Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

SCANDAL
“Space Ranger”, “Koi Moyo” and “Kagerou”
(Kitty Inc.)
Availability: CD single and iTunes Japan and US
“Space Ranger”: [Rating:4/5]
“Koi Moyo”: [Rating:5/5]
“Kagero”: [Rating:5/5]

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.

Apparently, the sudden change in the name of The Pagoda Podcast’s feed host has had an undesired effect on episodes showing up in iTunes’ directory. Simply put, the second podcast hasn’t shown up in their listing since podshow.com changed its name to mevio.com. The feed as given to Apple uses the older podshow.com XML url, which is probably already defunct at this point; getting the correction done is apparently a major adventure in itself.

The proper working feeds for iTunes, Winamp, and other podcast-compatible software can be had on this site’s own podcast page as well as at its own Mevio page.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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!

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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Johnny Thunders, one of the godfathers of punk rock, died on this day in 1991.

Thank you, Johnny, for having a major hand in creating the music I love, and helping make a punk rocker out of this Italian boy from Pennsylvania.

“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:

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

PERFUME
GAME
(Tokuma Japan)
Availability: CD only
[Rating:3/5]

Perfume, a three-piece J-pop girl group (the members – Nocchi, Kashiyuka, and A-chan – all use nicknames professionaly a-la TLC), on outward appearance do not seem to have much to distinguish themselves from other, similarly sized girl groups. Yet, with several singles to their name (all of which appeared on a compilation that preceded this album), this is only their first proper studio album. And it debuted at #1 on Oricion’s daily album chart this past Tuesday. What’s the deal?

Musically, Perfume are backed by arrangements heavy on all manner of analog synthesizers – often presenting harsher textures that recall early Polysics – and digital keyboards, married mostly to house and slower Eurobeat rhythms. That is the good part – all 12 of the songs on GAME are well written and well arranged, sometimes cleverly (the sequencers on “Bufferfly” easily evoke the winged creature of the same name) and its easy to see why songs like “Baby cruising Love” and “Polyrhythm” have made the pop charts in Japan. However, the instrumentation does not vary until the closing track, “Puppy Love”, comes in with a “Linus And Lucy” left-hand bass line and a choppy, artificial-sounding acoustic guitar.

Vocally, however, Perfurme are marred by heavy use of vocoders and other ProTools plug-ins. Used as a compositional device on the appropriate song (think Buono!’s “Internet Cupid”, Bob Mould’s “(Shine Your) Life Love Heart”, Panic! At The Disco’s “Nails For Breakfast, Tacks For Snacks”), or even in select places within a song (think Cher’s “Believe” and Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction”), it makes for variety within the confines of an album. Used heavily on every track without a break… well, think of current American R&B sensation of the moment, T-Pain, and his heavy reliance on vocoder-like vocal effects (a recent live TV performance that circulated on YouTube revealed how poor of a singer he is without the ProTools plug-ins).

The end result? An otherwise good album is marred by a production that casts doubts about the talent of its vocalists. They may have a number one album and a couple of hit singles to their credit, but on subsequent trips to the studio they’ll have to leave the vocal plug-ins deactivated in ProTools and use more varied musical arrangements if they even expect to see Morning Musume’s taillights from at least eight blocks away (by which time Morning Musume will have probably racked up another five or ten Top 10 hits). Like George Clinton sang on Parliament’s “Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk”, “Better luck next time.”

My blogging brother Tim “Napalm” Stegall is having a huge garage sale in Alice, TX (his old hometown) where he’s unloading a ton of stuff left behind by his late mother (for details, message him through his MySpace page). In the spirit of DIY punk rock, he’s even made up his own commercial for it:

Tell him CJ sent you!