Morning Musume arrived in Los Angeles today (July 1) for Anime Expo. I just saw clips of them arriving at LAX and was both excited and bummed out. Excited because they’re finally in America, and bummed because I’m not there. Yes, you can ponder the irony of someone who is one of the most vocal proponents of wanting Morning Musume to have a bigger presence in America not being able to attend their American debut. More ironically, I already had this bit of time off from my day job long before news of their debut was announced, which would have made things otherwise absolutely perfect. (I have my reasons for being unable to get there, but I will not go into them here. This is not the place.)
Today is also what the AX site calls “Day 0″, their press junket. Apparently, several blogs and fan sites (including Hello! Online) were on the press list to interview the band, but were turned down at the last minute. I am sure they’re upset about this, but one has to realize that Morning Musume had just arrived after a long-ass plane ride from Japan, are probably tired and maybe a bit jet-lagged, and only have so much time to devote to press. Major press were said to be getting the first shot at interviewing the band, who are without a doubt the most requested interview subjects at the convention.
It’s also worth noting that most of the blogs and fan-run sites that were on the press list are fans first. I am not saying that no one in that category is incapable of acting professional – far from it. But they are fans first, and a first in-person look at the members of Morning Musume could most certainly cause even the calmest fan to become extremely nervous. I know I’d probably be.
Simply put, please don’t get mad at the band, or Tsunku, or UFA, or the AX organizers. This is their first time dealing with an American audience. The best thing for the fans to do is attend the concert and cheer them on, and let them know that Morning Musume is more than welcome here and would be welcomed with open arms time and time again. I know that, had circumstances been different for me, I’d be doing the same thing.
I know people often bring up how the deaths of famous people seem to come up in threes, but today was ridiculous. And all three of the people who passed today were pop culture mile markers in my own lifetime.
Farrah Fawcett’s passing at 62 after battling cancer – and a mere day or two after it was announced that her and longtime partner Ryan McNeal were going to marry (they’d been a common-law couple for a couple of decades) – is a sad but not surprising passing. Her cancer battle had been public for some time; a network TV special on her cancer battle also served in part to cast more light on America’s desperately-overdue-for-an-overhaul health care system when part of that special depicted her seeing treatment in Europe for her cancer.
When I was younger, I used to watch Charlie’s Angels during its first-run status on ABC. If I recall correctly, Farrah only remained on Charlie’s Angels for their first season (her character did recur in a later season, but I’d stopped watching by then). Her famous poster from that period (said to have sold 12 million copies) has long become iconic, as is the hairstyle she popularized in the series. She also managed to strengthen her acting cred in her post-Angels career by appearing in roles that were a far cry from her TV character: most notably, the off-Broadway play Extremities (1982) and the anti-domestic abuse TV movie The Burning Bed (1984). Extremities in particular is cited as the role that gave Farrah serious credibility as a dramatic actress, making the choice to have her reprise the role for a 1986 motion picture a no-brainer.
The second passing of today was that of early garage-punk icon Sky Saxon, leader of the legendary 60’s rock group The Seeds, of “Pushing Too Hard” and “Can’t Seem To Make You Mine” fame. Both songs were minor Top 40 hits in their day, but both songs have gone on to be considered garage-punk classics, a designation that began when “Pushing Too Hard” was tapped to be one of the songs included on the now-classic compilation album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era, and both songs have been covered by many punk groups, including the Ramones and early California hardcore punks The Klan, in the 80’s and beyond.
Saxon himself, after being aligned for much of the 70’s with a religious sect/commune called the Source Family (their leader, Father Yod, is said to have given Sky the moniker Sunlight, which stuck almost permanently for the rest of his life), spent the rest of his career working both with various reformations of The Seeds and with other pickup groups. More recently, Saxon had collaborated with Billy Corgan on some new material and would later appear in the Smashing Pumpkins’ video for “Superchrist”. Saxon had recently moved to Austin, TX, initially after only intending to stay briefly for some performances. He had checked into an Austin hospital with a suspected infection of his internal organs, but succumbed to whatever was ailing him not long after being admitted. He was 63.
(self-released)
Available as a digital file through wearethefallen.com
(other outlets may be forthcoming)
One band that my fiancee and I have witnessed a couple of times in concert was Evanesence, a band that we had found some common ground on early in our relationship. By the time we had witnessed the band live – once during their co-headlining stint on the 2007 Family Values Tour, later that year during their own headlining tour. But it wasn’t the same Evanescence that had recorded their breakthrough album Fallen or even their 2006 studio follow-up The Open Door. A year into touring behind Fallen, band co-founder and main composer Ben Moody left the group abruptly; weeks before Ev began their FVT stint, lead singer Amy Lee fired guitarist John LeCompt, leading drummer Rocky Gray to leave himself in disgust. While The Open Door was a decent album, the succeeding post-LeCompt/Gray tour was Evanesence in name only – it was really the Amy Lee Show, and the second of the two shows we witnessed that year was more memorable for Lee’s rather ridiculous stage outfit (which resembled a huge red Swiffer) than for the performance itself.
Since his departure, Moody busied himself with a variety of songwriting and producing jobs, while LeCompt and Gray collaborated in a band called Machina. That was until last Thursday when a USA Today article revealed that the three former Ev’s had reconvened with former American Idle (sorry, that’s how I always spell it here at TGML) contestant Carly Smithson. To make a long story short, a few rehearsals later, the new band – initially called just The Fallen until another band with that name cried fowl the day after the USA Today article decided to hit the ground running with a game plan meant to both satisfy hardcore fans of the collective’s previous projects and build/maintain interest in the band itself – a gradual releasing of recorded material every few weeks, interspersed with touring and eventually to a release of a physical album with some material not previously issued online.
The demand for the band’s first single proved to be overwheling to the band – so much so that copies of the mp3 single didn’t start to come out until Tuesday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the band opened up their site for signups.
Is it worth the wait and the hype? Yep. Comparisons to Fallen-era Evanescence are tempting to do, hard to avoid, and more than justified. After all, given that 3/5 of this band was also 3/5 of Evanescence when that band’s aforementioned breakthrough album was recorded and toured behind, it should be no surprise that We Are The Fallen sounds like that era of Ev. The reuniting of Moody with LeCompt and Gray reinforces who the actual creative force behind Evanescence was (Amy Lee’s version of the band on The Open Door notwithstanding), and Carly Smithson proves to be a more full-bodied vocalist with a wider range than Ms. Lee. To sum it up: Past recorded accomplishments notwithstanding, this is how Evanescence should have sounded in the first fucking place.
In a few weeks, Morning Musume are going to make their American debut at Anime Expo in Los Angeles. As of the schedule I saw this weekend, it seems odd that what should be capping off the festival – their debut US concert performance – is actually occurring at 2:30 in the afternoon on the second day of the convention.
OK, what next?
Almost a year and a half after I wrote my first column on getting Morning Musume to America, one reader recently relocated the column and commented on how much “fun” it was to re-read the article now, given the present circumstances.
So far we have:
Morning Musume performing in Los Angeles.
The first Morning Musume titles to see physical release in America – Platinum 9 Disc and the follow-up single “Shouganai Yuma Oibito”.
Up-Front Works and their present American licensee, JapanFiles.com, working on tie-ins to the appearance and Anime Expo in general, including an OPV contest.
An official MySpace page (Given how many “unofficial” MoMusu MySpace pages have come and gone over the years, what took UFA so goddamned long with that?!?)
And with those, come the caveats:
So far, the physical CD releases have only been available from JapanFiles.com’s own retail site. A search of Amazon.com and CDUniverse.com only turns up import editions of everything.
No other appearances have been scheduled in this country for the band – but it’s still early in the game here. (Yes, Virginia, even my caveats have caveats.)
What was previously available on US iTunes up until JapanFiles.com got the American rights to much of the Hello! Project back catalog is not presently there, save for All Singles Complete. Platinum 9 Disc and more recent singles have turned up there the same time as in Japan and on JapanFiles.com since then, though.
So, Morning Musume comes here, plays their hearts out, has a successful show, and goes back to Japan Sunday night or Monday morning. What next?
From last night’s Tony Awards… which also begs the question as to why these has-beens were invited to lip-sync to a twenty-year-old recording of themselves in the first place:
Cue that kid from The Simpsons pointing and saying “Ha-ha!”.
So far, Tsunku’s plans for a new Mini Moni lineup are taking a more interesting shape. This morning, he announced who the leader of the third-gen lineup of the revived band is going to be:
Qian Lin, better known to us all as 8th-gen Morning Musume member LinLin. (If anyone has noticed, I’ve more often than not referred to Lin and her fellow “Panda Musume” Li Chun [JunJun] by their real names here and at Stuck In A Pagoda.) Throwing Lin into the mix is a good choice – she fills both the senior MoMusu member role held in the original lineup by Mari Yaguchi and the “international presence” role held throughout the band’s original existence by Mika Todd. And, by nice coincidence, LinLin also plays guitar – something Mika Todd also knew very well:
In a more personal yet somewhat related note, writing has been rather sporadic for me, period, the last few days (this blog post is the first thing I’ve seriously written since Friday night!), and most of my energy has been directed at completing the novel that the original MiniMoni itself inspired. I intend to make up for that big time this month. Thanks for hanging in there, friends.
This must be the year for Hello! Project to be doing the unpredictable. First, Morning Musume making their long-demanded debut in the United States, and now this:
Tsunku announced on his blog today that he’s reviving MiniMoni with an all-new lineup.
MiniMoni hasn’t exactly been far away from Tsunku’s – or fan’s – minds. Their first single, “MiniMoni Jankenpyon”, has turned up on set lists during the W/Berryz Koubou 2004 tour (sung by members of Berryz, despite the fact that two ex-MiniMonis were headlining) and during a Wonderful Hearts package tour a few years later with random MoMusu (one of which was Reina Tanaka, who had once cosplayed as a MiniMoni member in her pre-MoMusu days), Berryz and C-utes. Both times, the random members were dressed in the standard old-school MiniMoni covers.
So far, only one member has been confirmed for the new lineup: Hello! Project Egg Kanon Fukuda:
My initial presumption would be that Tsunku will be utilizing mostly H!P Eggs for the new lineup, rather than shoehorn existing Wonderful Hearts into the band, despite the original group’s origins as consisting of 3/4 Morning Musume. Whether the original 150cm and under rule concieved by Mari Yaguchi in 2000 is held to is also presently unknown. But whoever gets in the new lineup will have some big shoes to fill – especially vocally, since the group had four very distinctive voices in Ai Kago, Nozomi Tsuji, Mika Todd and Mari Yaguchi. Ai Takahashi’s later membership in the band in Marippe’s place did nothing to diminish that, thankfully.
The timing of this annoucement is interesting: Mari Yaguchi FINALLY issued a solo single earlier this spring, and was recently in the studio with fellow O.G. MoMusu Kei Yasuda. Meanwhile, Ai Kago’s first post-Hello! Project single is coming out in a few weeks. Nozomi Tsuji is concentrating on her “new” career as a designer of baby clothes at present, and it’s been awhile since anything new was heard about Mika Todd.
Also a mystery right now (give Tsunku a break, he’s only announced one band member so far!) is what the musical content will be like. MiniMoni’s original sound, however varied, was more youth-oriented, until 2003 when the group started turning towards a more mature R&B-oriented sound. An educated guess might surmise that a new lineup might hark back to MiniMoni’s original approach, but again, with only one horse in the starting gate it’s too early to tell.
CONOR OBERST AND THE MYSTIC VALLEY BAND Outer South (Merge)
Available on CD, 180-gram 2xLP with download code, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic Rating:
It is a little hard to listen to Conor Oberst recent solo output and not be reminded of Bob Dylan. Hell, with his self-titled 2008 solo release – his first recording for Merge after an almost lifetime association with Saddle Creek (the independent label he practically helped build thanks to his prodigious output under the Bright Eyes moniker) – had a lot of shades of Bringing It All Back Home/Highway 61 Revisited Dylan throughout.
Indeed, Outer South smacks incredibly of Dylan even more than Conor Oberst. Until now, it was unusual for Oberst to retain the same general musical style from album to album in a row, given that the past several years of his studio album output have ultilized electronics (Digital Ash for A Digital Urn), nu-country (I’m Wide Awake Its Morning), and a cross of Pet Sounds and Electric Warrior (Cassadaga). Then again, Conor Oberst the solo artist and his Mystic Valley Band are a wholly different beast than Bright Eyes.
The more consistent personnel of the Mystic Valley Band has brought in a new dimension to Conor’s world: The band is co-credited on the album itself, while several of the members contribute their own lead vocals and/or songwriting to the new album. On the front cover photo, Oberst has even gone so far as to deliberately obscure his eyes with a black marker smudge to divert attention to the rest of his bandmates. The presence of compositions from the rest of the band would explain why this album is appearing a mere nine months after the release of Oberst’s last full-length effort.
When I first sat down to listen to the album, I hadn’t given a glance to the credits and didn’t know that Oberst was sharing lead vocal and songwriting time with the rest of the band. When I was taking notes while first listening to the album (double vinyl edition), I had written “Conor’s singing voice [on “”Big Black Nothing”] is almost unrecognizable here, resembling a consistently on-pitch Dylan.” Nope – it was guitarist Nik Frietas singing his own composition.(Yeah, sorry for the Dylan comparison – I can’t help it with this album). Same with “Air Mattress” where I thought Conor was taking on a slightly more nasal voice – the band’s other guitarist, Taylor Hollingsworth, is the vocalist (and songwriter) there. (Frietas, Hollingsworth, and drummer Jason Boesel contribute two lead vocal/songwriting efforts apiece on the album; bassist Macey Taylor sings a song specially penned by Oberst; Conor co-wrote one song apiece with Frietas and keyboardist Nathaniel Walccott respectively and wrote the rest of the album himself.)
Again, the general musical tone of the album, like its predecessor, reminds me of mid-60’s Dylan, but there are other musical influences rearing their heads throughout Outer South. “Bloodline”, Nik Frietas’ other lead vocal/songwriting contribution, recalls George Harrison’s mid-to-late ‘70’s solo work – on first listen I kept expecting the band to go into “Crackerbox Palace” at any moment. “Roosevelt Room” channels louder Neil Young & Crazy Horse (Hollingsworth does some very Neil-esque electric guitar work not only on this track but on “To All the Lights in the Windows”). “Cabbage Town” finds Roger McGuinn 12-string leads, Phil Spector drum rhythms, and Roy Orbison-esque guitar strums vying for sonic space.
Some talk elsewhere on the internet (mainly early armchair reviewers on Rate Your Music working from leaked copies of the album) accuses the presence of the other band members’ songwriting contributions as actually weakening the album. This is not the case. The contributions of the other band members’ songs are equal with Conor’s, and Conor himself has definitely not lost a step songwriting-wise, given that he really hasn’t lost a step since at least Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep YourEar to The Ground. Having a solid team behind him no doubt helps, but even with the rest of the band sharing the singing and writing duties, Outer South is still USDA prime Conor Oberst – you can consume with confidence.
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