Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

Check the size of the coffee mug being wielded by Mr. Fripp - it’s bigger than his book! I could sure use a mug that size most mornings…

(Photos borrowed from here.)

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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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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock ‘n’ roll whose distinctive “shave and a haircut, two bits” rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday after months of ill health. He was 79.

Diddley died of heart failure at his home in Archer, Fla., spokeswoman Susan Clary said. He had suffered a heart attack in August, three months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa. Doctors said the stroke affected his ability to speak, and he had returned to Florida to continue rehabilitation.

The legendary singer and performer, known for his homemade square guitar, dark glasses and black hat, was an inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, had a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement award in 1999 at the Grammy Awards. In recent years he also played for the elder President Bush and President Clinton.

Diddley appreciated the honors he received, “but it didn’t put no figures in my checkbook.”

“If you ain’t got no money, ain’t nobody calls you honey,” he quipped. The name Bo Diddley came from other youngsters when he was growing up in Chicago, he said in a 1999 interview.

“I don’t know where the kids got it, but the kids in grammar school gave me that name,” he said, adding that he liked it so it became his stage name. Other times, he gave somewhat differing stories on where he got the name. Some experts believe a possible source for the name is a one-string instrument used in traditional blues music called a diddley bow. His first single, “Bo Diddley,” introduced record buyers in 1955 to his signature rhythm: bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp, often summarized as “shave and a haircut, two bits.” The B side, “I’m a Man,” with its slightly humorous take on macho pride, also became a rock standard.

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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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(Image courtesy Alternative Tentacles Records)

From the Boston Phoenix:

As you may have heard, conservative attack-radio douchebag Michael Savage went postal again the other day, responding to the news of Ted Kennedy’s brain tumor by taking to the airwaves with a rant that once again revealed the vicious, inhuman gutlessness of this country’s so-called silent majority — students of the P. Diddy Institute for Higher Etymology would surely recognize this as a prime bit of bitch-assedness. First he played clips of Ted Kennedy singing, interspersed with (Kennedy in-law) Arnold Schwarzenegger’s infamous “It’s not a tumor” clip. “The poor guy’s been suffering for years, you know?,” Savage said of TK. “Unfairly he’s been accused of alcoholism, but we see now that it was something much more deep-seated.”

Then he did something even more unforgivable: he played Dead Kennedys’ “California Uber Alles,” compounding the sacrilege by actually singing along. (Click on the media player above to hear the full clip, courtesy of MediaMatters.) A convergence of loony-fringe hatemongering and punk rock shibboleth-busting: is this where it all ends up?

We doubt that anyone would be ignorant enough to think that Savage is anything approximating an actual Jello Biafra fan, nor that anyone would be silly enough to think that Jello Biafra was in any way supportive of Savage. But we wanted to get Jello’s thoughts on the matter anyway, so Phoenix Editor Lance Gould raised him on the phone. Here’s what Jello had to say:

I haven’t read the details yet, but I’m aware of what Michael Savage did. Obviously he took my song way the hell out of context and did it deliberately. But the bigger issue is Savage himself and how the hell he gets away with stuff like saying this, and saying that people with AIDS should be put in concentration camps. And then when people protest at the station, he calls on his own listeners to come down and beat them up.

It scares the shit out of me that the most popular radio talk-show hosts are all foaming-at-the-mouth, ultra-bigoted blabbermongers whom only North Korea or the Nazis could love.

But like it or not, Savage is the third-most popular radio-talk show host in this country behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Nobody from the other side is represented or promoted well enough by the big right-wing-owned radio networks to compete. That’s one of the ways they mindfuck the country into being so dumb they vote for people like George Bush, Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The real issue here is why aren’t the big candidates calling for media reform? Once upon a time there was a law on the books called the Fairness Doctrine, and it said that if somebody like Savage or Limbaugh or that skull woman Ann Coulter said something completely fucked up and dishonest on the air, somebody else was allowed to come on the air and reply to them without being told to shut up every 15 seconds by a power clown like Bill O’Reilly. That law was on the books for 50 years but was allowed to expire in the late ’80s when a Democratic-controlled congress failed to override President Reagan’s veto of the law.

The damage was further compounded when your friend and mine Bill Clinton rammed through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, further deregulating how many radio stations and media outlets one corporation can own and what they can do with them and they greenlighted their long-held agenda to throw public interest out the window. And the volume and impact of the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Savages multiplied exponentially with nobody on the other side being allowed to reply. In large areas of rural and small town America, this is the only radio anyone is exposed to. That’s the problem. We need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. John Kerry had a golden opportunity to fire back at the Swift Boat liars and use that as a platform to rally the public to demand media reform. But true to form, he was too chickenshit to do it.

I originally sent the answers to Broomhead’s blogging survey right to him, but decided to share them here, especially with some other fellow bloggers in the IW community posting their entries publicly. Some of these answers seem like I’m giving variations on the same answer to variations on the same questions to me, though.

For the record, this survey goes for both the Pagoda and So Hot She Shits Fire. Also, for the curious, I liked Vee’s answers the best of all. (It’s a Cancerian thing).

Brian, I hope you got the results you were looking for with this survey. I’m curious as to see his summary of everything.
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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.

…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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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: