2010 is barely two days old, and already there’s new music to look forward to. Nothing on the Western music front yet, as far as I know. But by the time this post is less than a week old, a new Shonen Knife album will be on my desk. A new Koda Kumi album and new Buono! album will follow next month, followed by a new Morning Musume album the month after that – the latter just in time to define the final months of my bachelorhood. And there’s also singles from MoMusu, AKB48, Buono! and SCANDAL to deal with during that time period as well. The last time I recall looking forward to a new non-J-pop release at the beginning of the year, it was The Stooges’ The Weirdness album, which was scheduled within days of Morning Musume dropping Sexy 8 Beat – and those two albums dropping within weeks of each other early in 2007 made the rest of that year quite the anti-climax. By the end of the year, while I was trying to sum up the year in albums at MotokoAoyama.com, I was also planning to propose to my girlfriend.

Oh yeah, there’s that little interruption.

Truth be told, I’m already planning ahead, and not just for that. I’ve already anticipated that there’s going to be a short break in blogging action around the last week of June and going on for at least another week. Which only means one thing: I intend to stay as busy as possible, trying to post as much as possible here and at So Hot She Shits Fire (and whenever I can at My Sweet Meetan), while also going into final preparations for the wedding, getting the last scenes folded into Here Is The Wonderland in the immediate weeks to come, thus finishing that long-in-the-making first draft before plunging into the second, which should only take a minuscule fraction of the time it took to complete the first draft. And also upping my guitar skills.

What?

Yeah, I got a new electric guitar over the Christmas holidays. I don’t think I will be discussing it much here – this blog is meant for serious music discussion, and personal ramblings about trying to re-master the pentatonic scale or getting a better handle on sweep picking don’t really belong here, so there may be a little place somewhere where I’ll let those out of my system. (Updates about my personal life don’t belong here either, of course. I might refer to them in vague here or in “conversation” at SHSSF, but that’s another story, and I already have places for that.)

This, in a nutshell, is as personal as I intend to get, and I’m keeping it in topic: 2010 is going to see a lot more activity here. Beyond that, I’m not hard to find, as the list of “personal” links that has always existed here and at this blog’s predecessor will attest. With one of the series that I hinted at back in November (the Best Albums of 2009 series) out of the way, the other one will be starting next week to formally kick off blogging activity here at TGML for 2010. For now, I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend decompressing from New Year’s Eve/Day.

Other than that (and my wedding), I don’t know what’s going to take place in 2010. Hell, I didn’t know when 2009 started that Morning Musume were getting ready to announce their American debut and that Ron Asheton was going to be transferred from the Stooges to Rock N’Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band either.

Stay tuned. Things are only going to get insane here. But in a good way, of course.

I almost did something here on TGML that I haven’t done since I launched this site, and that’s almost allowed a calendar month to pass without posting something here.

Sorry about that.

My fingers and brain haven’t been idle, and I haven’t not been paying attention to what this blog normally covers. But life has gotten a bit goofy of late – I’ve been trying to get my novel manuscript finished, another old hobby of mine has been adding some inspiration to my life, and as of this writing, my wedding date is less than seven months away. I also had to change computers yet again since I posted last here, which sucks, but I have a better machine at my disposal so I really have no other excuse to not pursue all the projects I need to do, this blog included.

It’s also been a while since I contributed an installment of “Diggin’ in the Crates” to YODC, but I’ll make up for that as well. I’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to that project.

I have been plotting two little series for this blog and I’ll be attacking both of those throughout December. Stay tuned here and at my Facebook and Twitter pages. Thanks for your patience.

Two weeks ago, I saw a review of Horehound, the newly-released album by Jack White’s new project The Dead Weather, at this link. I had already enjoyed the album, and was not surprised to see nothing but nice reviews about it so far because, well, it’s a good album! However, I was surprised when I checked the above-linked review and saw that the reviewer had given the album two-and-a-half stars and spent most of the review bitching about the fact that Jack White was mostly playing drums instead of guitar on the record, and thus accusing him of not having any real impact on the project. From the looks of the review, I have the feeling that the hack behind this particular review only half-listened to the CD once while doing things around his house before dropping the disc in a pile marked “Sell at used CD store”.

That particular kind of reviewer – the one doing it only because it’s a job and it gets him a few bucks for writing about the record and a couple more for illicitly selling the played-once CD at a local used store or on eBay (either way, such a move is technically illegal, since promotional copies are considered by law to be still the property of the record company) – is one I don’t have much respect for, as they don’t really seem to care about what they’re writing. Many music bloggers (myself included), on the other hand, do their writing because love the music they write about. I might be nitpicky about how some of them describe what they’re writing about – a prime example that comes to mind was how some of my younger colleagues in the J-Pop blogosphere mistook Morning Musume’s funk-heavy 2008 single “Resonant Blue” to be disco instead – but they still like the music. (Just as a side note, the disco genre is more befitting of “Love Machine” and a few other early MoMusu tracks, rather than “Resonant Blue” with its heavy 70’s funk influence.)

[I don’t even have to bring up the age-old adage about opinions being like assholes (i.e. everybody has one, etc.), except in passing. Which I just did. And because I don't want any of my peers to think that I'm dissing them - I'm not. Moving on…]

Reviewing records is one of the easiest and the hardest things to do, and while it’s something I’ve tried to make a focal point of on this blog and its predecessor, other things tend to delay my attempts and desires to write more reviews. One is time, which is a factor for everyone and thus not worth devoting further time itself to. The other reasons are more, well, life-involved. Many has been the time when I’ve needed to review a current or recent release only to find myself wanting to listen to something else instead. Does it mean that the album I want to review sucks? Usually, no. The reality is that I have so damn many different musical interests that whatever I feel like listening to at the time becomes more important than dissecting a new CD.

Another factor in my not doing as many reviews as I should is the approach. Most of my reviews are usually track-by-track affairs, and this is fine for the J-Pop material because I try to write those reviews for a general audience and I want people coming across this blog to get a good idea as to what the record sounds like before they search out a copy. For the Western stuff, it’s harder to write about – the artists usually have more established sounds and perhaps a more encapsulated approach is needed. I would also blame a lifelong habit of writing more than the minimum amount of words needed, most likely out of the concern that I want the reader to understand. And then of course, there’s other projects that some people may have on their mind or their schedule or both. In my case, there’s the manuscript that I’ve been working on for close to two years now; I am only recently just starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel there.

The final factor – which goes with everything I write, and with those who care about their writing – is quality. A well written review, even if it’s not a glowing one, and even if the writer might not know Jack White from Jack Black [sorry for the bad pun] without a scorecard, will go a long way. It doesn’t have to be agreed with, but it should be respected. As far as non-professional reviews go, a well-written review in an age where anyone can post what they think about a particular CD is practically a rarity outside of dedicated music blogs. Browse around RateYourMusic.com (where I’ve been occasionally been re-sharpening my reviewing skills on some albums in my collection that are way out of the chronological and stylistic boundaries TGML covers) – or the comment areas of Amazon or iTunes – sometime. See how many well-thought-out reviews written by average Joes are in place (especially for more well-known artists), and how many reviews are actually the product of trolls, attention whores, and people who couldn’t spell a word correctly, control their shift keys or capslocks, or structure a sentence if their life depended on it.

It probably would not surprise you – and it definitely wouldn’t surprise me – if the latter category of “armchair reviewers” never actually listened to the record or artist they were gleefully bashing. Those “armchair reviewers” are more good reason why I’m going to try to keep doing reviews here, and I’m going to be getting quite a few out of the way over the next month – because the music deserves it. And because quality always perseveres.

Broomhead put forth an interesting question on his recently reactivated blog (which, as an aside, I’m glad to see that Brian is finally writing about his love of soccer, I was urging him to do a soccer blog months ago since he used to Twitter about the beautiful game a lot):

“Why do we post about the stuff that we buy?

There are many aspects of fandom and community (especially ours, IW) that bother me. I don’t understand this one. Many blogs post pictures or text of their recent purchases (GETS) – CDs, DVDs, Photobooks, Magazines, everything.”

Between his original post and Misa’s highlight about it on IW, it’s already gotten a good discussion going amongst our blogosphere.  Everybody has their opinion on the subject, and most seem to be positive. My comrade in Reina and Meetan fandom, CK, pointed out in a comment at TLS that two of the most popular blogs in the IW contingent, Morning Berryz and Hello! Blog, do this on a regular basis, for two reasons: One, to display what the items look like, and two, to keep their blogs active. CK has done this a lot at both of his sites, noting, “I can only do so many ‘think pieces’ and live concert reports. So the natural thing is to report on the items that I have purchased, if for no other reason to give a review.” 

I cannot say I’m not guilty of this, however. The funny thing is, I don’t show off my purchases of J-Pop items all the time, even though I buy a lot of stuff. Most of what I buy is the actual music on CD (and on vinyl if it exists in that format, something I wish would happen with the MoMusu/H!P material – are you listening, JapanFiles?), and since Paul at Hello! Blog in particular does that on the regular, there’s not much of a point of me doing the same thing. 

Recently at YODC, Langdon asked me if I wanted to make a regular feature out of doing something I was doing on occasion over there, showing off bits from my still-growing vinyl collection. Since that feature became regular earlier this year, only two Japanese-related items have been shown off there: a Sayuri Ishikawa best-of LP from 1977 and a copy of AKB48’s first independently released single (something which CK almost openly ogled in his  comment!). The rest of the vinyls that I have shown off there definitely don’t fall within J-pop guidelines. I think the only J-Pop items I’ve ever shown off in any of my blogs before then were a then-newly-acquired Mari Yaguchi MiniMoni plushie over at MotokoAoyama.com V1.0, and a copy of Mika Todd’s post-MiniMoni CD EP and a couple of other MiniMoni stuffies on my LiveJournal.

Does showing off J-items (or even vinyl aquisitions like I do at YODC) mean, as Broomhead suggests, that people are “caught up in material” or looking to fit in with the IW community? I don’t believe so. Again, I think CK nailed it on the head with the reasoning behind such posts. People like these kinds of posts on occasion. The vinyl posts at YODC happened, on-and-off last year and regularly this year, because Langdon and some of the other YODC crew dug them when I did them, and asked me to keep doing them. And, with the exception of two unintentionally missed instances so far this year, I have.

It’s not for me to put “showoff” posts down, firstly because it would be hypocritical of me, and two, it would be absolutely pointless and negative. These posts are done primarily for fun, and without that element, you have nothing – irregardless of what’s in one’s collection.

Last year, I posted two bakery-related videos from MiniMoni at this blog’s predecessor, Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama, and a post with more substantial food over at So Hot She Shits Fire. Since there’s no way I’m going to repost those videos (or make that joke about the kind of pie people were getting from certain ex-MiniMoni’s around the time of that post), I’m going to do things in reverse: First, here at the Pagoda, some more substantial food, since there’s going to be a boatload of cake going around the IW circuit (I’ve already seen Vee’s at the time I wrote these posts, and it looked multilple levels of great to me). Specifically, one of my favorite chicken recipes:

SMOKED PAPRIKA CHICKEN THIGHS

First, we start off with some music to accompany the food prep: in this case, my iPod in its JBL speaker/dock delivering the Cramps’ first long-player Songs The Lord Taught Us (RIP, Lux Interior).

While Lux’s vocals and Ivy’s guitars permeate the air of my kitchen, we gather the ingredients: 

• 10 – 12 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (appx. 2 packages)
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Smoked paprika
• Kosher or sea salt
• Cracked pepper

On the day I shot the photos for this post, I only made half the recipe, enough for one person (me!). One package of chicken thighs should feed two people, but these are so addictive that often it ends up being one package per person.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly coat the bottom of the baking dish with the olive oil. Open up the chicken thighs as much as possible and arrange in the dish (it is perfectly okay to have the thighs touching together). Cover the thighs with smoked paprika, but not so much that you can’t see the original color of the chicken underneath.

Sprinkle pinches of kosher or sea salt onto the thighs to taste. (Yes, that is an Alton Brown salt container of my very own, filled with kosher salt. Alton is the man. Fans of any other Food Network star that isn’t Raechel Ray or Masaharu Morimoto from Iron Chef can e-mail toughshit@thegroovemusiclife.com!) 

With a peppermill, add the pepper to taste. Sprinkle the thighs with olive oil. Bake uncovered for at least 45 minutes or until the internal temperature of the thighs reaches the standard 165°F. 

Serve immediately. Devour like you’re Edward Cullen and the chicken is Bella Swann. 

For those of you that still want cake, some special cake is being served over at So Hot She Shits Fire…

So, what exactly led to me starting over after two and a quarter years at Stuck In A Pagoda?

Well, one of the biggest reasons is the name itself. Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama is a cool title. I used it for a mix CD of traditional Japanese music that I posted at Art of the Mix several years ago, it was the title I semi-facetiously gave my LiveJournal when I started to use it regularly, and it was, for me anyway, a combination of my two biggest musical loves – punk rock and Japanese pop. (The old blog’s title is a parody of a Dickies song from their second LP, replacing the original’s titular heroine [a real-life Los Angeles newscaster] with my favorite Love Hina character.)

But the title has really restricted me of late. There is a lot more music that I want to comment on, and while I have done so in the past (an account of a Bon Jovi stadium concert I was dragged to in 2006 comes to mind), writing about other mainstream music didn’t completely jibe with my loving scrawls about the latest Morning Musume single, my anticipation for the Stooges’ first American tour since 1974, or anything else I normally covered at Stuck In A Pagoda.

In short, I needed to do my usual insanity and then some under a less restrictive name – but for weeks, couldn’t think of any.

And that is when my pre-ordered copy of Berryz Koubou’s Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance arrived and I saw what was written on Miyabi Natsuyaki’s T-shirt. I ran to GoDaddy.com and registered thegroovemusiclife.com before someone else beat me to it. That took five minutes.

Deciding on a design for the blog took longer. It wasn’t until the other day that I found a theme that I liked – so much so that I may be using the design for another new blog that I will debut next week (one even more specific than So Hot She Shits Fire, which will never change as in that case, you can’t really mess with perfection) as well as for the static version of Stuck In A Pagoda sometime later.

So, here’s the basic mission behind The Groove Music Life:

• I’m still going to write about Japanese pop.
• I’m still going to write about punk and alternative rock.

But I’m also going to:

• Write about any other pop or rock music that I choose.
• Continue my exploration of older Japanese musics. (Simply put, The Vinyl Pagoda Project is going to continue, name and all – I’m even going to port the older entries from Stuck In A Pagoda, dates and all, when the next installment goes up late Thursday or early Friday.)

Some other changes:

• Pagoda Video and The Pagoda Five will become Groove Music Video and The Groove Music Five
• No more picking on the Spice Girls and/or Miley Cyrus. I’ve already proved my point.
• There will be more reviews. As a matter of fact, I want to have at least three up before the end of next week.

Some things that will continue on from Stuck In A Pagoda:

• The Morning Musume/J-Pop In America series. I have been plotting further installments in this series since March; other writing activities, including the completion of Here Is The Wonderland, have been taking precedence (and that novel is still a top priority, as is making writing my sole source of income.)
• The LolIdols series, I Can Has J-Pop? (And I welcome ideas for that as well from readers).

…and one thing that might not continue.

• The Pagoda Podcast.

Obviously, the name won’t fit in with this new blog’s expanded vision. But the other, more important reason is, I don’t have the time right now. Putting a podcast together is a pain in the fucking ass, and even though I have a talent for audio editing, I’d rather be using that time to write. I also got no feedback from that second episode, and even though I started to put playlists for two more episodes together, I decided to put the idea of a podcast on hold. Maybe someday I’ll do a new podcast, but as of this writing I don’t see it happening.

So, in short, this little black duck needed a reboot, and this is it.

Now let’s have some fun – I sure intend to.