CJ Marsicano
So SNSD Made Their US Morning Show Debut This Morning…
I tend to loathe when a musical artist gets booked on what used to be Live with Regis and Kelly (previously Live with Regis and Kathie Lee). For one thing, when the show would start, one would have to suffer (or fast-forward if they recorded the show) through a babbling dialogue between Regis and Kelly (mostly pushed by Regis) that would take up at least 45 percent of the airtime. Secondly, musical artists tend to not get more than two minutes to pay a song, which is both jarring to the viewer and insulting to the artists. James Brown actually refused (and rightly so) to perform under such a ridiculous restriction and cancelled his appearance on the show at the last minute.
Girls Generation did a performance of “The Boys” on Live with Kelly this morning that I didn’t find out about until someone tweeted to me about it last night after my last post went up. I somewhat dreaded it because of how ridiculous the format of the show has been for decades, but I still set my DVR (and ended up watching it live anyway – thank god I have Wednesday mornings off). Regis is, thankfully gone (adios, you babbling idiot…), the monologue was thankfully shorter, and Girls Generation got off a relatively complete performance of “The Boys”, albeit one where there might have been one verse left out of the song (I didn’t replay the performance this time around). They did, however, perform over a backing track rather than use a live band like last night on The Late Show with David Letterman, which was a bit of a letdown.
They also got their first US TV interview courtesy of the show, with host Kelly Ripa being somewhat serious and guest co-host Howie Mandel being a slightly less obnoxious asshole than Regis Philbin. There could have been a bit more research and thought going into the questions asked of the band, but since the show was geared mainly toward a more general audience that is to be expected. The show’s producers also had a shot of the band’s tour bus and the crowd of hardcore Sone (at least one of them holding up a copy of the tin-packaged Korean edition of the new album) waiting outside, which was good because America got to see a crowd of discerning American pop fans who wouldn’t listen to thoughtless, overproduced, and undercomposed dreck like Katy Perry or Scotty McCreepy if you put a loaded pistol to their heads.
So, two for two as far as SNSD’s first two performances on American television go. Let’s see what happens from here (An album or EP with English versions of “Genie”, “Hoot”, and their other earlier hits would be a nice start…)
So SNSD Made Their American TV Debut Last Night…
…well, it’ll be last night when most of you will be reading this. As of this writing, Girls’ Generation’s network TV debut on The Late Show With David Letterman – pre-taped Tuesday afternoon – finished airing about ten minutes ago and I even re-ran it to watch a second time. Let’s get right to business:
PROS: Girls Generation and the session musicians backing them – a curious three-piece unit of keyboards, drums, and DJ – could have done a note-for-note performance of “The Boys”, but surprised me by switching up the arrangement a little bit, throwing in a new instrumental break that isn’t on the original recording in the process. Their vocals were live and not lipsynched, which was another plus (there were a few pre-recorded effected vocals running underneath the live mics – more on that in a moment – but those were there to help replicate the production of the original recording while SNSD sang live over them, not for them to mime to). They also handled their choreography well despite the relatively small amount of real estate on the stage floor they had to deal with (and even though Sunny, at least for a second or two, in danger of bumping her ass cheeks into Paul Schaffer’s keyboard stands).
CONS: Firstly, whoever David Letterman’s director is needs to be repeatedly pimpsmacked, as there were quite a few times when the cameras were focusing on members who weren’t singing. The vocal mix wasn’t 100% perfect as a few of the members seemed to have had their mic levels lower than the rest of the group, and at one point a pre-recorded effected vocal almost cancelled out one of the other members’s live vocal. And who said Regis Philbin (who had participated in a field-goal skit with Letterman and guest Bill Murray) could obnoxiously blow his referee’s whistle right after Girls Gen and their band stopped playing? Isn’t that old fart supposed to be completely retired from being on television?
So, that’s SNSD’s American TV debut in a nutshell. Are there going to be other TV performances to follow this one? Or are Interscope going to drop the ball and not push them any further this cycle, just like they unnecessarily delayed the American release of the album Girls Generation are supposed to be promoting for months after its original Korean release? Time will tell…
NEW MUSIC: JACK WHITE “Love Interruption”
Almost a year after the formal professional split of The White Stripes, Jack White is finally getting ready to unleash his first solo album Blunderbuss on April 24th, jointly released by Third Man and Columbia (the day before in the UK and EU – lucky bastards).
For now, Third Man are already taking pre-orders for the first single, “Love Interruption”, which will contain a non-LP B-side, and be released on vinyl on February 7th and through iTunes tonight at midnight. Tide yourself over in the meantime with this stream:
And since Record Store Day is happening before the album’s release, I’m sure Third Man are going to have something special coming out that day as well. After all, it was on RSD in 2009 when the first Third Man single, The Dead Weather’s “Hang You From The Heavens”, was released…
A Conversation With Brendan Canty (October 2001)
A little Googling had me come across this old interview with Fugazi’s Brendan Canty that I thought was lost forever until someone else had archived it. Since it’s my interview, I’m taking it back. This interview first appeared at the long-defunct website Project X and was conducted and posted days before the release of Fugazi’s final album The Argument. A few parts of this ended up missing anyway, but upon looking at this, most of it seems to have survived. With Fugazi recently opening their live show archive for download at the Dischord website, this seems like a good time to repost this.
Upon learning that Fugazi were about to release a new album, The Argument and a related EP, Furniture, this fall as well as reissue Instrument on DVD (yay!) with bonus footage, I contacted Dischord Records by e-mail. That was mid-August. By late September, Guy Piccotto, one of the band’s two guitarist/frontmen, initially replied that an interview might not be possible with everything that was going on both in the band and in D.C. in general. Being a more understanding journalist, I told Guy in my reply, “No problem — let me know when anyone’s free.” Last Monday, Guy said Brendan was available and passed on his e-mail address.
Fugazi. The name was found by vocalist/guitarist Ian MacKaye (co-founder of Dischord Records and lead singer of the influential early 80′s punk quartet Minor Threat) in a book about Vietnam, a slang term which is actually an acronym for “F’ed up, got ambushed, zipped in.” Their music shed’s punk past in favor of meshing such disparate influences as reggae, funk, go-go and hard rock. MacKaye and the band’s other vocalist/guitarist, Guy Piccotto [pronounced "ghee"], are probably the two most distinctive vocalists in rock today — MacKaye’s Joe Cocker-influenced “melodic shouting” style (honed during the three years that Minor Threat existed and refined with various side projects between 1984 and Fugazi’s formation in 1987), and Piccotto’s one-of-a-kind, full of raw emotion vocalisations. Ian and Guy’s guitar styles — thick powerchording and searing lead lines eminating from either or both guitarists at the same time — stand out in a sea of tenth-generation Ramones/Dickies/Buzzcocks/Descendants copycats and detuned unwashed KornSmackParkVayne slackers to this day, while bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty anchor the whole thing.
When the group formed in 1987, MacKaye had taken some time off from performing after the relative failure of his post-Minor Threat group Embrace, while Piccotto and Canty had been in an abortative punk band called Insurrection (the only existing copy of their demo, produced by MacKaye, sits in MacKaye’s archives) and another brilliant but short lived Dischord group, Rites Of Spring, that recorded one album and one 7″ EP in the mid-eighties before dispanding. That lineup reformed under a different name, Happy Go Licky, and played live for a similar amount of time (a CD of live recordings was released posthumously). When Happy Go Licky was starting to dissolve, MacKaye invited Canty and Joe Lally, fresh off of having roadied for yet another Dischord group, for some preliminary rehearsals. By the group’s second live show, Piccotto, who had been hanging out at Fugazi rehearsals anyway, became first backing vocalist/roadie, then a full member of the band. For their first tours as a band (since he wouldn’t pick his own guitar back up until the group began writing their third record Repeater — the first full album after two 12″ EP’s), Piccotto would throw himself all over the stage, jumping or hanging off of anything he could at any given second, be it Ian’s amplifier, Brendan’s drums, or even — as documented on a video tape of an early Philadelphia show shot in a school gymnasium — upside down from the rim of a basketball hoop.
A band policy established by the group on one of those early tours still stands to this day: They only charge ten dollars for CD’s, still press records and charge eight dollars for those (a policy which has stood for everything that has ever been released by Dischord), and only play all-age venues that will charge $5 at the door (except in LA where promoters there won’t go lower than six). There’s never a set list, and only a few songs out of their entire repritoire that they don’t ever do live. Onstage, MacKaye and Piccotto will be just as active physically as they are musically. They’ll stop the show if there’s a disturbance caused by an audience member, drag the offender onstage and encourage him to apologize over the mic. (If that doesn’t work, they’ll hand him his five bucks back and show him the door.) In their hometown of Washington, D.C., they’ll only play benefit shows. They won’t do interviews with any magazine they themselves wouldn’t read. It’s a description of them that’s prefaced pretty much every article that’s ever been written about them, but like the band itself — and probably because of it — it’s endured.
For the past few years, Fugazi have had the luxury of taking it easy. After promoting their seventh release End Hits, the group reduced their touring schedule in order to complete work on the documentary Instrument, a very well made two-hour retrospective of the group’s first ten years together, as seen on video footage ranging from early super 8 and camcorder live footage — including that clip of Guy singing “Glue Man” upside down from that basketball hoop — to rare TV interviews, footage of the band recording their 1995 album Red Medicine, and more recent 16mm footage of the band in performance shot especially for the film. While the group finished the final film and compiled rare demos and instrumental tracks for Instrument’s soundtrack, Brendan and his wife had their first child. He now has two kids, while Joe Lally’s wife just had her first child this past summer.
This was an interview I wanted to get right after I finished off the Mike Watt interview this past August. Upon learning that Fugazi were about to release a new album, The Argument and a related EP, Furniture, this fall as well as reissue Instrument on DVD (yay!) with bonus footage, I contacted Dischord Records by e-mail. That was mid-August. By late September, Guy initially replied that an interview might not be possible with everything that was going on both in the band and in D.C. in general. Being a more understanding journalist, I told Guy in my reply, “No problem — let me know when anyone’s free.” Last Monday, Guy said Brendan was available and passed on his e-mail address. I e-mailed Brendan and two days later at the initally appointed time, I called him.
“You know what?” Brendan said, “My youngest son son is having a hard time going to sleep. Is it possible that you could call me back in about a half an hour?” It was possible, so I said no problem, thought of a few extra questions to ask in the meantime, and rang Brendan. What follows is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done to date. There were literally a lot of laughs in the close to an hour we spent on the phone, as the transcription will reveal over the next couple of days… [Note: The transcription had originally been spread out at Project X by its editor over the course of a week.]
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INCOMING REISSUE: LITTLE RICHARD “Here’s Little Richard”
Concord Music Group has a new reissue of Little Richard’s first album, Here’s Little Richard, remastered, expanded with two demos and (pending the proper rights clearances) an interview with Specialty Records head Art Rupe, and enhanced with two videos he did for a screen test for the movie The Girl Can’t Help It, and ready for release on April 17th. I’ve already heard an advance CDR of the reissue, and it’s the best sound I’ve ever heard on these classic tracks – but the review won’t be up until the day the CD is released, and then over at our sister site Music Is Like Oxygen. In the meantime, here’s the man himself with the song that started it all:
One Musician’s Opinion on AKB48 as an Instrument-Wielding Pop-Rock Band…
AKB48′s self-played performance of their forthcoming single “Give Me Five” under the assumed name/side project Baby Blossom is getting a lot of attention in the J-Pop blogosphere. Despite the raw playing and the questionable sound reinforcement (the result of either no proper soundcheck the day of the performance, or the soundman not taking into consideration how different the room was going to sound with an audience full of people as compared to when the only people in the building were AKB48 and their road crew), they still made quite an impression on me. As someone that has been playing a variety of instruments his whole life, I definitely want to critique and give some serious suggestions to the girls because there’s a lot of room for improvement.
For those that don’t know, I’m a trained musician. I play several different instruments (guitar is my main one, and I presently own five that are all named after J-Pop singers) and there’s a bunch more that I’ve tried but could never get a good enough handle on (trying to teach myself alto sax at age 19 resulted in way too many references to Horatio Hornblower and goat calling from my otherwise supportive parental units) and I’ve played in several different bands for over a decade after my graduation for high school – in fact, it ended up being my main income during the waning years of Reagan America when the only other place that was offering steady employment was the Armed Forces (who had already turned me off when they were relentlessly trying to recruit myself and my other classmates during my junior and senior years of high school and then for months afterward). It’s this musical background that has been a blessing to my activities as a writer and blogger, especially since, as essential brother Ray Mescallado said once, I “aspire to quality music writing” (one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten on my work – thanks again, man.)
Anyway, having watched and listened to the live performance of the song, here’s my notes:
The four girls playing horns were basically the weakest link in the chain. With only a few months of experience on their instruments, they sounded not much different than the brass players in your average junior high or high school marching band. That having been said, brass and woodwind instruments are not the easiest instruments to learn. I attempted to learn trumpet in 6th grade, as well as my aforementioned attempt to try alto sax almost a decade later, and only realized one thing – I didn’t have the lung power to get away with playing a horn properly.
The keyboardists and percussionists involved were a bit inaudible, but I blame the soundman for that, and in all fairness, I won’t critique them.
Yuki Kashwagi did a very impressive job behind the drum kit – I don’t think she even missed a beat. If she found herself in a working rock band after graduating AKB48, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Minami Takahashi did fine playing lead guitar, but her silence for the last few bars of the second chorus before the solo was typical of the beginner. There was a couple of obvious missed notes, but the only thing that grated on me with her playing was her rather bizarre and uncomfortable/unnatural-looking left hand fretting technique. Continued woodshedding and a bit of study with some good guitar instructional videos would help tremendously – they certainly did when I picked the guitar back up after a couple of years of hardly touching it!
Yuko Oshima fluctuated a couple of times on bass but she held her own very well, while Atsuko Maeda showed a lot of confidence playing rhythm guitar.
It’s being openly hoped by AKB48 fans that the AKB48 members involved will continue with this Baby Blossom side project in live performance and maybe even in the studio, and I share those hopes. Quite frankly, it would suck if they stopped playing after pulling off what they did the other night!
The “Resonant Blue” crowdfunding campaign is on!
A few months ago, I announced my intention to do a crowdfunding campaign for my first book. That time, after a few delays, has finally arrived:
Please visit:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cjmarsicano/resonant-blue-limited-edition-first-printing
for further details.
Alternate short URLS:
http://tgml.co/resonantbluekickstarter
or
http://www.resonantblue.com/kickstarter
Most updates will be at the project’s own blog and the Kickstarter page rather than here or at MILO.
REVIEW: VAN HALEN “Tattoo” single
“Tattoo” (single)
(Interscope)
Available on iTunes
Rating:
It takes a special band to be able to just pick up where they left off. The Stooges did it with The Weirdness (despite “meh” production from Steve Albini). Mission of Burma did it with ONoffON and kept it up for two albums straight since then. The New York Dolls did it with One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This (and then blew it with Dancing Backwards In High Heels). From the sounds of this first single, Van Halen may very well be doing the same trick next month on their new album A Different Kind of Truth – their first album since David Lee Roth made his long-overdue return to the band.
If you felt like you were left hanging after the reconstituted original lineup did “Me Wise Magic” on the Best of Van Halen album in 1996 and then left Diamond Dave behind in favor of “Gary Jabroni”, hang no more. Dave is in fine – no, excellent – voice, and Eddie is completely sober, cancer-free, and grinning from ear to ear. There’s some keyboards in the mix, but the two components important to truly classic Van Halen – David Lee Roth’s vocals and lyrics and Eddie Van Halen’s guitar – are upfront and in sync.
The proof is in the pudding. Go put in your iTunes pre-order now and tide yourself over with the single. Need more convincing, or just another glance at the video? Here you go:
Um, Isn’t This A Little Too Soon?
Oy vey. Tsunku-san is really testing my faith in my favorite band.
I can deal with incoming goofball singles like the one coming out at the end of the month, “Pyoko Pyoko Ultra” (c’mon, it’s a parallel of “Hyokkori Hy?tanjima”, for chrissakes, even if it sounds more like a Berryz track than a MoMusu one).
This slew of personnel changes, though… enough already, man!
Risa Niigaki just became the leader of the band last September… and now she’s going to graduate at the end of the Spring tour? A translation of the statements from both Risa and Tsunku haven’t been translated yet, as far as I know (Hello! Online broke the news around 7:30 this morning; it’s 11:30 am as I frantically type this out on my iPad, mere minutes after waking up on a rare Monday off from work), but I’m sure the speculation is running rampant as to why we’re getting another personnel change so soon (and thus being denied at least one full album with Gaki-san as leader).
Like I said when Tsunku dropped the tenth generation members on us the day before Takitty’s graduation: Morning Musume are still my favorite band but wait a minute…
Let’s face it, folks: The Stable Nine lineup had us all spoiled. Some of you complained because that lineup was so stable, and now some of those same people are no doubt complaining because it’s the other way around now.
So who is actually going to be leader after this spring? Sayumi Mischchige, who is cute and has improved her singing quite a bit since she first came around, or Reina Tanaka, who’s already gotten a bit of bandleader experience as part of both Aa! and High-King? Come to think of it, in both of those units, Reina was the titular head of units that had predominantly younger members… Hmmm…
Happy New Year… We’re Expanding!
Yes, folks, you read that right. TGML is going to be stretching out a little.
Although I’m still in the middle of writing the first intended post for it at the time I’m writing this, The Groove Music Life is introducing a new sister site: MUSIC IS LIKE OXYGEN.
What is going on here is simple. Starting January 1, 2012, TGML is going to concentrate primarily on editorializing about what’s going on in music – starting with this blog’s original genre-specific focuses and going from there. MUSIC IS LIKE OXYGEN will be a review-exclusive site, and the reviews will include back catalog as well as new releases.
Both of these sites will mark a serious increase in my writing activites that will also include the long-delayed launch of the crowdfunding campaign for my first book, Resonant Blue, on January 9, 2012, and the completion of my long-in-work novel Here Is The Wonderland.
Enough discussion, though… check out the new site for more details:
