Happy Birthday to the True King and Heavyweight Champion of Rock n’ Roll, Iggy Pop!

He’s 62!

According to Totally Hello! Project, Ai Kago’s first post-H!P release that isn’t a DVD or book is finally going to be a reality this June.

So far, the only available link to order is Amazon Japan (see the above TH!P post); hopefully this will change.

HANGRY & ANGRY
“Sadistic Dance” (single)
(JapanFiles.com)
Available as a digital download through JapanFiles.com and ITunes US & Japan
Rating:

This is, admittedly, a quick review because I only have one song to deal with. I hadn’t even thought that Hitomi Yoshizawa & Rika Ishikawa would hit the studio again before coming to America this weekend for SakuraCon, but go they did.

If you liked the Kill Me Kiss Me EP (I certainly did), “Sadistic Dance” is more of the same, basically – which is not a bad thing: a dark-sounding lyric over mostly major-key punk/goth/pop music. The song starts off with an almost snake-charmer-esque lead guitar line, while the body of the song, whose instrumental arrangement is dominated by techno-influenced keyboards with early Jesus & Mary Chain guitar rhythms (without the excess amplifier feedback), is propelled by an almost poppish beat (especially during the choruses). Yossy and Charmy’s vocals, which have never needed any post-production tricks in their entire careers to date, take on an alternate dimension by way of whoever produced the track (JapanFiles didn’t provide any production credits) making an exact copy the duo’s original unprocessed vocal tracks (one of the many creative advantages of hard-disk recording systems like ProTools and Logic, compared to analog reel-to-reel tape), processing that copy with a touch of AutoTune, and then folding it underneath the original vocals so that both the clear and “robotic” vocals sit side-by-side on the track. In an age where some artists are using AutoTune more as a gimmick to hang (or lengthen) a career on, the deliberate side-by-side vocal production on “Sadistic Dance” comes off as a much more creative and honest way of using that particular ProTools plug-in.

Here’s hoping this is a teaser for a new HANGRY&ANGRY album!

Yeah, I know, some of you are saying, “say what”? Didn’t TGML start up back in August of last year? What’s this “third anniversary” shit?

Well, three years ago, I started blogging seriously at the first version of MotokoAoyama.com in April of 2006. However, the exact start date is lost to the ages thanks to the business ineptitude of a webhost owned by a part-time hair metal oldies band drummer. For whatever reason, I didn’t commemorate the first anniversary of Stuck In A Pagoda, but decided last year to make April 11th the official anniversary to coincide with the day my fiancee and I witnessed seeing Iggy Pop & The Stooges at the Electric Factory on 4.11.07. The clip of the Stooges doing “TV Eye” below was shot two days beforehand in New York City.

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And to cover the other half of this blog’s usual musical equation and remain with the live concert theme, a live version of one of the best singles Morning Musume has done (to date) in that same three-year time period. No slouch to the rest of the top notch material the band has done in that time period (”Eago YES Nude”, “Mikan”, “Kanashimi Twilight”, etc.), but the choice was easy because it happens to be the most played Morning Musume song on my iTunes:

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I’m going to have to update that list I did last year for a later post.

From The Beatles’ MySpace:

We are delighted to announce the release of the original Beatles catalogue, which has been digitally re-mastered for the first time, for worldwide CD release on Wednesday, September 9, 2009 (09-09-09), the same date as the release of the widely anticipated “The Beatles: Rock Band” video game.

Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album. On the same date, two new Beatles boxed CD collections will also be released.

The albums have been re-mastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilising state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.

The collection comprises all 12 Beatles albums in stereo, with track listings and artwork as originally released in the UK, and ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ which became part of The Beatles’ core catalogue when the CDs were first released in 1987. In addition, the collections ‘Past Masters Vol. I and II’ are now combined as one title, for a total of 14 titles over 16 discs. This will mark the first time that the first four Beatles albums will be available in stereo in their entirety on compact disc. These 14 albums, along with a DVD collection of the documentaries, will also be available for purchase together in a stereo boxed set.

Within each CD’s new packaging, booklets include detailed historical notes along with informative recording notes. With the exception of the ‘Past Masters’ set, newly produced mini-documentaries on the making of each album, directed by Bob Smeaton, are included as QuickTime files on each album. The documentaries contain archival footage, rare photographs and never-before-heard studio chat from The Beatles, offering a unique and very personal insight into the studio atmosphere.

A second boxed set has been created with the collector in mind. ‘The Beatles in Mono’ gathers together, in one place, all of the Beatles recordings that were mixed for a mono release. It will contain 10 of the albums with their original mono mixes, plus two further discs of mono masters (covering similar ground to the stereo tracks on ‘Past Masters’). As an added bonus, the mono “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” discs also include the original 1965 stereo mixes, which have not been previously released on CD. These albums will be packaged in mini-vinyl CD replicas of the original sleeves with all original inserts and label designs retained.

Discussions regarding the digital distribution of the catalogue will continue. There is no further information available at this time.

Pics of two of the remastered and repackaged titles can be seen here. I’ll probably ruminate more on this later.

Today would have been the 51st birthday of an American Musical Legend…

Dennes Dale Boon, known to most music fans as D. Boon, was born on this day. D. Boon was the guitarist and frontman for the mighty trio known as the Minutemen.

It is pretty much inconceivable to think of how the American music scene would have been without the Minutemen. The Minutemen would probably have been just another short-term band from California had Black Flag not taken the initiative to invite them to make a record – the Paranoid Time seven-song 7″ EP – for Black Flag’s SST Records label. Had that initiative not been taken – or had been turned down by the Minutemen, we probably would not have been blessed with The Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, or Dinosaur Jr. And American independent music itself would have been drastically different.

But thankfully, the Minutemen did go into the studio with Black Flag’s Greg Ginn one hot California night to record Paranoid Time, and the rest was an important part of music history. For the next six years, the Minutemen would create a wide body of material, all of it now considered classic and influential. Their 1984 double album Double Nickels On The Dime is considered to be a must-own, must-hear, classic album.
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