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:
MUSIC IS LIKE OXYGEN
Perfume Doesn’t Like You, Get Over It!
This is something I originally let pass without comment, but since it cropped up to the top of my Flipboard and on my Twitter feed almost out of the blue today after two months, the situation is getting even more annoying and pathetic and thus, I’m going to speak up.
Most of us in the J-Pop Blogosphere know the story of an old, rather creepy fan of the trio Perfume, screennamed Perfume444, who used to post video blogs on YouTube, spurred on by his love of the group. I hadn’t heard of the guy until this article was posted on International Wota, so he was nowhere on my radar until that particular post, and only for a few minutes. He openly declared, according to IW, that since the objects of his, um, interest, basically blew him off after a token few minutes at the Cars 2 premiere in L.A., he was done doing videos.
That was two months ago. Since he saw fit to comment almost randomly on the IW post again, he’s apparently not done whining.
What is especially disturbing is one of his claims as to why he did the video blogs in the first place – to get more attention for his favorite group. It disturbs me because one of the reasons I do this music blog is to do the same for Morning Musume and other Japanese bands.
The difference is plain: I go about the goal by writing about the music, and writing about it on the same level playing field as any other music I write about. What this Frank dude does… yeesh! It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the music, far as I can tell. The fact that he has bitched about the lack of attention Perfume and their management gave him says volumes.
Perfume444′s goals, then and now, are selfish. He wants the focus to be around him, not his favorite band, even though he claims otherwise. Perfume and their management apparently know this and, without a doubt, their private policy is described as succinctly as, “Forget that loser.”
I want to see Morning Musume and other groups get a better profile in the States and elsewhere. That’s a rather generous intention. Would I love to meet them? Of course, but I’m not going to go about it the wrong way and it’s not my primary motivation for supporting them and groups like them in this blog – meeting them would be a bonus.
Thanks, Steve.
While I’m catching up on things, and on a less snarkier note…
I would be beyond remiss if I let the day pass without giving infinite props to Apple founder Steve Jobs, who lost his battle with cancer last night.
Without Steve Jobs, much of what I do would not be possible. My blogging activities started on a PowerBook G4. I listen to music on an iPod when I’m writing. The main character in Resonant Blue was “born” on the PowerBook G4, as was the world of Here Is The Wonderland. I use an iPad to help stave off my Mac jones (my PowerBook died in 2007 and I’ve been dealing with Windows machines since then, albeit reluctantly), and I was already planning to switch to an iPhone upon their next upgrade (the iPhone 4S, revealed this past Tuesday and going on pre-orders tomorrow) after several months of battling a BlackBerry.
Most of us owe Steve Jobs a world of thanks, especially if my (and your) Twitter and Facebook feeds are any indication. I don’t think there’s a single reader out there who doesn’t use an Apple product of some sort, even if it isn’t one of his computers. My own Apple experiences go back to the Apple IIc back in my high school days (Reina Tanaka’s parents probably hadn’t even met, let alone had sex, back then – we’re talking 1984-85, here, folks) – and all the better for it. They got me interested more sincerely in computers, which got me started on writing more seriously long before there was an Internet, and I used to go for the Apple computers in Penn State Hazleton’s computer lab when my friend and I used to visit there on occasion before we got our own PCs and Internet accounts. Simply put, without this man’s vision and testicular fortitude, very little of what we all do would be possible.
Thanks for everything, Steve.
Macs at half-mast.
All His Rowdy Friends Are Probably Just As Uninformed And Ignorant As He Is
Quite honestly, I’ve tried to hold my tongue as long as possible on the whole Hank Williams Jr./ESPN brouhaha. I was ready to let it pass without much comment beyond the occasional smartass remark on Twitter and Facebook, but now that his firstborn son has spoken up and that ESPN made the only move they could make, I’m going to comment.
Over the weekend, by coincidence, I happened to read the book Family Tradition: Three Generations of Hank Williams by Susan Marino (Backbeat, 2011). Quite honestly, I was never as much of a fan of Hank Jr.’s music as I am of his father’s and son’s, and I’ve always seen him as someone who, initially by his mother’s heavy hand, made a lifetime career out of riding his esteemed father’s reputation. I did gain a small bit of respect for him thanks to one incident in his story about how he was genuinely upset with some of his backing musicians who had openly cheered the news of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. That bit of respect went down the shitter after news of his remarks (on Fox News, of course) comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler went viral.
One has to wonder how much undetected brain damage Hank Jr. suffered in his near-fatal fall of that mountain in Montana, just as he was starting to reinvent himself as a country-rocker, or how lingering or long-term the effects of his multiple injuries have been since then. I ask that not as a mockery or as an insult, but as a sincere inquiry as to whether or not those injuries may have impacted Randall Hank Williams’s judgement and common sense in the long run.
Since the remark occurred the day of a Monday Night Football broadcast, ESPN wisely pulled that night’s opening intro tape (which for years has consisted of Hank Jr.’s regular rewritings of “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” for every Monday night football game). Hank Jr., at first, gave what was pretty much a non-apology apology on his website and Facebook where he spent more time boasting that he didn’t have a press agent writing the statement for him than he did apologizing or explaining himself (or double-checking his typed statement for randomly capitalized words).
Lest anyone was left wonder what Hank 3 felt about the whole thing, he was pretty blunt… albeit with more intelligence than his estranged father showed in the first place, stating that his father shouldn’t talk about politics, period, and that the only musician that was qualified to discuss politics, in his opinion, was Jello Biafra.
Jello Biafra and Hank Williams III after one of III's recent West Coast shows.
This morning, ESPN chose to pull the plug on Bocephus for good, issuing a professional statement this morning to confirm as such. Not surprisingly, Hank Jr. chose to take the typical road of the right-wing liar, falsely claiming that he chose to leave and that, trying to further make himself look like the hero and ESPN the villains, falsely claimed that “stepped on the toes of the First Amendment” and that “me, my song, and my rowdy friends are out of here.”
What’s that old expression about not letting the door hit you in the ass on the way out, again?
His son’s more educated opinion not withstanding, Hank Jr. is rumored to still be looking into running for U.S. Senate in his native Tennessee as a Republican. So much for his talk a couple of years ago that he was going to put out records on his own after following his son out of Curb Records’s front door (especially since last month, Hank 3 has run circles around his father in that aspect, putting out three albums simultaneously on his own label). None of that should be any surprise, though – Hank III has been outpacing his father in a lot of aspects to the point where I’ve always wondered if the musical talent in the Hank Williams family skipped Hank Jr. and went right from Hank Sr. to Hank III.
Whether that’s possible or not, one thing is for sure – Hank Williams Jr. is not even a fraction of the man that either his father or his firstborn son is.
My own impression of Hank Williams Sr., especially after reading Family Tradition, is that he was a gentle and generous man despite his substance abuse problems. If Hank Williams Sr. – who was taught how to play guitar by a black blues musician, by the way – were alive to see what an embarrassment his son has become, he’d probably sober up and smack the shit out of him. And I wouldn’t blame him.
SITE NEWS: Announcement regarding the “Album of the Day” series.
Due to various technical obstacles, the Album of the Day series is being discontinued indefinitely.
Over the weekend, I felt that posting a different album every day was starting to take the focus away from what this blog was originally about, and gave consideration to altering the frequency of such posts, or suspending it entirely. Right now I have chosen a course closer to the latter.
I have been in contact with at least one of the streaming services I was utilizing for this series but have yet to get a response. The Album of the Day series was intended to help drive more traffic to the site – and thusly, to the articles here, believing that a quick upload and embed would not tax much of my time. The difficulty I had getting the Ai+BAND album up proved otherwise, and the various technical obstacles I was running into were making this into more of a chore than anything.
The Ai+BAND album, which was already uploaded to this site’s own server after attempts with Soundcloud and Grooveshark failed for one reason or another, has already been removed. I have had a very good business relationship with this site’s main host, Bluehost, and do not wish to jeopardize it by continuing to stress their equipment with more sound file uploads than necessary. The other two will be up another day or two but will be taken down by the end of the week.
If the Album of the Day series returns, it will more likely be an “Album of the Moment” irregular post instead. Again, however, until those gremlins are eliminated that possibility is remote at best.
Five Years of Blogging!
Yep, five years. I am, admittedly, quite amazed by that headline. Five years of blogging here and at this site’s predecessor, MotokoAoyama.com. It’s a milestone that I am very proud of. Not as proud as what took place last June 26th, but still very worthy of commemoration, and with my favorite way of commemorating things: A list of what has been accomplished, experienced, or just plain witnessed in the past half-decade:
Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Four laptops (Don’t get me started…)
Three iPods (I finally upgraded to a 120GB model!)
Morning Musume and AKB48 both making their American concert debuts – and way fucking overdue to return to these shores on a regular basis… no excuses, please, just book the dates and get on the plane!
Sixteen Morning Musume singles
Fifteen personnel changes in Morning Musume
Two personnel changes in C-ute
No personnel changes in Berryz Koubou
More personnel changes in AKB48 than anyone can keep up with… (and I’m not even going to bother trying to anymore!)
Seven and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP) Continue reading
SITE UPDATE: Server Move Impending
A quick server move is happening tomorrow. From an e-mail sent by our (highly recommended) hosting company:
Bluehost has completed construction on our new data center expansion, complete with advanced temperature control, custom server racks and dozens of improvements designed to help us provide you with higher quality service. We will be moving all customer servers into the new center over the next few weeks.
This expansion allows us to continue to manage all hardware alongside our Technical Support team and System Administrators, here in Provo, Utah. Our experience has shown that hands-on control over all aspects of your hosting is the best method of ensuring excellence.
The Bluehost System Administrators will physically move your server into the new data center between 9 PM, March 15th and 5 AM March 16th (MDT), during low traffic periods. We will work to ensure you experience as little downtime as possible and, to that end, we will take the opportunity to perform any needed hardware maintenance or upgrades. We expect the process to take 1 to 3 hours.
This move involves not only TGML but its sister worship sites SoHotSheShitsFire.com and MegumiOhori.com.
I Heard You Missed Me, I’m Back…
Those of you on my Twitter account or Facebook page may recall that I announced that I would be resuming posting on here on a more regular basis.
There have been two reasons why things got a bit slow over the past few months. One I am sure you all know of by now: I got married back in June. As a result of that, my first few weeks as a newlywed were spent getting used to living with someone else in a new place – and that was after a week of honeymooning to boot.
The other development kinda goes with the above territory, but is also a reason for the slowness of posts since the beginning of the year. I have been working whenever I can on my novel manuscript for Here Is The Wonderland and whenever I have sat down with this computer I have often tried to devote as much creative energy to that project, at the expense of this blog.
Simply put, what is going to be going on from here on out is this: When I moved my blogging activities I stated that I wanted to expand the musical reach of my blogging and I don’t fully believe I have accomplished that yet. In stating that, I also want to emphasize that I have no intention of forsaking my devotion to covering punk rock and Japanese pop on here – that will never falter, ever.
That having been said, there’s at least one other post I want to make this week or so that I was meaning to make for a couple of weeks. You’ll most likely know which one it is when it comes up. There may be a couple of catch-up review posts like I did before my wedding, but I’m not completely sure yet. I do know that I want to keep things a bit more current that I have been in the past.
I may also break rank with the main intention of this site – discussing music – when it comes to my writing career, especially as my writing projects hit the completion and submission stages.
Other than that, expect things here to get busier than they ever have been. Thanks for reading this.
And now, a quick update from yours truly…
As some of you may know, I’m getting married on Saturday. A lot of the prep for the ceremony and everything related to it has either been taking my time, energy, or both, and what’s been unintentionally getting kicked to the curb? This blog.And to be honest, much of what energy I have had has been devoted to ongoing work on Here Is The Wonderland and other writing projects.
However, I am not closing TGML or any of its related sites, or letting them stay static.
This week, I’ll be making a few special posts, and then when I get back from my honeymoon next week, I’ll be back at a more active schedule.
Thanks for your patience!
- CJ Marsicano
Happy 4th!
Fourth Blogging Anniversary, that is…
I almost forgot to post something today, but I have a good excuse: Today was also my fiancee’s bridal shower, and guess who had to schlep gifts back and forth in his car? Yep…
I should note that for the past few weeks I’ve been – on top of planning towards the wedding and subsequent move into mine and my wife-to-be’s new apartment – finishing up the novel (yeah, still… but then again if I didn’t have to hold a day job it would have been finished already), working on a screenplay for Script Frenzy, working on a couple of reviews for this blog (they’ll be up this week), and working on my guitar.
And last night, boy, did I work on my guitar… I got this thing (Epiphone Les Paul) a few months ago, but I never changed the strings until last night. Such was my Saturday night:
And to keep things J-pop related, here’s another part of what helped keep me sane, especially today:
Besides, I couldn’t figure how to equal or better the live MoMusu and Stooges clips from last year! But what I can do is (even though I didn’t get this finished until after midnight when the 11th became the 12th) update a list I posted two years ago on my second blogging anniversary at MotokoAoyama.com, which would make this “A List That Took Four Years To Make”:
Continue reading
