Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

Memes by both Misa and pengie within the IW blogosphere have turned up. I’m doing Misa’s first since pengie’s seems to call for a more detailed explanation and my response won’t be ready to be posted on here until later this weekend.

1. What was the first Japanese song that you ever listened to?
“Kiss In The Dark” by Pink Lady. I still have the 45 somewhere in my house.

2. Did it inspire you to like that group/singer, or did it turn you away?
I liked them a lot. Never bought the full album though… I’m surprised that I haven’t rectified that by looking for the album on eBay, but I do have a double-CD anthology of Pink Lady now!

3. What is the one song that you have been listening to for the longest time?
Both of Whiteberry’s albums.

4. What group/singer have you liked the longest?
Group: Whiteberry. Singer: Yui Horie.

5. What is the song with the most plays on your iTunes/media player? As of today, Morning Musume’s “Egao YES Nude” with 140 plays.

6. Is that song your favorite?
Definitely one of my many favorites. “Resonant Blue” is right behind it with 136 plays.

7. If not, what is?
No answer.

8. Is there any one group that you can listen to all/most of the songs by? If so, who?
Morning Musume/Hello! Project.

9. What is your favorite agency?
Some might say Hello! Project/UFW but I don’t have a “favorite” agency.

10. What is your favorite group/singer?
It’s a tie between The Stooges and Morning Musume.

Having already known of Li Chun’s keyboard talents when her and Qian Lin’s addition to Morning Musume was announced last year, I wondered if she’d ever display her instrumental skills in a public setting. Apparently she has already in this video from one of JunJun and LinLin’s first public appearances. (Does anyone know the name of the piece JunJun is performing in this clip?)

Of course, Sayumi tries to show off her (more rudimentary) keyboard skills afterward, only to get thwarted by two roadies (one of whom is wearing a commemorative Panda Musume T-shirt). Hey, at least Sayumi didn’t do a hamfisted version of “Home Sweet Home” or “Runaway”!

For those of you (like me) who are in the mood for a little more classical piano greatness, here’s an intimate performance (right out of his New York townhouse) from the Jimi Hendrix of classical piano:

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.

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Man, what took me so long to check out this PV? Actually, more like “watch it again and then write about it” would be the correct second part of that question…

I do admit, an H!P side project involving my favorite MoMusu is going to get my attention no matter what anyway, but I still have to withhold further comment until I’ve actually listened to the song a couple of times.

Well, the time for comment is now. I love the song. Yes, I’ve said this before when I did the Ri-Sa.J review this past weekend, and the TLC tribute episode of the Pagoda Podcast last month, and it bears repeating: Urban contemporary music in America has gone down the shitter. What was once the edgiest and best non-rock-based pop music on the American airwaves between 1991 and 2002 is now simply a repetitive and uninspired bastardization of both R&B and hip-hop with very little in the way of creativity or content either musically or lyrically. If I hear one more repetitive “hip-hop” song with lyrics about being “in tha club”, or about somebody’s clothes, or with some asinine deliberate mispronunciation of any word in the English language that makes Ebonics look like Shakespearian verse, I’m liable to call an air strike on the Island Def Jam offices or make Akon wish he really had gone to prison for car theft.

Hearing “C/C (Cinderella Complex)”, an R&B song which actually has defined verses and choruses (a rarity in current American urban pop), reminds me musically of a lot of some of the tracks on what I think is TLC’s finest studio album, Fan Mail. The musical arrangement of “C/C” reminds me a lot of the “grooving robotic” (my term) sound that Dallas Austin (the George Martin to TLC’s Beatles) concocted for many of Fan Mail‘s pivotal tracks – so much so that it’s almost a shock that Reina Tanaka and Ai Takahashi aren’t singing “Silly Ho” or “I’m Good At Being Bad” instead, or that one of the H!P Kids joining the sempai Musume on this track aren’t making with a Left Eye-styled rap interlude.

The video’s pretty damn good for what is supposed to be a one-off side project tied into a MoMusu-involved stage play. My fellow Cancerian Vee lamented in her recent review that Reina could have worn a hairstyle other than her trademark tails in the PV, which may be true. But I think in Reina’s case, given that she’d worn different hairstyles in the “Mikan” and “Resonant Blue” PV’s and sported a transitional hairstyle during Morning Musume’s recent Taiwanese TV appearance, her wearing her everyday “Wonkytails” in a PV situation seems a shade redundant, but it doesn’t matter since, thinking back to the past couple of years of Morning Musume PVs, Reina doesn’t sport her trademark tails in any of those clips.

Takitty’s touching her face and fooling with her hat seem to get a little tedious as well, but probably only because she was doing something similar (sans hat) in the “Mikan” PV. The hat looks good on Takitty – it makes up for the fact that we don’t see much of her badonkadonk. (Vee is to blame for that word being in my vocabulary in relation to Ai Takahashi!) The three H!P Kids involved, Saki Shimuzu of Berryz Koubou, Maimi Yajima of C-ute, and H!P Egg Yukka Maeda, all do well in their slightly limited roles on the song as well.

The single comes out next week, and I’ve already had my pre-order in for weeks, but no doubt I’ll be checking the torrents this weekend for an advance tideover.

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Well, almost. ^___^

Came across this while looking for a different Whiteberry video entirely (unfortunately, no one has “Jitensha Dorobo” on there, at least not as of this writing). From one of the last episodes of Uta-Doki (I should start collecting the DVD’s), MoMusu 5th gen member Risa Niigaki performs “Natsu Matsuri” (mainly by way of the song’s original artist, Jitterin’ Jinn) with a more full-bodied and mature-sounding voice than that of the then-15-year-old (at the time Whiteberry recorded their version) Yuki Maeda. Eri Kamei, acting as MC for the episode, apparently couldn’t resist grabbing a mic and joining in.

For some mysterious reason, I started getting Entertainment Weekly delivered to my house months ago. I have no idea how this happened, but I’m not complaining – it’s a good Friday early-evening leaf-through, but when I discovered that Stephen King has been doing a monthly column, The Pop of King, for the weekly magazine, I started looking forward to every fourth Friday to see what he had to say about pop culture.

This week, he wrote about his “real Top 20” songs. “Real” as in they’re the ones he plays the most on his computer through iTunes when he’s writing. I actually do my listening on my iPod instead, but my iTunes keeps track as I’m always adding and removing albums and songs and podcasts.

I liked the idea of a Top 20 article based on one’s iTunes statistics enough to write about my own, but figured I’d go one – or is that five? – better than Mr. King and do a Top 25. Hell, doesn’t iTunes have a Top 25 Most Played smart playlist on every new installation of the program? (They do; I’ve long since done Top 100 and Top 500 playlists on there just out of curiosity; I’m sure a Top 1000 will happen at some point!)

I don’t know how many of these will surprise longtime Pagoda readers like I was surprised to see “Candida” or “Too Late To Turn Back Now” (very good choice in the latter tune, Stephen), but, like Mr. King said in his own column about his own list, the computer does not lie.

25. “SHABONDAMA” – Morning Musume (44) – One of the first Morning Musume singles I ever bought. I didn’t know it at the time, but my future favorite MoMusu made her debut on this track. 15-nin MoMusu is one of my favorite eras of the band so far.

24. “MISS LOVE TANTEI” (Rock In Musume remix) – W (Double You) (44) – No slag against the original version of what would, sadly, be Aibon and Nono’s last single (on my machine, its in the lower Top 50), but there’s something about this wild indie-rock fan remix that reminds me equally of both Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. that had me gravitate more towards this version.

23. “I WANNA BE YOUR DOG” (Sessions@AOL version) (44) – Iggy Pop (with The Stooges) (44) – Recorded in 2003 to promote Skull Ring, this live-in-studio version isn’t available on iTunes anymore for some odd reason, but a little searching through YouTube will locate the actual video from this session.

22. “NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN” – The Dickies (44) – The Dickies pretty much made their name taking cover songs and amping them up considerably (although it should be pointed out that lead singer/keyboardist Leonard Graves Phillips is one hell of a songwriter himself). This is one of their best rearrangements, taking a minor-key 6/8 Moody Blues chestnut and making it a joyous major key 4/4 rocker. Probably one of my all time favorite cover versions.

21. “RIOT INDUSTRY” – Cobra Verde (44) – Probably the most obscure thing on the list. Underground indie-rock darlings, this is probably Cobra Verde’s best known song and the opening track of their 2003 album Easy Listening, thanks to a video that has Mike Watt, George Wendt, and Rudy Ray Moore guest-starring in it. Watt himself liked the song so much that he did it as an encore selection on his 2004 tour.

20. “ROBOKISS” – W (Double You) (45) – I don’t know what kissing a robot that looks like Ai or Nozomi would be like, but there’s two lucky bastards out there that… um, never mind, I’m not repeating that joke from Cake Day again.

19. “BLACK NIGHT” – Deicide (45) – America’s most notorious death metal band leaves the Deep Purple classic black and blue.

18. “FIRST KISS” (Brazilian Mix) – Aa! (46) – I don’t know why this metal-based fan remix is called the “Brazilian Mix”, as it sounds more to me like Emperor than Sepultura, but this last (to date) contribution by the pseudonymous “#13 Root” to his long-running Evil Morning project always has me picturing Reina, Airi and Miyabi trying to hold on to their mic stands for dear life while Ishahn and company blast away behind them.

17. “PLETHYSMOGRAPH” – Jello Biafra and The Melvins (46) – The former Dead Kennedys singer and primary songwriter teaming up with the Seattle-bred punk/grunge pioneers for the albums Never Breathe What You Can’t See and Sieg Howdy! was pure genius.

16. “MAKE THE WEATHER” – The Waitresses (49) – Not as well known as “I Know What Boys Like” or “Christmas Wrapping”, but in my opinion, a superior song to both. The first single off their second album, this song should have made them a bigger band, but their label Polydor, as they were wont to do back then, dropped the ball. Seeing the video a few times on MTV back in the day still triggered me to look for the song when I first had iTunes.

15. “TROLLIN’” – The Stooges (49) – The opening track of their great reunion album The Weirdness. I was so glad to hear them do this song live when I saw them in concert.

14. “KOI NO VACANCE” – W (Double You) (52) – Their cover of the Peanuts’ classic – and the rest of Duo U&U – had me start an ongoing investigation into older Japanese pop music that continues to this day.

13. “CALL ME WHAT YOU LIKE (IF YOU LIKE ROCK-N-ROLL)” – Puffy AmiYumi (54) – The great English-language rocker from the US version of Splurge. A real record label would have pushed this song to the hilt.

12. “TACHIRI KINSHI” – Whiteberry (55) – Pop-punk at its most brilliant, no matter what the language. They’ve got guitars and rugby uniforms and they’re coming to kick your asses.

11. “HOW DO YOU LIKE JAPAN?” – Morning Musume (59) – A great album and concert opener and, at least according to iTunes, my favorite MoMusu album track.

10. “PISTOL PACKIN’ MOTHER FUCKER” – Hank Williams III (59) – From the “unreleased” and appropriately titled This Ain’t Country album, the tracks have circulated through file sharing since the original master scared the shit out of Curb Records.

9. “MORE THAN GOOD” – MX-80 Sound (70) – From their second album Crowd Control, now easily found on iTunes and eMusic along with their first album Out Of The Tunnel as the CD Out Of Control. MX-80 dropped the “Sound” from their name for that CD, but I still call them that here. This was grunge before there was even grunge (the album first came out in 1980 on Ralph Records).

8. “KANASHIMI TWILIGHT” – Morning Musume (71) – Yossi and Mikitty’s last single with the band, and they went out rocking. I’m surprised that I haven’t sat down and tried to tab this song out.

7. “POISON” – Johnny Angry (73) – There’s a slight bit of bias on my appreciation of this tune. The person singing lead and playing the Hammond B-3 organ on here is my pal Pete Mazich, who some of you might recognize as the organist on Mike Watt’s The Secondman’s Middle Stand album. Check them out at their MySpace page, http://www.myspace.com/johnnyangrymusic. It’s pretty cool that right now two angry breakup songs – this one and “Kanashimi Twilight” – are back to back on here.

6. “HELLO! ORANGE SUNSHINE” – Ai+BAND (74) – Great cover of the JUDY AND MARY hit by this apparently dormant-at-present female-fronted quartet. Thankfully, the album this is on, Hello! We Are Ai+BAND!!, is still in print.

5. “RESONANT BLUE” – Morning Musume (77) – I’ve only played their new single how many times so far?

4. “KOKO NI IRUZEE!” – Morning Musume (77) – Brilliant ska-punk from Japan’s sweethearts. The strings add to the frantic pace rather than detract from it.

3. “I WRITE SINS NOT TRAGEDIES” – Panic! At the Disco (80) – The only thing remotely close to a badmouth I will ever say about P!ATD is that their Mike Nesmith-esque habit of song titles that appeared nowhere in the song’s lyrics made it initially difficult to find out what this song was when I first heard it.

2. “JOINING A FAN CLUB” – Puffy AmiYumi (81) – I knew that frequent Puffy collaborator Andy Sturmer was in Jellyfish, but didn’t know that this was originally a Jellyfish song until I stumbled across it on iTunes. Giving this song a second shot at life via Ami and Yumi was a wise move.

1. “EGAO YES NUDE” – Morning Musume (127) – One of their best singles, ever. Prime MoMusu.

Well, folks, the reaction to the first Pagoda Podcast was pretty good and very encouraging, so that means I’ll be giving these a shot whenever I have a good idea for a track list or concept. I especially want to thank Vee for the support and Henkka for the shoutout he gave on his own fine debut podcast. It’s pretty cool to learn that my own work here in the J-Pop Blogosphere is having an influence on folks. I’m happy to officially announce that this here podcast can now be both subscribed to and searched out through iTunes – just type either “Pagoda Podcast” or “CJ Marsicano” to find it. Oh, also, apparently the host company for the podcast has changed its name since I uploaded the first podcast there. Instead of Podshow.com they are now Mevio.com so the new URL for the podcast is http://pagodapodcast.mevio.com. The other one still works but that shit threw me off a bit. That’s showbiz!

Direct DL | Show Page @ PagodaPodcast.Mevio.com

I admittedly wasn’t planning on doing a new Pagoda Podcast so soon but given what today is, I had to do a particularly special episode. Six years ago today I woke up to learn the horrible news that Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes from TLC had died in a car accident in the Honduras. I forget how the accident happened but I do remember hearing that she went through the windshield and died instantly, which was doubly creepy because D. Boon from the Minutemen had died in the same manner on 12.22.85. Vibe magazine would later compare TLC’s large shadow over R&B/urban music and the loss of Lisa Lopes with the impact the Beatles had on rock and roll and the death of John Lennon in 1980. I certainly do not disagree with that assessment one bit.
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“Resonant Blue” has sold over 48,000 copies in its first week and reached #3 on the weekly Oricon charts. That’s almost as much as “Mikan” sold overall, at least according to Oricon. And, as HNPH points out, “Keep in mind, Oricon doesn’t count a lot of the smaller stores, so they sold more than indicated at Oricon. ^_^”

As for the naysayers that wanted to seal MoMusu’s doom since “Mikan” was released… mreh!

The new singles from Miki Fujimoto and Viyuden arrived in my PO Box today, just in time for their release date back in Japan – Miki’s first solo single since leaving Morning Musume and Viyuden’s last single ever. (Stupidly, I forgot to pre-order C-ute’s single, otherwise I would have gotten that today as well. Alas, I rectified that situation, but too late for me to get the version with the DVD.)

Miki’s new single, “Okitegami”, is two cuts of music in the kayokyoku style (according to Tokyograph’s article on Mikitty’s comeback). Googling for the term “kayokyoku” turns up this article in Wikipedia:

Kayokyoku is a genre of Japanese music. Kayokyoku is usually translated as “popular music” and first appeared in Japan after World War II. ‘Kayo’ literally means ‘balladry’.

Music in this genre is extremely varied, but in its broadest meaning kayokyoku refers to popular music with lyrics, excluding folk songs and children’s songs. Kayokyoku in the narrower and more practical sense, however, also excludes J-Pop and enka.

At the same time, Wikipedia’s article on enka states that kayokyoku is basically enka music developed during the Showa period of Japanese history. Kayokyoku and enka seem to turn up the same artists when browsing both iTunes US and iTunes Japan (and Pink Lady turns up in the kayokyoku category in iTunes Japan). I was tempted to say they were enka right away when I first wrote this blog article since Mikitty’s new single was released by Rice Music, the UFW subsidiary distributed by King that also has Yuki Maeda on the roster. iTunes (both here and in Japan) lists the song as being under the kayokyoku category.

Anyway, the single and its enka/kayokyoku style is an interesting diversion stylistically from her MoMusu and GAM material. I have been interested in enka/kayokyoku for awhile (long before Jero showed up – some Japanese vinyl albums I’ve gotten in recent weeks via eBay are apparently kayokyoku/enka) but locating information on that particular genre is a bit difficult.

On the cover, Miki looks dead fucking serious. A year away from Morning Musume, she looks as if she is ready to prove herself in a different musical arena. Both songs, “Okitegami” and “Tooi Koibito”, are beautiful ballads and Mikitty handles them very well. You would have to hear the songs to really do them justice.

What I really found interesting about the single was that enclosed in the single was a sheet of glossy paper containing the vocal sheet music for one’s karaoke pleasure, along with the lyrics written out in the traditional right-to-left, up-to-down style. “Okitegami” is in B-flat minor and “Tooi Koibito” is in C-sharp minor. (I would have scanned at least one of the sides of the sheet as an example, but in the interest of not wanting to spend wedding, food, and record money on legal bills stemming from a copyright fight – not to mention energy I could be using finishing my novel or fucking my fiancee – I declined.) I am presuming that this is standard operating procedure for enka and kayokyoku recordings – one is more than welcome to tell me otherwise.

Ultimately, this single makes me want to find more enka and kayokyoku music. I just wish I knew where to really start. Yuko Nakazawa’s early solo work and Yuki Maeda’s singles have had me interested in enka and kayokyoku for some time, and Jero’s fine work so far (yeah, I know, just one single… but what a single!) has started to increase that interest. Miki Fujimoto’s new single is just more welcome fuel for the fire.

Raid-kun of Raid My Minibar posed a rather interesting question on his blog recently: Who would you marry based on their voice?, and essential brother Ray Mescallado was the first to answer. So, what the hell… I love a good meme.

Most people will probably guess correctly who my number one is so I’ll start there rather than start from the bottom.

1. Reina Tanaka.

As longtime readers of this blog probably know, or at least figured out for themselves, I’ve never been completely able to pin down what it is that makes Reina Tanaka my favorite member of Morning Musume. One thing that’s made her that way, obviously, is her singing voice. Far from an attention (or any other kind of) whore, Reina possesses one of the best voices in the band, and the past couple of years of MoMusu releases have seen her coming out more and more; As a result, she is finding more room to shine as a singer. Thanks to the final version of their new single “Resonant Blue” leaking, I was able to grab the torrent as a tideover until my CD arrives later in the week, and for the record, the damn thing was the only song I played today on my iPod. Of course, the Wonkylicious One shines on that single. Long may she shine.

And now for the two choices of mine that may shock the shit out of most of you:
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