Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

News broke this afternoon that Maki Goto signed with Avex’s Rhythm Trax imprint, which is also the home of Koda Kumi. Maki’s new label-sponsored site is here; hopefully she will not be giving up her own blog in the process. Apparently the vocal and dance training Gocchin was going through in Los Angeles earlier this spring was in preparation for her move to her new label. That training as documented on her blog, plus her being on Rhythm Trax has folks already predicting that Maki will be going down a J-Urban path not dissimilar than Kumi’s. And judging from the picture above, Maki seems to not only be sharing the same label as Koda Kumi, but also the same wardrobe department and nail artist. I like a lot of Kumi’s stuff, and Maki’s already flirted with that musical road before early on in her H!P days (with “SHALL WE LOVE?” in Gomattou), then started learning heavily towards the urban pop side of things with much of her last Piccolo Town/King album How To Use SEXY), so her first Rhythm Trax singles should be very interesting records indeed. Release dates, anyone?

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.

An interesting excerpt from the 3.29.08 blogpost at Maki Goto’s website (translation courtesy of Hello! Online):

By the way, I didn’t say it yesterday, but some Japanese who is living in L.A. told me: ‘You really look like Goto Maki!’ So, I said something like ‘they tell me that a lot :)’ I’m winning popularity (can’t believe it).”

I wonder what her reaction would be if a non-Asian American had recognized her on the street? Hmmm…

Apparently, Maki has also been practicing her English lately, according to the same blog post. I highly doubt she’s doing it just to order food in restaurants… again, hmmm…

Well, this is a hell of a news item to be commenting on, on my first full day dealing with a new laptop… Someone e-mail pengie and tell her that her title of J-Pop Nostradamus is endangered.

Well, maybe not, but last fall I posted something that hypothesized the reason as to why Maki Goto quit Hello! Project. That link is here. but for as brief as it is, it’s worth recapping here:

Suppose… just suppose… that Maki Goto left Hello! Project and Up-Front Works because she wanted to break into the American market a hell of a lot sooner than Hello! Project and Up-Front Works?

Picture it… you’re Maki Goto and you’re sitting at home between recording and live dates and blog posts, and you’re going online and seeing that Puffy AmiYumi and Dir En Grey are making regular appearances in America, Hikaru Utada is trying to sneak herself in as well, several other J-pop and J-rock artists are making appearances in the States, and talk is already afoot that BoA is going to try to hit the USA in 2008. You think to yourself… “Great. Why not H!P? Why don’t we try over there? We already have fans buying the imported CDs or doing downloads…”

You go to a UFA meeting, bring the idea up, and get a “Not yet, we’re working on the rest of Asia first.”

(…) …and you go home, have a cup of tea, then get an epiphany… an epiphany that reads, “Fuck this waiting shit! I don’t just want to be a Japanese singing star! I want the world and I want it now!”

Fast forward back to present day, and it turns out that Maki has reopened her blog, and her latest entry says (according to Some Boys Blog) that she is currently in Los Angeles.

Doing what? Well, I can’t read Japanese (yet), but its a no-brainer to consider that Los Angeles is the center of the Western entertainment industry. Just remember, I called it back on 11.27.07.

5. Alvin & The Chipmunks “Christmas Don’t Be Late”. Original, OLD-SCHOOL Alvin and company. No CGI or ProTools involved.

4. Joey Ramone & Friends “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)”. A live rendition from the last show Joey ever performed (12.11.01).

3. Reina Tanaka “Kira Kira Fuyu No Shiny G” . Not really a Christmas song, but it was on Morning Musume’s 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP that came out right beforehand, and what Tanakachiii fanatic wouldn’t want The Wonkylicious Sex Bomb under their tree?

2. PetitMoni “Pittari Shirari Xmas”. A live version. This one’s for Vee, who adores Hitomi as much as I adore Reina.

1. Spinal Tap “Christmas With The Devil”. From their appearance on Saturday Night Live… in May of 1984, complete with the interview that preceded. At least there wasn’t an 18-inch Stonehenge this time around.

And finally… one of my short stories, “The Man In The Hummer”, was accepted for publication by Jaded Silence Press for their horror anthology Deliver Us From Evil, to be released in early 2008. More on a release date when I get it. I found out Saturday afternoon and sent them the corrected final draft yesterday.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

This is going to be as short and sweet as possible, as I’ve been a writing fool with only 5,000 more words to go in NaNoWriMo (and then after that I can actually FINISH the novel…)

With all the brouhaha that’s gone on in the J-Pop blogosphere ever since Maki Goto suddenly graduated from Hello! Project (in one of the worst cases of bad timing, just around the time her brother got busted for burglary), the following reasons have been brought up and/or suggested as to what led to Gocchin’s departure from Hello! Project and Up-Front Works (which probably won’t be contractually official until the new year starts: Musical differences, image differences, health reasons, psychological reasons…

But what about if the differences were because of something else?

A couple of months ago, an mp3 (taken from an audience recording) was circulating of Maki doing a live cover version of Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”. Much was made in the blogosphere of Maki both doing the song and adopting a “Makira” character when she performed it live.

Suppose… just suppose… that Maki Goto left Hello! Project and Up-Front Works because she wanted to break into the American market a hell of a lot sooner than Hello! Project and Up-Front Works?

Picture it… you’re Maki Goto and you’re sitting at home between recording and live dates and blog posts, and you’re going online and seeing that Puffy AmiYumi and Dir En Grey are making regular appearances in America, Hikaru Utada is trying to sneak herself in as well, several other J-pop and J-rock artists are making appearances in the States, and talk is already afoot that BoA is going to try to hit the USA in 2008. You think to yourself… “Great. Why not H!P? Why don’t we try over there? We already have fans buying the imported CDs or doing downloads…”

You go to a UFA meeting, bring the idea up, and get a “Not yet, we’re working on the rest of Asia first.”

You get impatient, you throw in that Shakira cover just to see the reaction it could get from fans…and one fan records the show, makes an mp3, and flows it to the World Wide Web.

You gauge the reaction, go to another UFA meeting, again bring the idea up, get a “Be patient, Gocchan…”

…and you go home, have a cup of tea, then get an epiphany… an epiphany that reads, “Fuck this waiting shit! I don’t just want to be a Japanese singing star! I want the world and I want it now!”

You go to one last UFA meeting, drop a bombshell, and agree to wait until the last date of your tour to publicly drop another bombshell… look for another label and agency, wait out the rest of your UFA contract until 2008 starts…

And as for the rest of the story? We’ll just have to wait and see what 2008 brings for Maki Goto.

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?
(more…)

Imagine waking up this morning, going to IntlWota.com after going through your morning e-flurry, and finding news that Maki Goto was leaving Up-Front Works to continue her solo career elsewhere, although she has not yet signed with another label or agency (and probably couldn’t until released from her UFA contract).

Maki, with her stellar track record, won’t have much trouble maintaining her solo career from hereon in. I’m curious of how she’ll sound on her first post-H!P recordings, of course. Reports are that this departure was in the works for awhile, which would contradict a report from Nikkan Sports that her brother’s legal troubles had something to do with it. The long-planned departure would also suggest why her last H!P-overseen album, How To Use SEXY, didn’t have a numbered title, as is traditional with H!P artists.

Ganbatte, Gocchin.