Being a creature of habit, especially as a newlywed, I tend to leave my BlackBerry on overnight while it charges, albeit with the ringer set to “Phone calls only” in case of any family emergencies. This is especially good, because I have a couple of close friends’ Twitter accounts as well as some music and news sites’ Twitters set to send their tweets to my text message – the better to get any breaking news. Had I failed to turn off my ringer for the evening, my wife probably would have clobbered me for the flurry of SMS messages that came up in the middle of the night, especially from Hello! Online and my blogging/writing BFF Vee.

All of which related to this big announcement from Tsunku that came up while I slept:

Big announcement from the Morning Musume camp:

About the graduation of Eri Kamei, 6th generation member:

Eri Kamei came to me several times regarding her health condition. One time, she said to me : “I would like to find the time to cure the atopic dermatitis that I’m suffering from”.

Since the time she joined the Morning Musume, it looks like she was dealing with symptoms like itching and slight skin color changes. She took medication to calm the symptoms down and she also used make-up to cover it but during live concerts, there is a lot of sweat and many outfits to put on, which made her recovery very difficult.
Some may say it is “just a skin problem” but according to doctors, an external problem like skin problem may move to an internal level. It may as well have an impact on her spirit, her mental level. Also, for her, it is a serious thing so she decided to focus on her recovery instead of letting it continue.

Eri Kamei will graduate from Morning Musume and the Hello! Project on the last day of the Morning Musume?Autumn 2010 concert tour. As for her activities after that, I intend to discuss with her after her full recovery.

About the graduation of Jun Jun and Lin Lin, 8th generation members (foreign students)

In May 2005, both of them joined the Morning Musume as foreign students and today, while being skilled singers and entertainers, they also greatly improved their Japanese proficiency and they are now grown-up women. This is why I took the decision to graduate both of them at the same time as Eri Kamei on the last day of the Morning Musume?Autumn 2010 concert tour.
After graduation, they will enter a period of preparation before focusing on their singing and entertaining career in China.

August 8th 2010
Morning Musume? Producer
Tsunku?

Followed, as always, by statements from the band members themselves:

Eri Kamei: As Tsunku? said, I will graduate on the last day of the Autumn 2010 Tour from the Morning Musume? to focus on my health. It is my decision but let me reassure you, my condition is not that serious. I just wanted to focus on my recovery for a while because lately, I was thinking a lot about how I could become a pretty woman. I took this decision with that in mind.

But I really love to do concerts so today and until the Autumn Tour, I am counting on you to sing, dance and have fun with me.

Thank you for your continued support.

Jun Jun: Since I came to Japan, I did and I learned so many things. Thank you so much.
But what really made me happy was to meet all of you, I am so thankful for this.
With this emotion in my heart, I want to make more and more happy memories with you.

Until my graduation at the end of Morning Musume? Autumn Tour, I intend to sing with all my heart.

Thank you for your support until the very last day. Thank you all.

Lin Lin: Since I first joined the Hello! Project Egg and then the Morning Musume?, I was so happy every single day. Of course, I sometimes missed my home but thanks to everyone around me and all of your support, I now feel that Japan and the Hello! Project is like my home.

During the Autumn Tour, I intend to sing with everything I got so I count on your support and I hope to see you there.

Wo Ai Ni.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today I marry my longtime girlfriend and lover, Tara Ann Welsh. In fact, by the time this entry automatically posts, we will have already said our vows. So, there’s no other appropriate song for today than this one from my favorite band:

…except maybe for this one that could have been our first dance had Tara been more into J-Pop. Still, it’s also appropriate, so I’ll post it here (lyrics in both Japanese and English will open in a new window here):

See you all again here very soon… the honeymoon awaits. In the meantime, you can keep up with us here and here!

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 »

Paul Thomas and his mad coding skills have struck again, and of course, I had to, had to take the poll, which this year came as a two-parter – one for individual members and one for groups. Some of the results as I filled them out should be of no surprise, others should not:

My fandom hasn’t changed very much. Reina is still on top for me, Takitty is right behind, but for whatever reason JunJun and LinLin have moved up in the ranks. Much of this ranking of individuals from #3 on down could change from day to day, though, so this is just what I was feeling tonight.

The group fandom was less hard to figure out. Morning Musume are still my favorite band, Buono! still rock, and I still like Berryz and C-ute even though I still can’t recognize some of the members on sight (obviously picking Miyabi, Momoko and Airi out thanks to their Buono! work isn’t hard, and I can recognize Risako and Chinami, but that’s about it at the moment) and C-ute’s new album hasn’t completely grabbed me yet like 10 My Me and We Are Buono! did.

I try never to let a day go by without playing some MoMusu music, no matter how many other musical mood swings I go through from day to day and week to week (In one example, for whatever reason, I went on quite the Minutemen/fIREHOSE jag the past week, as my last.fm page will attest). But, my listening habits have always been that way and that’s not likely to change, ever.

The bottom rows of both polls stayed the way they were from how Paul organized the default selections for a good reason: Erina Mano’s music hasn’t exactly grabbed me, and I’ve never listened to Guardians 4 or S/mileage so I can’t comment on them.

Other than that, I get married in 89 days (yikes – time’s flyin’!), which means that as that day looms forward I need my favorite band and their compatriots to keep me sane. That also means I have to cram in a lot of activity on here before then… and then cram in some more after the nuptials.

MORNING MUSUME
10 My Me
(Zetima)
Available on CD. CD/DVD and from iTunes and JapanFiles.com
Rating:

If there’s one thing for sure about Morning Musume, it’s that they’re markedly consistent – and then some. Equally at home dishing out solid studio albums as well as top-5 singles, it’s the one constant in the career of a band whose lineup used to change from one album to the next. I know that when I get a new Morning Musume album out of my PO Box and put it in my CD player and iPod that I’m going to get a good album. Eleven studio albums (yes, I count the unnumbered Cover You) in, I wasn’t expecting to get surprised, but I did – not only did they live up to their artistic reputation, but with 10 My Me Morning Musume put their balls (OK, ovaries) on the line.

An unexpected sample – an English-speaking voice with a European accent saying “Electro-convulsive therapy, part one” – splices into the final seconds of an orchestra playing the final bar of a piece. A sudden shift of gears, and driving analog synths kick off “Moonlight Night ~Tsukiyo no Ban Dayo~” before the group makes with mock-operatic vocalizing and then back into their more recent group harmonizing. Musically, the song goes all over the place in an indescribable manner but makes perfect sense from section to section and as a whole. I want to keep scrolling the music file in reverse on my iPod to try to identify the different elements, but I can’t because the song compels me to listen to it as a whole.

Their final single with Koharu Kusumi, “Kimagure Princess”, follows – and the high-register vocals that the group starts off with serve as a delayed reminder that it’s not going to be business as usual all the time this particular go-round with Morning Musume, emphasizing the experimental tone that permeates 10 My Me’s core.

“Genki Pika Pika!” finds the group mining 80’s pop influences again, this time around delivering a vibe reminiscent of Sheila E’s “The Glamorous Life” by way of The Jets’ “Crush On You” – a perfect musical arrangement to accompany some beautifully breezy vocals from the group.

“Namidacchi” starts with some George Winston-esque piano and gentle bass, acoustic guitar and percussion before another sudden musical shift, whipping out punk guitar powerchords and some drum fills worthy of Flipper’s Steve DePace in the choruses. A little DJ scratching (something used to sublime percussive effect in their classic ballad “I Wish” way back when) slips in during the second verse as well. The song’s bridge goes further forward and backward (backward in a good way, of course), as the members trade off some rapped couplets a-la “Do it! Now” over the punky guitars.

After the band’s brilliant 2010 kickoff single “Onna ga Medatta Naze Ikenai” – which proves that you can play powerchords on acoustic guitars and have just as much of an impact on an uptempo rock song, “Ookii Hitomi” – the first of only three splinter-group efforts on this album, here highlighting 6th gen members Reina Tanaka, Sayuri Michishige and Eri Kamei – delivers a great match of European house rhythms and chugging electric guitars. A little AutoTune vocoder effect pops up in the verses, but, like some more tasteful, creative and honest uses of the effect (reference points again: Cher’s “Believe”, Bob Mould’s “Shine Your Light Love Hope”, and more recently Somaya Reece’s “Tramp” – the first truly good pop single I’ve heard from an American artist in close to a decade, by the way), it’s done to serve the song; In other words, it’s there for decoration, not for a burial. (Late bloomer Sayumi already proved she could sing on Platinum 9 DISC’s “It’s You” and Cover You’s “Ringo Satsujinjiken” – she has nothing else to prove to anybody but herself.)

The band’s leaders, Ai Takahashi and Risa Niigaki, take the spotlight on the second splinter track, “Anohi Ni Modoritai”, over a musical style that Morning Musume has been pretty much owning of late: urban contemporary R&B in the style of TLC, Mary J. Blige and early Destiny’s Child. “No Scrubs”-style acoustic guitars, G-Funk synth bass and a string quartet provide the musical setting for Takitty’s and Gaki’s mutli-layered harmonies.

The band’s 40th single, “Nanchatte Renai” (with the much-missed Koharu delivering the most mature vocals she ever did… to date) provides the album’s next recap moment, setting up the listener unawares for the next track. “Osaka Umainen” – the last of the splinter tracks, featuring 8th-gen members Aika Mitsui, Li Chun and Qian Lin – starts with a simulated 78RPM big band “sample” before some 8-bit synth blips kick off the song proper and compete with 60’s soul horns and plinking early rock’n’roll piano. The song itself comes off like a cousin of earlier MoMusu album tracks that provided what some bloggers referred to as some of Koharu’s more “cracktastic” moments like Platinum 9’s “Guru Guru JUMP” and Cover You’s “Ping-ping Pan Taisou”. This time around, without Koharu being around to throw into the mix, the song actually comes off more mature, especially when LinLin gets some solo lines.

“Loving You Forever” is a great power ballad in the “I Wish” tradition. Classic MoMusu harmonies and Beatlesque strings are propelled by an arrangement that recalls The Raspberries’ “Overnight Sensation”. The next time some armchair critics complain that Morning Musume hasn’t been the same since the departures of longtime members like Kaori Iida and Natsumi Abe, play them this cut.

The album closes with a great one-two punch: The band’s chart-topping Summer 2009 single “Shouganai Yumeoibito” followed by a version of Platinum 9’s “Ame no Furanai Hoshi de wa Aisenai Darou?” sung in Chinese (Longtime fans will recall that the closing of the original version has JunJun and LinLin singing in their native tongue.) The recording is not a complete port of the original recording’s backing track; instead a slightly extended intro of nylon-string acoustic guitar and strings leads into the group accompanied only by piano and strings at first, before a variant on the original arrangement takes over. Hearing the entire band sing in Chinese seems to add a noticeable degree of delicacy and fragility to their vocals. “Shouganai Yumeoibito” itself would have been the perfect closing track to the album; the addition of this “alternate version” of the song makes for a great encore.

I concluded my review of Platinum 9 DISC last year with the statement, “The streak of solid Morning Musume albums continues.” That statement, while it holds true for 10 My Me, isn’t enough. More to the point, 10 My Me is Morning Musume’s equivalent of Pet Sounds or Double Nickels on the Dime – an instant classic album to many, and something that will grow in stature as the years go by to many others.

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.
—–
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.

AKB48 Sakura no Hanabiratachi b/w Dear my teacher AKS AKB-101, released 2.1.06	MORNING MUSUME SEXY BOY ~Soyokaze ni Torisotte~ b/w Chance Chance Boogie Zetima EPCE-5390/91, released 3.15.06

The lyrical subject of AKB48’s debut A-side is… graduating?

In a way, it makes sense: The group had already been giving shows at their eponymous theatre in Akihabara for several months before Yasushi Akimoto decided to shepherd his new protégés – at the time consisting of what became “Team A” (no Meetan or Erepyon in sight) – into a recording studio for their first single – and this one, self-released, to boot. And a ballad! I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of the early regulars at the AKB48 Theatre were picking up the group’s first single, recognizing the song as being one of the band’s slower numbers, and running to their online message boards to post their discontent: The nerve! A slow song for a new all-girl pop group’s first single? And one with lyrics about moving on, yet? What is that schmuck AkiP thinking?

Consider that, for one thing, Akimoto and AKB48 were pretty much going the DIY route for this first single. They hadn’t courted, or been courted by, any of the major labels yet. No doubt many of the early fans of AKB’s live shows were clamoring for a CD of some sort. Judging from the packaging, however – a four-panel 2×2 insert briefly describing the band’s concept, lineup, and theatre, plus a randomly inserted collector’s card of one of the then-current members – Akimoto’s intention was, in part, to attract more attention to his new musical venture.

A slow song doesn’t necessarily mean a sad song – “Sakura no…” is very upbeat (in spite of its slow tempo), very innocent, and very major key. There’s no line division – the twenty-girl lineup sings the entire song in unison. And the lyric was appropriate because AKB48 was going from just being a live unit with an indefinite residence in its own performance venue to being recording artists. And given that school graduations were on the horizon in Japan at the time this single was released, AkiP’s and the group’s timing was close to impeccable. The song peaked at #10 on the Oricon singles chart, so the strategy worked.

The B-side of “Sakura no…” is practically the A-side’s direct opposite. Rather than an innocent and upbeat ballad about looking ahead to the future, “Dear my teacher” finds the girls singing (over an underground disco beat) from the point of view of a female student who wants to cross the line with her male instructor (at least I’m assuming the object of the song narrator’s affections is male). Some of the lyrics are pretty blunt, judging from the translation at Stage48: “Do it, BABY! / Do it, BABY! / Won’t you teach me a lesson? / I secretly want special extra credit / … If you lock the door / I’ll be a good girl.”

Meanwhile, a few weeks after AKB’s debut single, Morning Musume were all business as usual with “SEXY BOY”. There is a slight techno influence on the A-side, and I say slight because most of the techno I’ve heard didn’t have upfront harmony lead guitar breaks breaking up the otherwise keyboard-dominated landscape. There are some para-para moments in the chanted backing vocals in the chorus, but not as much as your average Eurobeat tune – Tsunku kept things less specialized and more mainstream as far as the basic musical arrangement went. It was and is a catchy and memorable song.

The B-side finds the band mining some big band/jazz influence again. This wouldn’t be the first time (“Mr. Moonlight –Koi no Big Band-“, of course) or the last (MoMusu’s last B-side of 2006 would also mine similar musical territory, but that’s another column). While it’s a good song, and the girls’ vocals are up to standard, in retrospect it’s one of their weaker B-sides, although I’m sure it served the purpose of being both B-side as well – given the band’s usual concert protocol – as part of the band’s Spring 2006 tour set list.

For their next singles, both groups would shift gears – but that’s a story for the next column.

There is considerable temptation – both spoken and unspoken – to compare Morning Musume and AKB48 to each other in the J-pop community, both in the blogosphere and amongst those who frequent boards and chat rooms. In many ways, this is an apples vs. oranges argument. Morning Musume are an established act with over a decade’s worth of albums, singles, and DVDs under their collective belt. AKB48 are practically the new kids in town, not even five years old. One is a more compact unit (albeit one that once boasted 15 members on recordings), the other is a veritable rotating talent pool/reparatory company. One act is more of a singles band than an album act, while the other could be either/or. One has eleven studio albums (counting a forthcoming March 2010 release and a cover/concept album that wasn’t traditionally numbered), the other has several album-length releases, but none could really be called studio albums in the traditional sense – more like cast recordings of their theatrical performances. One band has eleven Number One singles and only ever missed the Oricon Top 5 twice in their entire career to date – and both times, they never peaked at a position lower than #6; the other only has one Number One single so far, and didn’t break the Oricon Top 5 until the fall of 2008 – until then, #6 had been their highest chart position.

However… they both make great recordings. And that is where this series – in planning since last November – comes in.

Over several parts – each devoted to a single apiece from both bands – this author will be comparing the singles of Morning Musume and AKB48, strictly on musical grounds. Neither single covers nor PVs will be involved in the comparison. Sales numbers and chart rankings will have no relevance here, either, especially since neither has anything to do with the long-term impact of the music itself. (Consider how three of the most influential and beloved albums to be released in the mid-Eighties – the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime, Husker Du’s Zen Arcade, and Slayer’s Reign in Blood – have had far-reaching cultural impact in the twenty-some years since those records were first released, even though their initial sales were a fraction of what the major pop acts of the day were selling.)

How this works will be quite simple: Each Morning Musume single will be evaluated alongside its AKB48 counterpart – or vice versa, depending on which single came out first. The first installment, for example will pair MoMusu’s “Sexy Boy ~Soyokaze ni Yorisotte~” with AKB’s “Sakura no Hanabiratachi”. There will be no pre-determined outcome; there may not even be one. Yes, I refer to Morning Musume as my favorite band almost as regularly as I eat, shit, and breathe, but I am also a big AKB48 fan. If I had disliked AKB48, I would not even be writing this series, let alone be owning, hosting, and collaborating on a site dedicated to a favorite member of that group. This will simply be a somewhat scientific/scholarly look at where each act was when they released singles within weeks of each other.

In most cases, their release schedules for singles happened within weeks of each other, making the comparisons easy. In a couple of cases, AKB48 released singles within weeks of a previous single of theirs while Morning Musume had no brand new release to counter it; one single, the 2008 “re-release”/re-recording of “Sakura no Hanabiratachi”, will be left out of this comparison for reasons to be fully explained later, and their digital-only single “Baby-Baby-Baby” will also, most likely, be left out since there was no Morning Musume single to counterbalance – using the MoMusu side band High-King’s single “C/C (Cinderella Complex)”, released around the same time, would not be a very fair comparison, even if for many fans the single filled what has to be the longest gap between Morning Musume singles (April 2008’s “Resonant Blue” and September 2008’s “Pepper Keibu”) ever. “Boku No Taiyou” has also left me with a bit of a dilemma, given that it dropped seemingly within days of the release of “BINGO!” – I haven’t decided on whether or not it will be part of this survey. It might be, but pitting two AKB singles against one MoMusu single from the same time period will probably be pushing it. No matter. This is strictly for fun, not part of a contest to determine which band is better than another.

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.

MORNING MUSUME
Platinum 9 Disc
(Zetima [Japan]/JapanFiles.com [USA])
Available on CD, iTunes US and Japan, and JapanFiles.com

Morning Musume’s 9th studio album (10th if you count Cover You) shows the band at their prime – all the better for an album that wound up being their first ever American release, the second of two studio albums by the band’s longest-lived lineup, and the album that preceded their US performing debut. One of Morning Musume’s many strengths is that they put out solid albums and not just solid singles – this album was just a gentle reminder of that.