THE BIG CATCH-UP… In which the wearied webmaster of this here site gives some quick capsule reviews to recent albums he’s liked but hasn’t gotten around to writing about.

I usually don’t like to do capsule reviews. In my view, they tend to be written by lazy hack writers who only seem to skim through the promotional copies of CDs they obtain for review before piling them up in a box somewhere for them to sell off at a used CD store somewhere – if they bother to listen to them in the first place. But since I’ve been doing a whole lot of listening but no blog-related writing over the past few months – thanks in part to all of the preparations I’ve been going through for my wedding this Saturday – this particular format will have to do. After the honeymoon and once I’ve gotten settled in, I’ll go back to my regular reviewing style. This’ll be part one. Part two I’ll be completing and posting after the honeymoon.

AKB48 – Kami Kyokutachi (You! Be Cool/King) – While there’s a whole pile of albums out there with the AKB48 name on them, they’ve all been, with the exception of the Set List – Greatest Songs 2006-2007 compilation, basically “original cast albums” of all of the separate teams’ shows – lots of good songs and good singing, but nothing that could cohesively be called a studio album. Fortunately, although billed as a “best-of album”, Kami Kyokutachi comes off as close to a coherent studio album as the group has ever come. All of the band’s King A-sides plus their interim digital-only indie single “Baby! Baby! Baby!” get supplemented with a few random B-sides (no Undergirls/Theatre Girls material or Erena Ono’s beautiful solo cut “First Kiss” though) and some new tracks and make for the most cohesive – and long overdue – long-playing experience to be released under the AKB48. Now if they could put out a single A-side that is a hell of a lot more exciting than the last couple of singles they’ve released since the year started…
Rating: Available on CD/DVD combo and on iTunes Japan.

DEVO – Something for Everybody (Warner Bros.) – When it was first announced that Devo had gotten back together full-time, resigned to their original American record label Warner Bros., and started working on a new album, I saw a couple of skeptical tweets from people who wondered why anyone would want a new Devo album in the first place. Well, not only have Devo debunked Thomas Wolfe’s old yarn about not being able to go home again by returning to Warner Bros., they’ve also followed in the tradition of the Stooges, New York Dolls, Mission of Burma and Ace Frehley and handed in an album that was worth both the multi-decade wait (two decades, in the case of our beloved spudboys), but they’ve made their finest album since 1983’s Oh No! It’s Devo. Simply put, they’ve redeemed themselves after the debacle of their Enigma Records period and made an album that stands up as tall as their classic back catalog (most of which has been very nicely remastered and reissued by Warner Bros.). (Also, in my opinion, Warner Bros. should surprise the hell out of casual listeners and service the ballad “No Place Like Home” to radio.)
Rating: Available on CD, LP, and in three different iTunes/Amazon MP3 editions; this review is based on the highly-recommended 16-track deluxe edition.

HANK WILLIAMS III – Rebel Within (Sidewalk/Curb) – This is the last album Hank III is doing for Curb Records, and once it was announced earlier this year that he had completed the album and handed it in to the label, people wondered how much of an effort he’d put into it, given his open disgust with how the label handled his music. Given his intentions to continue as an independent artist for all future albums onward, III could not certainly squander his hard-earned fan base for the sake of kissing off his soon-to-be-former-label. Thus, Hank hands in a set of mostly country material closer to Lonesome Broke and Driftin’ than his seminal Straight to Hell, but changes gears in a few places with the title track’s touches of Assjack-style hollering in the chorus, the eerie “Karmageddon” with its lyrical allusions to the plight of Native Americans, and – the true highlight of the album – a raucous country/punk/metal hybrid in “Tore Up and Loud”, where III’s “Hellbilly” style gets kicked up several notches with personal lyrics, power-metal double-kick drumming (done by III himself – like “Punch Fight Fuck” on Damn Right Rebel Proud, anytime you hear Slayer-style drums behind country guitars, III’s sitting behind the kit), and Pantera-esque electric guitar riffing, culminating in a blatant, obvious, and long-overdue Declaration of Independence capped with a “Fuck all y’all” to the Curb Records staff. Fuck Curb, indeed – and a big “fuck, yeah” for Shelton Hank Williams.
Rating: Available on CD, LP with bonus CD, and on iTunes and AmazonMP3.

Again, part two comes after the honeymoon… see you then! Until then, one can follow our exploits via Twitter.

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”:
Read the rest of this entry »

E-mail Lucifer; Tell him he’ll have to place an order at Land’s End for winter gear, because I’m about to say something nice about Miley Cyrus.

No, I can’t stand her. She’s a terrible singer and actress. Koda Kumi or anyone in Morning Musume (or any female in the Japanese pop scene, quite frankly) could eat her for breakfast and shit out the Pussycat Dolls. But in a Parade magazine interview that hitting newspaper inserts this weekend, apparently she has a few choice words about the genre her father helped ruin:

“It scares me, that’s why. It feels contrived on so many levels. Unless you’re wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy boots and singing and whining about your girlfriend or boyfriend leaving you it’s not going to sell. I think that’s why my dad finally got out of it. You have to wear those cowboy boots and be sweet as pie. It makes me nervous, the politics of it all.”

Yeah, it’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but in this case, the pot is right: Even though her weak attempts at what she passes off for pop music in this country aren’t exactly any better than the Carrie Underwoods, Rascal Flattses, and John Riches (and their umpteen clones) that Nashville has been passing off as “country” music since her father dropped that achy-breaky one-hit wonder on America’s heads, she hit the nail on the head with an unerring eye. What started out as the unintended invention (for all intents and purposes) of Hank Williams Sr. and Jimmy Rodgers, what used to be the province of distinctive outlaws like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, and Kris Kristofferson has become an assembly-line genre dominated by a select clique of writers, producers, and session musicians backing a series of interchangeable clones.

It’s not Garth Brooks that should be faulted, although some people like to use him as a convenient whipping boy. Garth Brooks came in as an artist who grew up on both Kiss and George Strait and turned a genre weakened by the Urban Cowboy fad back around. It was the “parade of horribles”, to borrow a Circle Jerks song title, who didn’t give a fuck about the accomplishments of Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, or Buck Owens but saw a way to make a quick buck that infected Nashville. Look up the lyrics to Alan Jackson’s song “Gone Country” and you’ll see a decent idea of what went wrong. Is it any wonder why Garth stopped recording and performing, why Terri Clark walked out on her BNA/Sony-BMG contract and started putting out her own records, why the Dixie Chicks told the country establishment to fuck off and hooked up with Rick Rubin?

Ask Hank Williams III how wonderful Nashville is, or at least listen to or read the lyrics of his songs “Trashville”, “Dick in Dixie”, and “The Grand Old Opry (Ain’t So Grand Anymore)” sometime. There’s your answer.

Not surprisingly, Country Music Television’s blog, playing Fox News to the pop-country establishment’s Republican Party (i.e. acting as an echo chamber/propaganda unit), is seeing fit to defend the current Music Row tripe. Their opinion doesn’t matter – this same blog also praised the idea of record stores going out of business after Sugarland signed with Wal-Mart to have an exclusive right to distribute their next album. Perhaps the author of that CMT blog piece should go visit a real record store – especially on Record Store Day this forthcoming 4.17.10 – and see what real people are buying!

I’m not going to hold my breath and wait to see if Miley has an even bigger epiphany, takes a year off from the public eye to disappears somewhere with a guitar and some Stooges and Minutemen albums, and turns up on some indie label somewhere after letting her Hollywood Records contract lapse. But the mere fact that a super-corporate pop act made such a critical comment speaks volumes – even if she doesn’t follow it up by putting Fun House and Double Nickels on the Dime in her iPod!

HANK WILLIAMS III
Damn Right Rebel Proud
(Sidewalk/Curb)
Available on CD, 180-gram LP with bonus CD, iTunes, and AmazonMP3

Mike Curb is a moron. When he first signed Shelton Hank Williams, Curb figured that, starting with the infamous 1996 Three Hanks: Men with Broken Hearts album of Hank III and his father Hank Williams Jr. doing posthumous duets with Hank Sr., the foundation would be laid for a series of million-selling pop country albums like III’s formal debut album Rising Outlaw. Then Hank III handed Curb as his follow-ups the more traditional-sounding Lonesome Broke and Driftin’ and the metal/punk “hellbilly” album This Ain’t Country and all hell broke loose. Curb refused to release This Ain’t Country and seemingly gave Lonesome little or no attention becuase it didn’t sound like Tim McGraw. Hank III would be in legal limbo for several years, touring  his ass off both with his own band (doing country, hellbilly, and punk/metal all in the same show) and as bassist with Superjoint Ritual. Eventually, a settlement came and Hank III released his definitive album Straight To Hell in 2006, complete with his already infamous anti-pop-country anthem “Dick In Dixie”, through Curb’s Bruc imprint. Damn Right Rebel Proud is more of the same and then some. III lashes out at Gaylord Entertainment, the Grand Old Opry’s current owners, for not reinstating III’s influential grandfather (“The Grand Old Opry (Ain’t So Grand)”), unleashes some “hellbilly” material for the first time on an official release (“H8 Line” and “Long Hauls and Close Calls”), disses the Bush Adminstration (“If You Can’t Help Your Own”), carries on the “family tradition” in his own way (“Smoke and Wine”, “Six Pack of Beer”), and pays tribute to GG Allin (“Punch, Fight, Fuck”). This definitely isn’t your sister’s country - unless your sister is the type of girl who jumps onstage while  Hank III and his band are playing and flashes her tits at the crowd.