Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

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).

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.

A new Berryz Koubou single is coming out on August 27th… if you can call it that.

Right in-between the releases of their 17th single “Ike Ike Monkey Dance” on July 16th and their as yet untitled 5th LP on September 10th is a single involving a remix of their cover version of Dschinghis Khan’s eponymous single, which will have the collective release title Dschinghis Khan Onkochishin Remix. I do have to agree with those who think this particular release, on appearances, comes several months too late, given that the original Berryz single came out this past March. Remixes usually tend to come out within weeks of an original version’s release, rather than months, no?

Is Tsunku running out of ideas, as some of us have feared? No. Considering that a new, original, Berryz single is coming out the month before this remix EP, and an album of new material plus “Dschinghis Khan”, “Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance” and “Tsukiatteru no ni Katamoi” is coming out the month after, it’s not even a possibility. Since the EP is coming out on Piccolo Town, Tsunku’s only real role in the release in question is probably just approving the final master of the CD. So many Berryz Koubou releases coming out in a very short time period is nothing new either: Their first three singles came out in three consecutive months in the spring of 2004, and the band closed out 2005 by releasing in a five-week period the Dai 2 Seichouki LP, the “Gag 100kaibun Aishite Kudasai” single, and the Special! Best Mini ~2.5 Maime no Kare~ EP.

However, it should be pointed out that as of this writing, “Dschinghis Khan” is Berryz Koubou’s biggest selling single to date, having sold over 37,000 copies in outlets whose sales are counted by Oricon. It’s also the Berryz single that has had the most first week sales of any single in their career and the single that has had the longest stay on Oricon’s sales chart (eight weeks). The song apparently still has some wings over in Japan; although the single hasn’t been on the Oricon chart since May, the song is presumably still getting scattered airplay on Japanese radio, and given the song’s origins as a popular European and Asian disco hit in its original incarnation in 1979, it’s not unlikely to think that Berryz’ version is getting some club play as well, in spite of its radio-length brevity.

It’s also not unlikely to think that some enterprising bedroom remixer somewhere hasn’t done an unofficial remix that combines the Berryz version with the Dschinghis Khan original, or that some DJ in a dance club in Japan hasn’t already crossfaded between both versions in the course of a club set. Hence this impending release.
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Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama just passed its 2nd Anniversary mark recently. I didn’t make a big deal about it for several reasons… For one, I didn’t make a big deal last year either, and second, the actual date of this blog’s debut has been lost in the ether thanks to the ineptitude of a hair-metal-oldies-band drummer and his not-so-wonderful web hosting staff. I’m guessing that it was April 8th, 2006 when I started this blog, while at the same time I am tempted to make the “official” date April 11th because last year on that day I got to see The Stooges.

Rather than go through some lengthy bullshit on the past, I thought I’d take a cure from the liner notes of Fatboy Slim’s recent greatest-hits anthology and list some of the things this blog and its author have gone through since I started this project:

Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Three laptops (a 2004 Apple PowerBook G4 until 3.17.08, a Dell Inspiron borrowed from my mother, and my present Dell XPS M1530)
Two iPods
Seven Morning Musume singles (counting “Resonant Blue”)
Seven personnel changes in Morning Musume
Three and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Six Berryz Koubou singles
One and a half Berryz Koubou albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Five C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Two and a half C-ute albums
Six Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power)
Two Koharu Kusumi albums
Four New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of all three studio albums)
Four Puffy AmiYumi albums
Four Mission of Burma albums (three of them being the new vinyl reissues on Matador)
Two Panic! At The Disco albums
Two copies of Flyleaf’s first album (one autographed)
Two autographed Sick Puppies CDs
One guitar autographed by Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers
Four books autographed by Henry Rollins
One book autographed by Sen. Arlen Specter
One e-mail from Henry Rollins
Two e-mails from Jello Biafra
Three day trips to New York where I spent over $700 combined in one store (Virgin Megastore) alone
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
Five day trips to Philadelphia
Two day trips to Syracuse, NY
One Stooges concert
One Bon Jovi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two Flyleaf concerts
Two Evanescence concerts
Two Sick Puppies concerts
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Four SD cards
Two phonograph needles (accidentally broke the first one)
Three disbanded Hello! Project groups
Three new Hello! Project groups (not counting Kira Pika and Milky Way)
Two people parting company with Hello! Project altogether one way or another
One Hello! Project-related project getting released in the States (Yo-Yo Girl Cop)
Six Wordpress themes
Four domain names (three for the Pagoda alone, the other for the Reina blog)
Two different Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp header graphics (Vee improved on the original)
Two years without Ai Kago
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
One Guns N’ Roses album finally being finished and handed in (whether it gets released may be another story!)
Two knocked-up MoMusus
Two instances where I bitched about Nozomi Tsuji getting knocked up
Three instances where I remarked about what a lucky bastard Taiyo Sugiura is
Three snarky remarks made by me about Avril Lavgine
One snarky remark made by “Reina” about Jamie Lynn Spears
One snarky remark made by me to “Reina” about Beyonce Knowles
Countless snarky remarks about American Idle
Three American Idle contestants losing their recording contracts
Four Reina Tanaka photobooks
One tire
Two illnesses
Two back-to-back NaNoWriMo wins
Three book projects (two simultaneous, one on hold)
One published short story (”The Man In The Hummer” in Deliver Us From Evil, available from Jaded Silence Press)
All three versions of American Wota
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
Two jokes stolen from Jeff Dunham
One joke stolen from Nothing Nice To Say
Reina Tanaka’s 18th birthday
My 40th birthday
Mike Watt’s 50th birthday
Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday
Several boxes of CD sleeves
Countless mouse and camera batteries
Countless VitaminWaters
Countless instances where I took to heart David Peel’s adage that “fuck” is not a dirty word
A year and a half of lost blog archives (Fuck you, “Vikki Stixx”!)
Not enough trips to Starbucks
More money spent at CDJapan than at Gallery of Sound
More money spent this year on vinyl than CDs
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée.