Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

A couple of weeks ago (the first week of June, to be exact - Hello! Online only posted the translation a few days ago), Morning Musume were asked this for their Pocket Morning Weekly Q&A:

If you were asked to release one Morning Musume song overseas, which song would it be?

(Presumably, this question is being asked of the band regarding the musical merits of their songs, perhaps also disregarding language issues under the admittedly utopian, but still refreshingly open-minded belief that no one really gives a shit what language a song is sung in. The language issue is another column entirely.)

Some of the ladies had their own answers. Eri Kamei suggested MoMusu’s ska-punk chestnut “Koko ni Iruzee!”, citing (for obvious reasons) the line “A song passing over borders” and adding the reason, “Because it’s a very powerful Morning Musume song.”

Sayumi Mishichige picked “Aruiteru”, a song she acknowledges as one of her personal favorites, also citing an appropriate line of lyric in what she refers to as “the second refrain” (actually, it’s the first prechorus) of the song: “We’re at the distance where the we can hear the songs of the whole world.”

Koharu Kusumi picked “Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari” for a more personal reason: “It’s the song where I introduce myself, so I want to introduce myself like: ‘This is me!’” (Presumably, she is referring to “Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari 3″, which closes out Rainbow 7.)

Li Chun went old-school, picking without explanation the MoMusu standard “Furusato”. (Is JunJun looking to cut a solo version of the song for the next Best Shot DVD?)

Reina Tanaka had two choices, both personal favorites. One was “Shadondama”, which she had already picked as her top favorite Morning Musume single in the 17th installment of her CDData column last October. The other choice was one she shared with the rest of the band: “Resonant Blue”.

Risa Niigaki and Qian Lin both cited a similar reason for picking “Resonant Blue”: The fact that (as of this writing), “Resonant Blue” is the band’s current single. Gaki-san wants overseas fans “to see the recent us” while LinLin “want(s) more and more people to hear (the song)”. Aika Mitsui picks the song as an example of what she calls “the cool Morning Musume”, while Ai Takahashi gives no reason whatsoever for picking out the song.

Admittedly, I’d pick out “Resonant Blue” as an introductory American single myself, simply because it’s such a solid song and performance. Longtime readers of this blog already know my affection for the song, so I won’t risk boring anyone with a recap.

According to iTunes, “Resonant Blue” is already the most downloaded Morning Musume song on the American iTunes service. The young ladies of Morning Musume just might have something there. It also makes me wonder, yet again, how aware Morning Musume and Up-Front Works are of the band’s non-Asian cult audience. That, of course, is another column entirely… maybe part of a certain ongoing series.

An interesting question came up in the January 2008 issue of Down Beat magazine’s “The Question Is…” column, which takes a question involving America’s first true musical genre and poses it to several jazz musicians.

In the wake of such recent jazz releases as Herbie Hancock’s River: The Joni Letters, his Grammy-winning [not just the jazz grammy either, but Record of the Year] collection of improvisations on the songs of Joni Mitchell, and pianist Cyrus Chestnut using Elvis Presley songs as the basis of jazz improvisations, the Down Beat column in question asked, “Are there limits to using pop repertoire for jazz interpretation?”

The columnist in question, Dan Ouellette, writes: “Boomer artists in recent years have found jazz inspiration in pop songs by Elton John, The Doors, and James Taylor…” After referencing the aforementioned Hancock and Chestnut releases, Ouellette asks, “Where will it end – would someone ever make a go at jazzing up the 1910 Fruitgum Company’s bubblegum hit ‘Yummy, Yummy, Yummy’? Simply speaking, what works and what doesn’t for jazz interpretations of familiar pop tunes? How far can a jazz musician delve into the pop world for ‘new standards’?”

Hancock had already been plumbing possibilities about a decade prior to River when, in one of his first albums for Verve in 1996, he recorded the album New Standard, in which he used the likes of Nirvana’s “All Apologies”, Prince’s “Thieves In The Temple”, Don Henley’s “New York Minute”, and songs by Peter Gabriel , Sade, and Stevie Wonder as the basis of improvisational workouts. Hancock, of course, apprenticed early in his career with one of the true masters of jazz, Miles Davis.

Miles Davis being Miles motherfuckin’ Davis, of course, didn’t care where a song originated – if he could improv over it or explore the melody of it with his horn, he was going to do it. Having covered (with considerable audacity at the time) several popular and Broadway songs – many of which are now considered jazz standards – during his days with his first great quartet (the one with John Coltrane on tenor sax) in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, his approach would rub off directly on Coltrane, who would have one of his first ‘hit’ recordings with his 15-minute modal workout based around The Sound of Music’s “My Favorite Things”.

Miles would retain that same don’t-give-a-fuck attitude in 1985 when he made new standards out of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” and Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” on his album You’re Under Arrest. A few of his band members at the time weren’t entirely sold on the idea – guitarist John Scolfield said that he hated playing the songs in a later interview – but Miles was more than satisfied with the results… as was Cyndi Lauper herself; in the wake of Miles’ original cover version, “Time After Time” has become one of the most performed and recorded songs in modern history. (No doubt, the songwriting and publishing royalties Cyndi Lauper has been collecting for the past twenty years on that song alone have made it more than possible for her to do whatever the hell she wants in the recording studio, as opposed to endlessly repeating her She’s So Unusual and True Colors triumphs.)
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