Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

Stumbled across this clip while doing a little research for the Vinyl Pagoda Project. Don’t know what the TV show was or when this clip aired, but here Ayumi Hamasaki teams up with old-school J-Pop legend Akina Nakamori for a rendition of the latter’s controversial 1978 single “Shojo A”.

Yes, we will be hearing from Naka-san in the process of the VPP. but probably not until I decide on a final blog redesign for here. (If you can help, please e-mail me.)

ETA: Kd, formerly of Iro Iro Aru Sa!, tells me that this clip is from Ayu’s television show AYU READY?. which aired on Fuji TV for about a year and a half, and live collaborations like this were a regular part of the show (see her comment below).

Nakanomori BAND announced their breakup through their website on Sunday. News from Tokyograph here, and a reaction from pengie at unchained here. As a fan with all of their albums in my library, this is bad enough news to begin with. What makes this sadder is the breakup was precipitated by the forced layoff the band was under for the past couple of months because lead singer/guitarist Ayako Nakanomori at least a third of a way through a prescribed/predicted six-month recovery period following throat surgery; initially the other group members were going to tide themselves over with side projects until then, but now it seems that, unless that statement was a P.R. holding pattern, at least one person in the band changed their mind.

All musical instruments are fragile, from the oldest Stradivarius violin to the newest off-the-rack Fender Stratocaster. But the human larynx is the most fragile instrument of them all. The best way to combat or prevent such abuse is to learn how to sing from the diaphragm (chest voice) rather than from the voice box itself (head voice). Sometimes vocal training can actually help a person who tried to sing untrained recover or even improve their vocal power: In her pre-She’s So Unusual days, Cyndi Lauper rehabilitated her singing voice, which had been shredded from multiple nights fronting cover bands, by studying for a couple of years with a vocal coach who specialized in teaching rock and pop singers opera techniques. I think Henry Rollins underwent some similar vocal training in the mid-90’s, judging from the change his singing voice went through between the Weight album sessions in late 1993 and the Come In And Burn sessions in 1996. In between those two sessions, Rollins did a guest vocal on Mike Watt’s first solo album, but his voice is a rather harsh, throaty rasp on that track; his vocals from Come In And Burn onward have shown Rollins to be in much more control of his singing voice. At least one of his Rollins Band albums, Hard Volume, was recorded while the singer was both under deadline and suffering from strep throat, and his Black Flag diary/memoirs Get In The Van recounts several instances when he either blew his voice out onstage or did several consecutive weeks of one-nighters while battling laryngitis.

Of course, bad habits can also lead to the detriment and even the loss of vocal power. Smoking (both tobacco and marijuana) and drinking alcoholic beverages are the most common enemies of the voice box. Many singers - and rightfully so - prohibit people from smoking around them, but others will claim that smoking doesn’t effect their voices. In moderation, those vices may actually enhance some voices - Bob Dylan’s trademark vocal tone was partly the product of smoking both tobacco and pot, while a short layoff from lighting up led to the sweeter voice he had on his Nashville Skyline album. On the electronic press kit reproduced as a bonus feature on their When London Burns DVD, Deicide’s Glen Benton candidly credits the deepening octaves of his vocals to “cigarettes, Jack Daniels and marijuana” (vices he would give up in late 2006 on the advice of a doctor).

In excess,such vices can be fatal to the larynx: legendary operatic tenor Enrico Caruso smoked cigars regularly and paid the price of an onstage throat hemmorage for it, while on the totally opposite end of the spectrum, punk rock performance artist GG Allin, who started out his recording career in the late 1970’s with a more melodic, Iggy Pop and Stiv Bators-influenced vocal and delivery, recorded his final studio album with a voice that was horrifically ravaged from years of unrepentant drug and alcohol abuse. Even the casual use of cigarettes and alcohol can have fans of an artist up in arms, as Ai Kago’s original stalkerazzi-outed underage smoking incident in 2006 proved.

Diet can also have an effect, desired or not, on the voice. Many experts advise singers against consuming any kind of dairy product before recording or performing, owing to the buildup of mucus caused by even one glass of milk or slice of cheese. Of course, consuming the odd dairy product could also assist in deilbrately making a voice sound less worked on, something David Lee Roth (according to his own memoirs) discovered during the sessions for Van Halen’s first album. According to Roth’s memoir Crazy From The Heat, when their producer Ted Templeman discovered that Diamond Dave had avoided cigarettes and dairy prior to recording the lead vocal for “Jamie’s Cryin’”, Templeman ordered the singer to go outside and smoke a joint, and sent a studio runner out to get Roth a cheeseburger. Roth went outside, ate the cheeseburger, smoked half of the joint, drained a can of Coke, and came back in to record the vocal for one of VH’s best loved early album cuts.

I don’t know what kind of vocal training Ayako Nakanomori had (if any), or if she had any habits that could have resulted in her vocal problems. By that, I do not mean to imply that she was a smoker, only that she could have done or gone through other things, like poor diet choices, a stressful situation, or some sort of bad cold, that could have made her voice susceptible to getting a cyst on her vocal chords in the first place. Hopefully, she’ll overcome her original setback, just as she’ll have to overcome the sudden breakup of her eponymous band when she resumes her music career.

I just got a stack of 45s in the mail today.

Fifty of them.

All Japanese. and dating between 1968 and 1990.

I’ll explain quickly: A couple of weeks ago, I won an eBay auction for a lot of fifty Japanese 45s. The seller, very helpfully, provided post-it notes on each single with the artist and titles written in romaji, which is a big help to this gaijin who is practically illiterate in the language that fascinates him so. I spent the past 90 minutes or so cataloging all 50 of these singles into an Excel database file.

Now the real fun part begins.

As often as I can, I’m going to write about each of these 45s - both sides, what I think of the songs, and whatever I can find out about the artists. I’ll even share vinyl rips of these recordings. For anyone interested in earlier Japanese pop/enka/kayokyoku, this should be a treat. It sure is already one for me as a collector of records and a fan of Japanese music and culture.

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?

RI-SA.J
“Sexual Night, but…”
(Next Records)
Availability: CD single, iTunes Japan, HearJapan.com
Rating:

R&B music here in the United States has gone right down the commode since about 2002. I could easily say a specific date – say the day Lisa Lopes died in that car wreck – but I won’t. But I will say without a doubt that in the wake of TLC’s subsequent breakup that the quality of R&B/urban music in America has been lacking. Most songs in the genre are just plain monotonous, built along a lame hook, lame-ass “in da club” lyrics, and less than average vocals. I swear to god, if I ever hear Rhianna’s “Umbrella” song again, I’ll take that umbrella, shove it up her ass, and…

*IM beep*
reina_t_1111: Breathe, Ceej, breathe. Skip the details and get to the CD you’re reviewing.

Looks like my muse has spoken.

Anyway, some great urban contemporary-influenced sounds have been coming out of Japan over the past several years that I’ve been following that country’s output – Mai Kuraki’s first two albums, many of Hello! Project’s R&B experiments (see the tracks used on the second episode of The Pagoda Podcast as well as the show notes for good examples), and much of Koda Kumi’s output come to mind. So it’s probably no surprise that, thanks to the site HearJapan.com and a Japanese indie label called Next Records, I should stumble across a trio that makes the best modern R&B songs that I’ve heard in years.
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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.

My favorite J-Pop blog celebrates its First Anniversary on May 9th. Unfortunately, I have no cupcakes to commend the occasion with…

But what’s this?

For Pink Wota, and especially for my dear friend Vee, some pink vinyl from the “Punk Wota”:

It’s the double-vinyl edition of one of MotokoAoyama.com v1.0’s Top Albums of 2006:

Now, let’s dance:

SCANDAL
“Space Ranger”, “Koi Moyo” and “Kagerou”
(Kitty Inc.)
Availability: CD single and iTunes Japan and US
“Space Ranger”: Rating:
“Koi Moyo”: Rating:
“Kagero”: Rating:

I have a weird musical fetish, and it involves Japanese girls playing guitars. Shonen Knife may have kicked up the dirt, but it was Whiteberry who planted the seed back in 2001 that eventually grew into my chest-deep interest of Japanese music. Unfortunately, while there have been plenty of Japanese girls with guitars and drums winning my heart over the years, nothing has been totally perfect in this little wonderland. Whiteberry called it a career in 2004 after 2 albums, an EP and countless great singles. ZONE lasted three studio albums and over a dozen great singles. Nakanomori Band are on a short forced hiatus due to their lead singer taking six months off after having surgery on her vocal cords. Akiakane are touring the world but have yet to hand new material to Mike Park at Asian Man. You get the idea.

This past March, four schoolgirls from Osaka flew over to the United States as part of a package tour of independent J-Rock artists called “Japan Nite US Tour 2008″. No one knew what they really looked like. The band was called SCANDAL - spelled with all capital letters, and absolutely no relation to the 80’s American band fronted by Richard Hell’s ex-wife. (Yes, my friends, the “Love Comes In Spurts” guy was married to the “Goodbye To You” chick once upon a time…) Their website only had a short biography, manga/anime caricatures of the four members, some web animation, and the plan to release three one-song singles through the independent label Kitty Inc. in three months, as well as their US tour plans. I heard the four “demo” songs that were on their MySpace page. Their only available PV at the time was an animated video that was cut short to serve as an advertisement for the Japan Nite tour. I was both intrigued and skeptical.

Some of my blogging brothers at YODC witnessed their set in San Francisco and came away raving about their opening set and wanting more of these four young ladies. They weren’t the only ones, as Son of Gigan reported that every copy of their first two CD singles sold out at the merchandise booth. Yikes.

Fortunately, their tunes recently turned up on iTunes in both Japan and the US, with their second single becoming a Free Single Of The Week on iTunes Japan. Suffice it to say, thanks to the availability of iTunes Japan gift cards through Peter Payne’s JList.com, I went right over and nailed both songs. Of course, a week or so later I would discover that they were on US iTunes as well. Bad for me, but good for every American J-Pop fan that hasn’t dared get a Japanese iTunes account yet.

Now that their third single has been released (on CD on May 5th, and on Japanese iTunes on Tuesday evening [ETA: "Kagerou" turned up on US iTunes early Wednesday morning after I first posted this... argh!]) and that there is plenty of video of them available on YouTube, I can safely say that these four girls are for real.
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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.

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:

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:

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