Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

While it’s cool that this version has turned up (no doubt it will be part of the DVD version of the single), it’s probably no surprise that other folks in the J-Pop blogosphere (as Celestia has already anticipated) are going to whine about why this version didn’t come out first instead of the first version.

I do have one theory. While the version with the “everyday” and “dance rehearsal” footage of the various band members is cool, I think UFW may have gone with the alternate version to emphasize what is one of Morning Musume’s strongest A-sides of late and say, “Here’s the band doing their new single, no frills, no bullshit, you be the judge.” The vaguely tepid initial reaction (in comparison to the rest of 2007’s singles) to “Mikan”(*) may have been a factor in how Zetima and Hello! Project chose to promote the new single. Obviously, the original version of the PV as released by UFW has already gotten fans on both sides of the Pacific talking, and a great majority of them anticipating the formal release of the single.

Both versions of the PV are as strong as the single. My only bitch about the alternate version is that, even though she’s one of the two lead singers on the track, Reina doesn’t actually appear in non-performance footage close-up (she is the first member of the group to actually appear in the “Another Version” edition of the PV in the opening long shot, but isn’t immediately recognizable) until about one minute and forty seconds in. And since Reina is my favorite member of the band, obviously this is going to be a major bitch point with me. But then again, I’m also the webmaster of So Hot She Shits Fire so that’s to be expected.

Next week’s release date for the single can’t come soon enough. I would not be surprised if I was hitting the torrents real hard on Monday as a tideover until my pre-order landed in my mailbox.

((*)If posts like this one by Morning Kuri are any indication, folks seem to be changing their mind for the better regarding “Mikan”.)

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 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?

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”.

I heard early scuttlebutt that Morning Musume’s forthcoming new single “Resonant Blue” was going to be similar in style and feel to “Egao YES Nude”, which had me quite excited because, at present, that song, over a year after its release, has been played over 170 times on my iPod alone, according to my “Most Played” playlist.

A radio rip of the song - almost appropriately, premiered today on Reina Tanaka’s radio show - is already circulating and getting a great amount of reaction, mostly positive, from the IW Blogosphere (my favorite review is Vee’s, which also gets the award for best post title of the bunch).

To compare this to “Egao YES Nude” tells only half the story - this is “Egao YES Nude” turned up to 11. Like “Egao…”, “Resonant Blue” is in the disco/funk vein. But where “Egao”, great song that it is, leaned more towards the underground disco side of things, “Resonant Blue” leans heavily towards funk. More to the point, it’s the lost P-Funk song that George Clinton and company never got to record in their heyday, albeit with a little Ohio Players “Love Rollercoaster” guitar deceptively starting things off. The only thing really missing to complete the P-Funk equation is Bootsy Collins’ trademark vocal exclamations and “space bass” sound… and maybe Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk butting in and complaining that the girls in Morning Musume are too pretty.

I agree with Vee - I can’t wait for the album either.

…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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No, their P.R.-purified announcement doesn’t come with the admission that they never liked each other ever or the much-needed steps for a scorched earth policy on themselves that includes the burning of their master tapes and a group suicide, but the Spice Girls - a manufactured product whose creator has since shoved the American Idle concept (which has not produced a wholly viable artist with either the talent, the listenability, or the longevity of its first winner, the admittedly worthy Kelly Clarkson) down this country’s collective throat - have finally wised up and packed it in, realizing that all the hype in the world could not legitimize a reunion that, unlike those of the Stooges, Van Halen, and Meat Puppets, no real music fan ever really wanted in the first place. Given that most of the people who had wasted $15 apiece on their CDs in 1997 either sold them at a loss or threw them away when they discovered real music, it was the only thing left for these no-talent tramps to do.

Now that the disease has finally eaten itself alive, it’s time for America and the world to make way for the cure to pop music’s ills…

Open up your wallets, American record companies, and get ready to start the bidding war for a girl band that, unlike the Spice Cunts, is more than worthy of the mantle held by the Ronettes, Supremes, and TLC:

The Japanese celebrate St. Valentine’s day in a rather unique fashion. Women give the men gifts of chocolate as well as other gifts.

While all of this may seem quite one-sided, confectioners in Japan - never ones to miss an opportunity to sell more - took advantage of the Japanese feelings of obligation and created “White Day” in 1980 to help assuage the guilt feelings of those poor obligated males who received chocolate on Valentine’s Day. On March 14th, exactly one month after Valentine’s Day, men who were lucky enough to receive gifts of chocolate have the chance to return the favor by giving the women who gave them gifts of chocolate a more expensive box of chocolate or sweets (for some reason or other, these return gifts seem to be priced slightly higher than those the women purchase). Again, the stores provide plenty of reminders of the approach of this day so that even the most forgetful man cannot say that it slipped his mind. The gifts of chocolate that men buy are in white boxes (after all, it is “White Day”) and come with separate shopping bags to put them in.

(Original text from http://www.tanutech.com/japan/valentine.html)