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”:
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I don’t think I could add any more insight to what has already come out from Hello! Blog and Selective Hearing in the wake of much of Anime Expo’s staff getting up and leaving in what is apparently justifiable disgust. I will say this, however:

Although others in the blogosphere have said that the most likely place for popular Japanese acts to bond with their Western cult audience is at conventions like Anime Expo, this is an aspect that I have disagreed with for years. The incidents referred to in that ‘silenced staff members’ post really disgusted me – how the hell did that douchebag think he could get away with disrespecting Morning Musume like he did? I came away from reading that more convinced that Japanese music acts should not rely on the conventions for their American performance venues.

Instead of dealing with anime con organizers, Up-Front Works and other agencies should hook up with established booking agencies outside of Japan and start organizing tours for their acts, much like they should avoid the quick-hit-oriented, throw-against-the-wall approach of most major labels when looking for Western labels for their recorded product in favor of a big independent label like Matador or Merge, or an independent-minded major-label imprint like Warner Bros.’ Nonesuch or A&M’s Octone.

Dir en grey, Puffy AmiYumi, and the many acts that have participated in the yearly Japan Nite package tours certainly don’t need the anime conventions – and wisely bypassed them entirely in favor of performing in more music-centric venues. Neither do Morning Musume or any other J-pop act that we all love. Given that MoMusu drew 7,500 last summer for their sole US show to date, it’s a no-brainer that American J-pop fans would go see their idols at a venue closer to home.
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On a vaguely related note (well, related to MoMusu, anyway) – the MoMusu/AKB48 singles “comparison” will resume shortly, and I’ll explain briefly in the next installment why the series has been taking longer that I would have wished to come to further fruition.

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?

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• I’m still going OMFG from the news, not even 24 hours after hearing about it. 
• Last night I was trying to digest in my mind both the news about Morning Musume’s impending American debut (Up-Front Works confirmed it themselves last night) and continue planning for my wedding next June (my fiancee and I just put the deposit on the hall last night, as a matter of fact). 
• Then Vee calls. The two of us, about 15 years apart in age and with birthdays right next to each other, proceeded to continue fangirling (ok, in my case, fanboying) about the news for much of the conversation. 
• Vee then dropped a very important question: “What songs are they going to play?” We started speculating on the set list: “Love Machine” obviously has to be there; “Resonant Blue”, “Egao YES Nude” and “Mikan” were also mentioned, Vee kind of hoped “Onna ni Sachi Are” wouldn’t be on the set list as she didn’t think it went well live… that kind of thing. I’m sure speculation about the set list will continue up until the day of the concert. 
• Typical procedure for anime convention headlining acts, according to Vee who has been to quite a few, is for the headlining act to perform on Saturday, which means that if this procedure holds for Anime Expo 2009, that Morning Musume will be making their American performing debut on Independence Day – an almost appropriate date for such a milestone, reminiscent of one of the early milestone events in punk rock – Independence Day 1976, when the Ramones made their English debut. Members of the Sex Pistols, Clash, and many other first-wave British punk bands were said to be in the audience that night. 
• JapanFiles.com is going to have Morning Musume’s back catalog, starting with the release of “Naichai Kamo”, available for legal download. No word on when or whether tactile copies will be available like they’ve done with HANGRY&ANGRY’s EP. 

They had to know we were out here. They had to have known how imported copies of the CDs were going across the Pacific Ocean (and elsewhere). They had to know how mp3s were circulating all over the planet. They had to see Western faces popping up at their concerts lately.Their music didn’t just worm their way onto US iTunes by accident. They had to know.

“They”, of course, meaning Morning Musume, their fellow artists in Hello! Project and their agency, Up-Front Works.

As every American J-pop fan who has a laptop and/or a cell phone knows by now. Morning Musume are going to make their American debut as “First Official Guests of Honor” at Anime Expo 2009 in Los Angeles. Ever since Vee relayed the news to me, I have been in OMFG mode. As my work day was concluding, I grabbed my iPod and started to listen to a different, non-Japanese album that I was thinking of before I heard the news, then realized to myself, “What the hell am I doing listening to something other than Morning Musume, today of all days?”

What I wonder right now is, what is the exact purpose of Morning Musume’s visit (besides performing, of course)? Is this a thank you to the diehard cult American audience that has been literally worshiping them from afar for the past several years? Or is there something else going along with this visit that hasn’t been announced yet? (Like, maybe say, an American distribution deal for their music?)Was having JapanFiles.com do the non-Japanese release of the HANGRY&ANGRY EP (involving MoMusu 4^th Gen members Hitomi Yoshizawa and Rika Ishikawa) a sneaky way for UFW to further test the waters, much like I believe the presence of much of MoMusu’s catalog on US iTunes was a first test?

Furthermore, speaking of H&A, was the streamlining of the Elder Club from Hello! Project (keeping them under UFW contract, however) one of the final steps needed by UFW before they started to look into bringing Morning Musume stateside? I don’t think that sounds completely ludicrous – Hello! Project, in a way, is its own entity within Up-Front Works and is, for all intents and purposes, UFW’s bread-and-butter. But what I am getting at is, I don’t believe that Anime Expo’s announcement of today was the result of an overnight decision on UFW’s part. The usual legalities of bringing a foreign performing act – getting work visas, convincing government officials that the act is either in demand or unique (and Morning Musume certainly qualifies as both at this point), and so forth – take time. The frequent travels of the band – both as a whole and as individuals – to Hawaii over the past several years for fan club shows and photobook shoots, no doubt, may have helped with the visa process.  

Since the news is still fresh and I am still fanboying from it as I write this, it’s too early to tell why else Morning Musume would finally be coming here, but I will certainly not be surprised by anything that happens related to this new development from here on in.

Now I’ve got to start making plans for the first weekend of July… 

Just when I thought the most J-pop-related eventful thing today was going to be listening to the new Buono! album and getting a couple of other overdue reviews done…

It started with an e-mail from my female counterpart, Vee with the subject line “Oh my fucking god.”: “You win, CJ. You win FOREVER. THEY *ARE* COMING HERE.”

I was at work and not immediately near my laptop, so the second I saw Vee’s message on my Blackberry, I ran to my desk at the first immediate opportunity and hit up hello-online.org. Then it was my turn to go “Oh my fucking god” repeatedly.

Only one thing could make two Cancerians from the East Coast go all fanboy/fangirl like this: Morning Musume in America. Finally.

I’d write more now, but I’m still going OMFG repeatedly. Soon as I calm down, I’ll write more. But one thing is sure: I am so there.