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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…if we can’t debate at IW or AW Forum for the time being, the Pagoda has plenty of room. Bring it on.

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.
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Imagine if you will… Lester Bangs, the legendary rock critic who championed The Stooges and their other proto-punk brethren in the likes of Creem and Rolling Stone, suddenly turning around and dissing those same bands in favor of championing the acoustic soft-rockers like James Taylor that he once loathed with a passion.

While the case I am about to discuss is not as extreme as that, it is a proper parallel to the situation at hand.

The pseudonymous blogger “Radicalpatriot”, who up until recently championed Morning Musume and Hello! Project just as much as this writer did, if not more, went from visiting rakuen to see our heroines and came back from the States having decided to no longer promote the matter of bringing Morning Musume and Hello! Project to a non-Japanese audience wider than their current (and growing) cult status.

He claims in a recent board posting at American Wota (some weird internet glitch at wherever he was posting from kept him from accessing his normal posting URLs) that the live MoMusu/H!P experience was more about the fans than the singers onstage, or in his words, “The crowd is the show”. What gave him this clue, or at least what led him to such a rather ridiculous conclusion, is unclear. “The crowd” is not and never will be the show. The crowd is not why MoMusu/H!P music is finding its way to American homes - it, contrary to Rad’s sudden claim is, is all about those young ladies and their music. That’s why that crowd is there in the first place.

I don’t know whether it was some weird culture shock, or Rad’s once-well-meaning habit of hyperbole and overanalysis going more overboard than sanity should allow, but his recent statement simply smacks of betrayal, period.

If Radicalpatriot (or more appropriately at this point, Radicalquisling) wants to deal with rebellious Morning Musume fans, he needs to look no further than his home country and see the growing legion of American music fans who have chosen the high quality songs, albums, recordings, and performances of Morning Musume and other J-pop acts (not just ones from Hello! Project) as an alternative to the old-guard music industry trying to forcefeed watered down and unmemorable pop acts like Hannah Montana and whatever else is clogging 90% of your average Top 40 radio hour at any time in any part of this country.

If he’s not willing to continue to champion the cause of bringing Morning Musume and other great J-Pop to the United States on a mainstream basis, I am. It was part of my game plan for this blog for 2008 long before he went to Japan, and I’m more than determined to fire up that campaign now.

It’s on, motherfuckers. Who’s with me?

We interrupt my attempts to succeed at NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row to bring you a public service announcement…

Radicalpatriot’s recent blog postings on wanting to see Morning Musume and Hello! Project on United States soil resonated with rather loud familiarity. Last year around this time, I wrote a piece where I, at length, argued for the case of bringing MoMusu and H!P to America. Unfortunately, that article, which was posted on MotokoAoyama.com v1.0 and on a slightly modified form at Ikimasshoi! during my all-too-brief tenure there, no longer exists (Ikimasshoi! did another remodeling job and bounced every non-news poster in December of 2006, not long after I posted the article there; Loyal readers of this blog already know what an arrogant hair-metal drummer and sometime web service owner did to MotokoAoyama.com v1.0, while a link to that horror story lies elsewhere on this blog for you newcomers). My belief that Morning Musume and Hello! Project would make a considerable positive impression on mainstream America still does exist.

Let’s step away from the trees and look at the whole forest, shall we?
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