REVIEW: SHONEN KNIFE “Osaka Ramones”
SHONEN KNIFE
Osaka Ramones: Tribute to The Ramones
(Good Charamel)
Available on CD, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
Rating: 
[AUTHOR'S NOTE: This review was originally intended for what I have referred to at TGML's Facebook page as "The Secret Project", but since there's going to be an unavoidable delay in that project's debut, I've moved it here because I didn't want it to sit any longer. Shonen Knife deserves it.]
Naoko Yamano, Shonen Knife’s front woman, guitarist, chief songwriter, and only consistent member of the veteran Japanese trio (as well as a MILF to both the punk rock and J-pop fan bases), learned how to play guitar by listening to the Ramones. In that aspect, she already has one thing in common with millions of people around the world, this writer included. On top of the obvious Ramones influences that have been part and parcel of Shonen Knife’s music from the beginning of their storied career, the band has also been known to encore with Ramones songs and even do occasional gigs consisting of all Ramones covers under an assumed name, and their 2008 album Fun Fun Fun also contains a tribute song, “Ramones Forever”, that includes autobiographic details on how Naoko first heard the band and how Shonen Knife got to open for the Ramones on their last tour of Japan.
With their own 30th anniversary occurring this year, Naoko and her bandmates decided commemorate the occasion by cutting a full album of Ramones covers, using the name of their occasional Ramones tribute act side project, Osaka Ramones, as the album’s title. About half the album was recorded in their hometown, while the other half was recorded in America with Good Charamel founder (and GooGoo Dolls member) Robby Takac co-producing.
Outside of transposing the key signatures of some of the songs to make them more friendly to their normal female vocal ranges, Shonen Knife remained otherwise faithful to the original recordings, even trying to reproduce as accurately as possible the production styles of the original Ramones recordings (save for “Blitzkrieg Bop”, where the band and Takac wisely avoid emulating the extreme Meet the Beatles-style panning of the guitar and bass tracks in favor of a more contemporary mix). Also remaining unchanged are the gender viewpoints of the original songs, giving some of the covers an unintended faux-lesbian subtext.
The song selection isn’t as completely predictable. A few obvious choices – “Rock n’ Roll High School”, the aforementioned “Blitzkrieg Bop”, “Sheenah Is a Punk Rocker”, “Psycho Therapy” (thankfully, no “I Wanna Be Sedated”, which every bar band in America tends to play very badly) also share space with a couple of not-so-obvious choices, particularly “Scattergun” from the final Ramones studio album Adios Amigos! and “Chinese Rock” from End of the Century.
Given that Shonen Knife’s original songs often cover more kawaii (Japanese for “cute”) topics – food (“BBQ Party”, “I Wanna Eat Chocobars”, “Ice Cream City”), animals (“I Am A Cat”, “Deer Biscuits”), rock and roll (“Golden Years of Rock n’ Roll”, “Rock Society”, “Your Guitar”), campy sci-fi (“Riding on the Rocket”, “Giant Kitty”), with the rare weighty topic (“S*P*A*M”, “Economic Crisis”) – it is quite the shock to hear Naoko and the others (bassist Ritsuko Taneda and new drummer Emi Morimoto sing one song apiece) take on some of the Ramones’s darker lyrical moments, particularly with “Chinese Rocks”, “We’re A Happy Family”, and “Psychotherapy”. This doesn’t distract from or lower the quality of the album, just makes it stand out from the rest of the Shonen Knife catalog.
Beyond that, Osaka Ramones does exactly what Shonen Knife intended the album to do – pay tribute to their heroes and commemorate their own milestone anniversary, one made possible one way or another by the Ramones themselves. Fans of both the Ramones and Shonen Knife will love this, and if one is a fan of one band but not the other, hopefully the album will inspire explorations into the other’s back catalog.
REVIEW: PETER TOSH “Legalize It” and “Equal Rights” Legacy Editions
PETER TOSH
Legalize It (Legacy Edition) and Equal Rights (Legacy Edition)
(Legacy/Columbia)
Available on 2CD sets and on iTunes and AmazonMP3.com
Rating: (for both)
Peter Tosh’s debut solo album Legalize It is not only one of my favorite reggae albums, it is one of my favorite albums, period, so when an opportunity came to hear advance copies of newly remastered and expanded editions of both that album and its follow-up Equal Rights, I went for it. (Big thanks to Randy at Sony Legacy.) And I’m not kidding when I say Legalize It is one of my favorites – I’ve owned several editions in the past 25 years, starting with a cassette copy and then going on to the first original Columbia CD edition from the late 80’s, Legacy’s original single-disc remastered reissue, a 180-gram vinyl release from 2000, and a Jamaican pressing done on Tosh’s own Intel-Diplo H.I.M. label.
I have tried several times to write about this album’s new reissue and honestly, it’s been hard to do. I have been listening to this album for close to three decades and it never has failed to entertain me. Both longtime fans of Tosh and of reggae music in general know how seminal, how much essential listening that an album Legalize It is. Tosh was starting basically from scratch after a frustrating if amicable departure from The Wailers (amicable between himself and Bob Marley – Tosh’s relations with Island Records chief Chris Blackwell were another story, given that Tosh would later christen him “Whiteworst”) when he proceeded to start putting together what became Legalize It, even sending copies of the original Jamaican mix to three interested labels before Columbia took the chance. The album has not gone out of print since.
It is because of all that familiarity with this album and the various editions that I have proudly owned it on that I can say with all certainty that this new edition of Legalize It is simply the best I have ever heard this album sound, and whatever price one pays for this new edition is worth it just for the remastered version of the original LP. All of the bonus tracks are pure gold, but the best of the whole bunch is the original Jamaican mix of the album that dominates the first half of Disc Two. Comparing the two will easily reveal how pure the original mix is and how much the album was nicely decorated to make it accessible to a wider audience (in spite of the fact that openly endorsing the legalization of pot pretty much made Tosh eligible for being Public Enemy Number One).
Equal Rights is, this writer also admits, an album that I’m not as familiar with as Legalize It, which is practically imbedded in my bone marrow at this point. But Tosh was firing on all cylinders at this point, reclaiming “Get Up Stand Up” from the Wailers (which wasn’t hard – he co-wrote it and sang the closing verse on the original recording) for himself and getting even more political, writing a song bashing apartheid at a time (1977) when most people didn’t even know what it was (One of the participants in the album that was interviewed for the reissues’s liner notes admits that he originally thought Tosh made up the word, given that he was known for his own distinctive wordplay, e.g. referring to oppression as “downpression”, understanding as “overstanding”, calling corrupt systems “shitstems”,), and another encouraging everyone of African heritage worldwide to be proud of their ethnic roots, years before the likes of Public Enemy and KRS-One would do the same thing. Equal Rights‘s bonus tracks are just as revealing as those of Legalize It’s, presenting a slew of unreleased tracks recorded during the album sessions (some of which Tosh had recorded before with the Wailers and on early pre-Island solo singles). For this listener, the whole package makes me appreciate the album just as much as I appreciated Legalize It for all these years.
These are important albums both in reggae music and in general. If you don’t own them, you have no excuse not to now, and if you already own other editions, it’s time to upgrade.
Five stars for both. Obviously.
REVIEW: BORIS “Attention Please” and “Heavy Rocks (2011)”
Attention Please and Heavy Rocks (2011)
(Sargent House)
Available on CD, LP, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
Rating:
With some bands, you know what to expect before you even bust the shrinkwrap on your newly purchased LP or CD or click that download link. Boris is not one of those bands. When it was announced earlier this year that the veteran Japanese experimental rock trio was dropping both a rock album and a pop album simultaneously, I’m sure a lot of eyebrows were going up. Since we’re dealing with Boris, however, these descriptions of their new material are vague at best. The music, however, isn’t.
Attention Please, the so-called “pop” album, actually sees the trio bringing their experimental tendencies into the pop-rock format with often surprising results. Lead guitarist Wata is the sole lead vocalist on the entire album; while she doesn’t possess the range of many of her more visible countrywomen like Kumi Koda and Morning Musume’s Reina Tanaka and Ai Takahashi, her whispery, almost fairy-like singing does carry its own distinctive recognizable signature. Terming the album as “pop”, however, doesn’t mean that the album is loaded with radio-friendly tracks like the first single “Hope”. “See You Next Week”, for example, marries an industrial found-sound loop to Wata’s reverberated vocals and slowly arpeggiated guitar figures. I’ve noted several times in the past that most Western J-pop fans are usually fans of alternative, punk, and indie music. Attention Please may very well be the album those fans reach for when they can’t decide between listening to Sonic Youth or Morning Musume.
Heavy Rocks – borrowing a name from another album of theirs from ten years ago, and thus a methodology not dissimilar to Weezer’s self-titled, differently colored trilogy of albums – actually seems like the more accessible of the two albums. Here, the band concentrates on various forms of guitar-based riff rock – Anthrax-like riffing on “Czechoslovakia”, raucous hardcore punk on “Galaxians”, first single “Riot Sugar” sounding so much like the Cult that they invite their pal Ian Astbury over to chip in a few trademark vocal interjections. They let their experimental side rest, save for the ambient cut “Key” and the Merzbow-like noise explosion that interrupts “Missing Pieces”. Most of the vocals are handled by Takeshi, but a guest vocalist, Yoshito Kawakita, takes the mic over to kick some Puffy AmiYumi-like “do-do-do”’s over the grunge-influenced barre chords of “Window Shopping”.
Also curiously, both albums contain a track called “Aileron”, but both songs, like the albums they are on, are rather different. The Attention Please “Aileron” is a William Ackerman-esque acoustic guitar instrumental, while the Heavy Rocks track takes one of the other version’s guitar figures, transfers it to an electric, slows it down, and makes it a lengthy full band piece with lead vocal.
They’re two separate albums, with their own packaging and musical concepts, but together they make one complete whole – and you can’t go wrong with that.
Four and a half stars for each one, or five stars for both.
ETA: When this was first written, the album was reviewed from legally downloaded editions of the albums that contained no credits. We thus originally identified Wata as the vocalist on “Window Shopping”. Having received physical copies of the albums from Sargent House today, we have since corrected that error and apologize for any confusion.
REVIEW: ROBERT JOHNSON “The Centennial Collection”
The Centennial Collection
(Legacy/Columbia)
Available on 2CD set and on iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
Rating:
By all accounts, I shouldn’t have to try to sell anyone on Robert Johnson. The man’s legend has loomed large since Columbia, under John Hammond Sr.’s auspices, assembled 16 of the long-dead Johnson’s recordings under the title King of the Delta Blues Singers. If you’re interested at all in early blues music, the roots of rock and roll, or early American music in general, you probably already have a copy of King of the Delta Blues Singers or the Complete Collection box set from 1990 (a surprise platinum-selling release – especially in the eyes of Columbia, who only expected to move ten or twenty thousand copies) in your collection. If not, any interest you may have had in the man’s music may have been slowed down by just one thing: “Ugh! Recordings from when they only made 78’s? There’ll be a fuckton of scratches. Important or not, five-star essential listening or not, I’m not listening to music under that bad of a sound source.”
Thankfully, technology has progressed to the point where a good sound engineer could take a scratchy 78, program the clicks and pops out of it, and make the recording sound as crystal clear as possible, as a late 90’s overdue CD edition of the first King of the Delta Blues Singers album proved in comparison to the Complete Collection box.
Of course, even Johnson devotees might whine, “Another reissue of the same bunch of tracks? Jesus Christ, Columbia, why don’t you just dig Robert’s body up and poison him to death again?” upon hearing of the release of The Centennial Collection. But that’s where technology comes into play again. Digital audio archiving has evolved so much that Centennial makes the previous edition of Johnson’s recordings sound less than optimum. I’ve heard Johnson’s recordings on everything from a cassette to the original box set to the 1998 CD edition of KOTDBS to a 180-gram LP. The fact is, these classic tracks are sounding as CLEAN as they have always deserved to be. There is a little high-end hiss that the sound engineers could not remove without compromising the original sonic fields that were recorded eighty years ago, but Johnson’s singing and guitar playing, his signature sound – are ringing clearer than ever. You couldn’t make these recordings sound any better unless you built a time machine, went back to the late 20’s and patched a MacBook Pro with ProTools into producer Don Law’s disc cutting machine.
And that, dear Virginia, is what this release of all of Johnson’s recordings is all about. If you can’t appreciate Robert Johnson’s music under these newly optimum conditions, then there’s something wrong.
Recommended Surfing: TheCompleteRobertJohnson.com
REVIEW: MEAT PUPPETS “Lollipop”
MEAT PUPPETS
Lollipop
(Megaforce/Red Ink)
Available on CD, LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
Rating: 
I welcomed the return of the Meat Puppets ever since Curt Kirkwood polled fans as to whether they wanted to see a reunion of the original lineup through his MySpace page. The first result of that question’s aftermath, 2007’s Rise To Your Knees, was the indie-rock equivalent of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: It was great to see/hear from some old friends again, even if the end results didn’t fully live up to the anticipation built up from years worth of passing time even before a return to action became reality.
With that seemingly odd comparison having been made, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the follow-up, 2009’s Sewn Together (which made TGML’s Top 10 Album list that year) is the Meat Puppets’s Wrath of Khan. Fully recharged after the test run that was Rise To Your Knees, Curt and Cris Kirkwood and then-drummer Ted Marcus had delivered in Sewn Together a long-playing effort that was (and is) fully worthy of standing up with the best albums (II, Up On The Sun, Mirage, Huevos, Too High To Die) of their classic back catalog.
Now, two years later, comes Lollipop; While they’ve had a major personnel change – Shandom Sahm, son of the late Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas Tornados leader Doug Sahm and also a former Meat Puppet back in the short-lived Golden Lies period, replaces Marcus behind the trap set – they not only haven’t lost a step, they’ve progressed nicely without losing an ounce of what makes the Meat Puppets who they quintessentially are, be it Curt Kirkwood’s lead lines or his and Cris’s brotherly harmonies. Much of the material could have fit nicely on Up On The Sun or Mirage, but there are also a few welcome twists and turns, like the reggae/ska rhythms that propel the verses “Shave It”, or the almost Coldplay-esque piano chords that open “Orange” only to get near-obliterated by “My Sharona” drums and some nasty fuzz bass from Cris Kirkwood. All of it works.
So, if we’re going to fool around with Meat Puppets/Star Trek comparisons, does that make Lollipop their Search for Spock? Well, put it this way: Search was a must-see flick back in the day. Lollipop is a must-hear album. Enough said.
(Hot tip: Advance order customers who ordered Lollipop from the band’s website – your humble reviewer included – initially received a high-quality digital download of the album with the songs in their original, pre-manufacture sequence [but accidentally labeled with the final sequence’s song titles] – an error long since corrected and rectified by the band’s management. To emulate the original sequence, program your CD player or iPod playlist in the following order: 2, 3, 11, 10, 9, 5, 6, 7, 8, 4, 1, 12.)
Stream: Meat Puppets “Damn Thing”
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REVIEW: MORNING MUSUME “Maji Desu Ka Ska!”
MORNING MUSUME
Maji Desu Ka Ska!
(Zetima)
Available on CD, CD/DVD and on iTunes
Rating:
Thanks to Mother Nature’s most recent (and worst) menstrual period in recent memory, it took a little longer for this long-awaited single to hit people’s stereos and iPods. With all of the previews going around, I already had a good idea of what I thought of the single before the release date; As is my standard operating procedure, I prefer to wait until I have a high-quality sound file or the CD itself – whichever I can get my hands on first – before I commit my thoughts to word-processor file.
The ska in “Maji Desu Ka Ska!” is indeed ska, lying somewhere between the 2-Tone [Specials, Selecter, Madness, (English) Beat] and Third Wave [Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Less Than Jake, Toasters] eras. (I mention this because it would have been disappointing if Tsunku had put the word in the title and didn’t tip his hat musically to that style.) Having the four newest members of the group, whose names I still haven’t matched to their faces yet (the lack of personnel turnover between 2007 and last winter, plus the less populated additions to the group in the two years beforehand, appear to have spoiled me), start off the song was a calculated risk, but so far it works – for the next singles, they’ll have to keep topping themselves. Then again, Reina Tanaka was prominent on her first single with the band, and now she’s considered one of the best vocalists in the band, so that may be a good sign for our newcomers. If there’s a flaw in the song, it’s because the prominence of the Ninth Gen makes the song threaten to come off like an early Berryz Koubou or C-ute track at times – and the last thing Morning Musume should be sounding like is any of their Hello! Project stablemates. Fortunately, once the more experienced members of the group take over the song, that fear is subsided.
On the B-side, “Motto Aishite Hoshii no”, the veteran members dominate more, and the musical style returns to an uptempo version of what was employed on the last three MoMusu albums and their related singles – upbeat pop combined with more serious vocals. It’s definitely one of the better Morning Musume B-sides in recent memory, which is saying something.
Combined, both tracks look back at Morning Musume’s recent past while looking ahead to the future. And that’s what the first Morning Musume single of the new year should do.
Four and a half out of five stars.
TRACK REVIEW: SEETHER “Country Song”
I’m quite the fan of these guys, and my sole disappointment at the only time I’ve seen them live to date (at WMMR’s MMRBQ in 2007) stemmed from their only getting a half-hour or so to play (despite their already stellar back catalog track record at the time) while has-beens Collective Soul were getting twice that time to play. When I first heard of the song’s title (the first advance single from Holding On To Strings Better Left To Fray, out May 17th), I had fears of these guys pulling a Bon Jovi – or worse yet an Aaron Lewis (and playing to the teabagger contingent in the process as the ex-Staind singer is) until I listened to the song itself, the music of which is actually composed and arranged in a vein similar to their hit “Fake It”. Definitely something that makes me look forward to the new album. Steam below, pick out your favorite lyric at the band’s own site, then pay your 99 cents at iTunes.
Stream: Seether “Country Song”
TRACK REVIEW: NEW YORK DOLLS “Fool For You Baby (Dom Dom Dippy)”
The advance single has been released from Dancing Backward In High Heels, the fifth studio album by the New York Dolls and the third since they reformed back in 2004. To be honest, I am rather underwhelmed by this track. The track is dominated by David Johansen’s lead vocal, heavily reverberated backing vocals, and some very artificial-sounding organ, with some plinking high-register piano coming in before the song fades out – there is hardly any nasty trademark Dolls guitar riffing, and the whole affair sounds more like Phil Spector trying to do a lo-fi version of his fabled Wall of Sound. It’s definitely not what I would have expected from a New York Dolls single. I’m hoping that when the full Dancing Backward album drops on March 15th that this song will prove the exception rather than the standard operating procedure. We shall see what happens in about nine days. In the meantime, listen for yourself down below:
Stream: The New York Dolls “Fool For You Baby (Dom Dom Dippy)”
REVIEW: KODA KUMI “Dejavu”
KODA KUMI
Dejavu
(Rhythm Zone/Avex)
Available on CD and CD+2DVD
Rating:
Shouldn’t “déjà vu” be two words, not one? No matter. It’s the first quarter of the new year, and Koda Kumi wasn’t about to let it pass without a new album, and like a devoted fan I have to welcome it with open arms.
Unlike last year’s 8th AL Universe, Kuu-chin isn’t flirting with rock arrangements this time around – there’s no “Ningyao-hime” or “Can We Go Back” to throw the listener for a powerchord-driven loop; with only one glaring exception Dejavu focuses almost exclusively on pop and urban arrangements.
“POP DIVA”, the album’s advance single, sounds like Kuu-chin is either challenging or mocking Lady GaGa; considering that in the wake of the release of Kuu-chin’s single, GaGa dropped the “Express Yourself” clone “Born This Way”, had herself carried into the Grammy Awards in a large egg, and then accepted an award while wearing an almost Klingon-esque prosthetic forehead, one has to wonder if GaGa got whatever message Kuu-chin was sending. While it’s a catchy song, it’s not one of Kuu-chin’s better A-sides – producer Lil’shorty sees fit both on this song and the album’s opening prologue to unnecessarily mix Kumi’s vocals through AutoTune vocoder effects. It’s not as annoying on “POP DIVA” since it fits the heavily synthetic arrangement, but over the keyboard-triggered orchestral sounds of the album’s prologue, it’s pretty much surplus to requirements.
“Lollipop”, the opening cut to last summer’s Gossip Candy EP, follows. (The PV had my pal, up-and-coming shred guitarist Maxxxwell Carlisle, rather fascinated after I’d linked to it on Facebook awhile back.) Riding an almost sexy-sounding synth-bass line straight out of classic early-90’s R&B, Kumi (multitracking some rather tight and sultry vocal harmonies) delivers a somewhat blunt oral sex lyric. “Okay” follows, some of her introductory vocals getting more unnecessary AutoTune effects; the song’s musical arrangement recalls, of all things, some of Young Jeezy’s work on his The Inspiration album (a male backing vocalist chanting rather husky, Jeezy-esque “Aaaayyy”’s during the choruses doesn’t help matters – I almost expected the song to be mixed into Jeezy’s “Go Getta” at any second, and I had to double-check the album’s liner notes to make sure Jeezy’s usual producer Shawty Redd wasn’t behind this track.
Two ballads, “Aitakute” and “Passing By”, follow. The former is presented with electric piano and live strings, the latter with acoustic piano, string synthesizer, and a male vocalist named B. Howard joining her on the chorus. Both give Kumi yet another change to shine vocally; there’s a reason why one of her early compilations was devoted to some of her ballad performances, and these two songs are pleasant reminders.
“AT THE WEEKEND” is a club banger, albeit one driven by some strong and attentive songwriting (i.e identifiable verses, choruses, and bridge) rather than falling for the 21st Century American pop pitfall of only having one strain of backing music with the “chorus” being simply a different vocal melody/pattern being sung over the same exact chord changes and leitmotifs as the song’s verse.
“Melting” merges a disco-like chorus with more poppy verses and pre-choruses, and the combination works to a tee. Then it’s back to more techno/EDM territory for “Hey Baby!”, followed by “Choi Tashi Life” which is delivered over a faster-paced variation of a house music rhythm, made airier-sounding by warm string-synth chords.
Another pair of ballads, “Anata Dake Ga” and “Suki de, Suki de, Suki de” (both of which featured on a three-track, all-ballad EP last year), follow. Kuu-chin’s vocals are at their most tender on the former track, while she gets the album’s only presence of predominantly live instrumentation (acoustic and clean electric guitars, bass, drums, and string section) on the latter.
“Bambi” is the album’s weakest song, a ridiculous rip-off of Shania Twain’s dated crossover pop-country hits. The only thing saving the song is the fact that Koda Kumi is a stronger singer than Shania ever was. Also fortunately, the closing track “I Don’t Love You!??” – a classic Kuu-chin urban-pop track that would have fit perfectly on either of her first two single anthologies – comes in to remove the questionable taste of the preceding track out of listeners’s brains.
Dejavu is typical Koda Kumi and save for the penultimate track, the album should satisfy both longtime fans and newcomers. Four and a half out of five stars.
