Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

…to all the mothers everywhere… especially these two new Morning MILFs:

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And to paraphrase Brother Ray, it wouldn’t be Stuck In A Pagoda without throwing in a different set of Mothers for good measure:
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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.

Leave it to my favorite blogger in the IW blogosphere, Vee Hoffman, to give me the excuse to finally sit on my ass and do something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. I have to apologize in advance for the slightly shitty microphone I used on this debut podcast, as I had plugged into my $1700 Windoze Blister laptop a $2 microphone I’d gotten on the spur of the moment via a “cheap deals” link Tara had hipped me to. This was slightly impromptu, but if the reaction is good to this experiment, I’ll try to outdo myself on Episode 2 (and get a better microphone). Enjoy!

Direct download:

Episode 1

ETA 4.20.08 6:02 PM. Apparently Odeo.com, which is hosting the stream and RSS feed of this podcast, has briefly gone kerplotz. My apologies, but that part of the equation is unfortunately out of my control. Good thing I put the direct DL up, huh?

ETA 4.21.08 10:48 AM. Since Odeo.com is proving rather unreliable, I’m hosting the show through Podshow.com now and have removed the Odeo.com flash stream. You can stream or download the show, or grab the RSS feed for this and future episodes through this URL:

http://pagodapodcast.podshow.com

I’ve also put this new location’s RSS feed through iTunes for those of you that like to download podcasts in that manner; I’ll let everyone know when it becomes available soon as I get an update from Apple.

ETA 4.22.08 8:29 PM. The Pagoda Podcast is now available through iTunes. Click here to subscribe!

Playlist:
“The American Invasion” (intro) / CJ Marsicano / WMX8 EP
“Pinch!” / Yui Horie / Ho?!
“SwEEt dREAM” / Tommy February6 / Tommy Airline
“Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)” / Parliament / Mothership Connection
“Hello Orange Sunshine” / Ai+BAND / Hello! We Are Ai+BAND!
“Yumi Wo Mimashita” / Yukki / Sotsugyou EP
“Mrs. Robinson” / Natsumi Abe & Yuko Nakazawa / FS5 Sotsugyou

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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Online Videos by Veoh.com

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.