Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

My blogging brother Tim “Napalm” Stegall is having a huge garage sale in Alice, TX (his old hometown) where he’s unloading a ton of stuff left behind by his late mother (for details, message him through his MySpace page). In the spirit of DIY punk rock, he’s even made up his own commercial for it:

Tell him CJ sent you!

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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Since some of the descriptions of “Resonant Blue”’s music that I’ve seen on other blogs (Yes, Celestia and Yoshimi, I’m talking to both of you!) are inaccurately describing the musical style Morning Musume uses in their forthcoming single as “pop” or “hip-hop” (in both cases… WTF?), a little lesson in the funk is in order. And having grown up on R&B music, suffice it to say that I know my funk, OK. Let’s begin…

First, “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players. Where do you think the opening guitar lick in “Resonant Blue” comes from?

Apparently, there’s a phenomenon online called the Rickroll, where someone will start out with a serious post and then at the last second, whip out a YouTube video of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”.

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In honor of International Wota’s 1st Anniversary:

“Okashi Tsukutte Okasui” by MiniMoni - their harmonies on this song slay me everytime.

And in the interest of equal time, we also have pie:

And because I’m going to the special hell: I’m sure we all know what kind of pie two lucky bastards have been getting from Aibon and Nono lately

The video came out yesterday but I didn’t get to see it until this morning. My reaction: Fuck, yeah! And Reina’s one of the centers? Put that “Fuck, yeah!” on a tape loop.

Simply put: They do not make pop music like this in America anymore. This song is capable of slaughtering every song on the current Billboard singles chart that isn’t named “Nine In The Afternoon” or “Sensual Seduction”.

…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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As I begin to type this entry out, I have my Numark TTUSB Turntable out and a 200-gram pressing by Classic Records of the enduring Miles Davis album Kind Of Blue – one of the greatest albums ever made in any genre – playing; specifically, side two in the middle of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley’s alto sax solo on “All Blues”. I seem to be playing this album in this particular format at least once a week – I have owned Kind Of Blue in a couple of its different CD issues (the early 80’s release with its unnecessary digital remix of the album’s tracks and a totally different cover photo, and the remastered edition released in 1997 that is the version readily available, the master of which the vinyl pressing I am presently playing is based on) and I must say, even through the Logitech iPod speakers that my turntable is presently plugged directly into, the record sounds absolutely incredible. Just mentioning this particular pressing of the album on my LiveJournal led my colleague Vee to remark, “Holy crap, CJ, I got chills just reading that sentence”’ – which makes me wonder how she would react if she had been in the room with me to hear the actual record.

Vinyl has been making a rather unique resurgence over the past few years, notable enough for Time magazine to recently write an article about the phenomenon. The format has never disappeared – punk rock, alternative/indie rock, hip-hop, and electronic dance music have all kept the format alive, but most chain music stores do not stock them (unless they’re as big as Virgin Megastore’s Times Square, New York location).

Ironically, one national chain that is carrying some vinyl is Hot Topic. Don’t laugh. It’s not a wide or even a large selection – the selection is limited to some punk, alternative and metal releases (not surprising given Hot Topic’s sales demographic), but if you wanted to grab Paramore’s Riot! or No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom on colored vinyl, or a picture disc of Fall Out Boy’s Infinity on High or Slayer’s South Of Heaven (not Reign In Blood, American Recordings?), you’d be set.
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