should have gone into “past” columns or that might be even better points of discussion and attack than previously mentioned.

With that introduction and caveat both out of the way, let’s get down to business.

In order for Morning Musume to make their way into the greater American consciousness, we cannot forget the very first link in the chain between artist and music lover – the recorded product. (I could very easily say “CD and digital download” but with vinyl making such a resurgence over the past couple of years, especially in this country, I’ll avoid being format-specific and just refer to “albums” and “singles”.) I have not done a survey of any kind on whether fellow MoMusu/H!P fans have most of their music in digital (mp3) or in tactile (CD) form. (For the record, most of this writer’s collection is at least 95% CD – all of which was ripped to my hard drive for my iPod upon receipt – and 5% download, with most of those files being from both the Japanese and American iTunes stores.) However, I would like to gather that many of you buy the CDs, downloading only as a tideover until one has the actual CD in their hands. I’m also presuming that many of you would readily buy more of the CDs if they were available domestically.

However, not just any record label is going to be able to handle this music. A label that is just going to throw Morning Musume against the wall and hope that they’ll stick will not be a good label for the band. Neither will a label that will push the band as a “novelty”, or market them solely to the anime convention crowd.

A quick reminder: Morning Musume are not tied to any Western record label whatsoever. The master recordings of pretty much every Hello! Project artist (with the strange exception of Buono!) are owned by Up-Front Works, making UFW pretty much an independent label that licenses its recordings through three UFW-owned imprints distributed by different labels: Zetima (distributed by Sony Japan), Piccolo Town (distributed by King Records), and Hachama (distributed by Pony Canyon). This means that, outside of Japan, that ten-year-plus back catalog is up for grabs.

The kind of label that Morning Musume needs is a label that will market and nuture them as career artists – in other words as an act with longevity. That may sound weird but given the current climate where most labels seem to drop artists when they don’t sell a million copies of a record right out of the box, it’s a most important point. I will get to why I think Morning Musume should be treated as artists and not as “a fast food fad to throw away” (to borrow a Jello Biafra lyric) momentarily.

Tofu Records, thankfully, are no longer in existence. While their goal to make J-Pop more accessible to US music fans was a noble one, their distribution and marketing left a lot to be desired. A prime example was their licensing and subsequent US release of Puffy AmiYumi’s 2006 album Splurge. The album had not been released in this country until after Ami and Yumi had completed their tour for it, and the distribution for it, like pretty much every Tofu release, had been restricted simply to the anime section of Suncoast. Normal record stores did not seem to carry it at all - I had to buy my copy of the domestic edition through Amazon when it came out; when I was in New York City later that year and paid my usual visit to Virgin Megastore, I was rather shocked to discover that the US edition of Splurge was not in the Puffy AmiYumi bin there (Epic’s HiHi Puffy AmiYumi soundtrack and all three of the Bar-None releases were, however), but the import edition was sitting in the World Music section. When the import edition of a popular J-Pop band’s current album is easier to get in America’s biggest city than the cheaper domestic edition, something is definitely wrong.

There are at least two major labels I can think of that would also be extremely poor choices for Morning Musume and Up-Front Works to be associated with. One obvious choice is any label that Clive Davis, former chairman of Columbia Records, founder of Arista Records, and current chairman of the RCA Records Group (RCA, Arista, and J Records), is in charge of. Clive has had his considerable and lengthy day in the sun – he was the one who brought rock music to Columbia in 1967 after witnessing Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company at the Monterey Pop Festival, a move that would have the long-term effect of bringing the likes of Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Earth Wind & Fire, and Aerosmith along as well. His later founding of Arista Records would spawn a notoriously diverse roster that started with proto-rapper Gil-Scott Heron and would include at various times The Kinks, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, and Lou Reed, but at the same time also foisted Whitney Houston, Kenny G, and Air Supply onto unsuspecting ears as well. Probably his last noble acts as a music executive were siding with TLC during their the legal fray with their former manager Perri “Pebbles” Reid (who actually held their original contract with the Arista-distributed LaFace imprint), and discovering Alicia Keys.

Sadly, in very recent years he’s been known for butting heads with some of his artists over the content of their music in a vain quest to adult-contemporize artists more used to edgier rock and R&B material. Kelly Clarkson in particular had a very public battle with Clive over the more rock-oriented material on her album My December, during which Clive tried to bribe the singer with several million dollars in return for dropping several of the songs off of the album in favor of more bland by-the-nuumbers adult-contempoary material (wisely, she didn’t take the money), while American Idle 2006 winner Taylor Hicks reportedly blamed artistic differences with the veteran executive over his sudden decision to part company with the RCA Records Group. Granted, like most post-Clarkson Idle winners, his status as a ‘fan favorite’ may be in justifiable doubt, but when fan complaints about some of the material on his album plus his post-departure remarks about artistic differences are added together – even without throwing the Clarkson My December controversy back into the mix – it doesn’t help dissipate the image Davis has grown in recent years of an out-of-touch, potentially senile old man.

Another label that would be a very poor fit for Morning Musume is any EMI label. Yes, it sucks to have to type that sentence. EMI’s labels include Capitol, Parlophone, Virgin, and Mute. EMI holds the back catalogue of the Beatles, the seminal Blue Note label (the Dischord Records of jazz music), the Sex Pistols, Duran Duran, and Frank Sinatra’s Capitol recordings. Sadly, however, they are not currently owned and operated by a bunch of music lovers but by a financial concern called Terra Firma Capital. Their CEO, Guy Hands, is looking to cut down his new label’s A&R departments (the major lifeline between label and artist) and wants to hook up all of EMI’s artists to be “sponsored like football [soccer] teams”. Not surprisingly, many of EMI’s past artists aren’t too happy with this idea, and in the wake of Terra Firma’s takeover, Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, and Radiohead all walked out on the label with middle fingers held behind their backs (like Tommy Chong did to Strother Martin at the beginning of Up In Smoke) for greener pastures; the Rolling Stones and Iggy Pop & The Stooges may be the next artists to jump ship as well, taking their respective back catalogs (which they retained the rights to) with them in the process.

That leaves two-and-a half major labels: Universal, Warner Music, and Sony-BMG. I say two-and-a-half because the aforementioned RCA Records Group as helmed by Clive Davis is part of Sony-BMG. Would any of them be good? That depends on which imprint chose to deal with Morning Musume on the right basis. Universal has the Island Def Jam Music Group (Island, Def Jam, and Mercury), Geffen Records, the Interscope/A&M Group, and the Verve Music Group (which is Universal’s jazz division, holding the Verve and Impulse! back catalogs). Warner Music is Warner Bros., Reprise, Rhino, Atlantic, Elektra, and Rykodisc (which itself bought out Twin-Tone, Restless, and Frank Zappa’s entire back catalog in its original existence). Sony-BMG is Columbia, Epic, the Zomba Music Group (LaFace, Jive, Scotti Bros., Volcano), and the aforementioned and off-limits RCA Records Group. All three of these conglomerates has at least one label that would treat Morning Musume as a career artist – Universal has A&M/Octane, who made Flyleaf blow the fuck up in 2007 after two years of steady support, Columbia would be a good home for MoMusu should they go with Sony-BMG, and I should think that any of Warner’s larger imprints (Warner Bros., Reprise, and Atlantic) would make a good fit if Tsunku decided to rub shoulders with them.

On another side note, all three of the major label groups also have their own distribution arms that deal with independent labels – Universal has Fontana Distribution, Warner Music has the American Distribution Alliance, and Sony-BMG has RED Distribution. All three have been known to use these independent channels to market their artists from time to time (Sony-BMG used their Red Ink imprint, a sort of joint project between Columbia Records and RED Distribution, to market Shinedown’s first major label album as well as Mike Watt’s last solo effort), building a sort of grass-roots campaign for certain artists with major label resources. A combination of the right imprint plus an indie-label-style promotion would probably be just the ticket.

Of course, there are some of the larger, non-major-affiliated groups that could also do just as good if not a better job at giving Morning Musume an American presence. In the past couple of years, Saddle Creek, Matador, Merge, and Fueled By Ramen have been seeing many of their top artists – Bright Eyes, Two Gallants, Spoon, Cat Power, Mission of Burma, Arcade Fire, Panic! At The Disco, Paramore – all nurtured to grow loyal fanbases and diverse quality catalogs, as all good recording artists should be and all good record labels should have– make high chart debuts on Billboard’s album chart. Not only would any of these labels make a good home for Morning Musume, they could also put our heroines out not only on CD, but on – hold on to your seats – vinyl. And the first three labels have also been putting out high-quality vinyl pressings - sweet, sweet 180-gram virgin vinyl – and enclosing download codes for those people who love both turntables and iPods. Yes, that includes this little black duck typing all this into his Apple PowerBook. (Fueled By Ramen have been doing vinyl as well, but as of this writing it hasn’t been for every release they’ve put out over the past few years, there’s no bonus CDs or download codes, and the vinyl itself has been in limited release.)

And then there’s also a little upstart of a label that helped make EMI look even more pathetic than before when they welcomed Paul McCartney with open arms and proceeded to make his next album sell more copies than his last Capitol release – the Hear Music label, a joint venture between Concord/Fantasy records (yep, the label co-owned by Norman Lear that holds the back catalogs of Creedence Clearwater Revival as well as the post-Atlantic Stax/Volt back catalog and all those great Prestige, Riverside and Pablo jazz albums) and Starbucks Entertainment. While they’ve started out by having Paul McCartney, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell do albums for them (getting Joni Mitchell to come out of her self-imposed recording hiatus is definitely just as big a feather in Hear Music’s cap as signing Paul McCartney), they’re already starting to develop new artists. A young lady from Australia named Sia is already getting a good amount of notice with her first album for the label, and a young singer-songwriter named Hillary McCrae is also on tap for Hear Music’s 2008 release schedule. Both of these young ladies I heard for the first time late last year when Starbucks and iTunes partnered with a Song Of The Day campaign – come in, buy a coffee or frap, get a card with a download code for a different song. (When this campaign was going on, I had just heard Natsumi Abe’s then-new single and thought it would be a good addition to the campaign.)

If Morning Musume partnering with a label co-owned by Starbucks seems almost contradictory given my wanting to see them avoid EMI and their new owner’s sponsorship plans for artists like the plague it is, relax. None of Hear Music’s artists are ever forced to shill for Starbucks… but Starbucks will actually shill for them! Starbucks has its own music channel on XM Radio, and sells a rather discerning selection of CDs in its stores – not just those on Hear Music (Led Zeppelin, Frank Sinatra, Thelonious Monk, Radiohead, John Fogerty, newcomer Colbie Calleat, and Sheryl Crow have all been on Starbuck CD racks in the past few months, and Sonic Youth are said to be doing a special compilation for the chain soon). The type of music Starbucks plays and sells is not being marketed to an audience that listens to watered down 21st Century American pop music like Hannah Montana or T-Pain. The type of person that walks into a Starbucks listens to a diverse mix of music – Morning Musume with their genre-defying song catalog would be almost absolutely perfect for this listener, even if they don’t sign to Hear Music.

In the next part or one of the next parts of this series of undetermined length (again, I’ve been mulling over these installments very carefully, so I don’t know which parts are going to be finished first), I’ll try to explain in more detail why Morning Musume should be marketed like a career artist – and what kind of an audience they should be exposed to.