Girls Generation did a performance of “The Boys” on Live with Kelly this morning that I didn’t find out about until someone tweeted to me about it last night after my last post went up. I somewhat dreaded it because of how ridiculous the format of the show has been for decades, but I still set my DVR (and ended up watching it live anyway – thank god I have Wednesday mornings off). Regis is, thankfully gone (adios, you babbling idiot…), the monologue was thankfully shorter, and Girls Generation got off a relatively complete performance of “The Boys”, albeit one where there might have been one verse left out of the song (I didn’t replay the performance this time around). They did, however, perform over a backing track rather than use a live band like last night on The Late Show with David Letterman, which was a bit of a letdown.

They also got their first US TV interview courtesy of the show, with host Kelly Ripa being somewhat serious and guest co-host Howie Mandel being a slightly less obnoxious asshole than Regis Philbin. There could have been a bit more research and thought going into the questions asked of the band, but since the show was geared mainly toward a more general audience that is to be expected. The show’s producers also had a shot of the band’s tour bus and the crowd of hardcore Sone (at least one of them holding up a copy of the tin-packaged Korean edition of the new album) waiting outside, which was good because America got to see a crowd of discerning American pop fans who wouldn’t listen to thoughtless, overproduced, and undercomposed dreck like Katy Perry or Scotty McCreepy if you put a loaded pistol to their heads.

So, two for two as far as SNSD’s first two performances on American television go. Let’s see what happens from here (An album or EP with English versions of “Genie”, “Hoot”, and their other earlier hits would be a nice start…)

Please visit:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cjmarsicano/resonant-blue-limited-edition-first-printing

for further details.

Alternate short URLS:
http://tgml.co/resonantbluekickstarter
or
http://www.resonantblue.com/kickstarter

Most updates will be at the project’s own blog and the Kickstarter page rather than here or at MILO.

I can deal with incoming goofball singles like the one coming out at the end of the month, “Pyoko Pyoko Ultra” (c’mon, it’s a parallel of “Hyokkori Hy?tanjima”, for chrissakes, even if it sounds more like a Berryz track than a MoMusu one).

This slew of personnel changes, though… enough already, man!

Risa Niigaki just became the leader of the band last September… and now she’s going to graduate at the end of the Spring tour? A translation of the statements from both Risa and Tsunku haven’t been translated yet, as far as I know (Hello! Online broke the news around 7:30 this morning; it’s 11:30 am as I frantically type this out on my iPad, mere minutes after waking up on a rare Monday off from work), but I’m sure the speculation is running rampant as to why we’re getting another personnel change so soon (and thus being denied at least one full album with Gaki-san as leader).

Like I said when Tsunku dropped the tenth generation members on us the day before Takitty’s graduation: Morning Musume are still my favorite band but wait a minute…

Let’s face it, folks: The Stable Nine lineup had us all spoiled. Some of you complained because that lineup was so stable, and now some of those same people are no doubt complaining because it’s the other way around now.

So who is actually going to be leader after this spring? Sayumi Mischchige, who is cute and has improved her singing quite a bit since she first came around, or Reina Tanaka, who’s already gotten a bit of bandleader experience as part of both Aa! and High-King? Come to think of it, in both of those units, Reina was the titular head of units that had predominantly younger members… Hmmm…

12, Smart

Looking back, both of these albums represent two parts of a transitional period for the band. Eri Kamei, Qian Lin and Li Chun were about to depart the band when Fantasy! Juuichi dropped, while Ai Takahashi had already taken her bows before 12, Smart‘s release. The next album and the singles that precede it with the tenth generation involved should prove interesting, even if that first single A-side is too much of an anime theme for most people’s likings.

By the way, this ranking isn’t any kind of slur on Morning Musume – far from it. It’s just there’s one album that seemed to get played just a little more than both of these… Which album was that? Check in after midnight…

…Followed by something to match the other focus of this blog from punk legends The Dickies. Trans-Siberian what?

A Tom Waits-ian take on “We Three Kings”, courtesy of Mojo Nixon, and done up for YouTube by this author, WPIX Yule Log style:

And speaking of Tom Waits, what would the holidays be without a Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis?

Here’s a skewed, ahead-of-its-time view of a commercialized Christmas from legendary pianist/satirist Tom Lehrer:

Here’s another number I’ve shared before, but with a different performance (the original SNL performance keeps getting kicked off of YouTube):

And as long as I’m digging in the crates, let’s hear from Yossi, Gocchin and Yasuda-chan:

Since we’re in the middle of Hanukkah this year, we’d be remiss to not play this little number:

…and finally, in the further interest of equal time, one for the Scrooges out there:

Happy Holidays, everyone!

…to alternative icon Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, seen here channeling Husker Du circa Zen Arcade:

…and to guitar hero Adrian Belew (of King Crimson, Frank Zappa, and Talking Heads fame):

MORNING MUSUME
12, Smart
(Zetima)
Available on CD, CD/DVD combo, and on iTunes US and Japan
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

It took a couple of days longer than I expected, but I wasn’t about to not review a Morning Musume album for the second time in a row. (At least in the instance of Fantasy 11, I could blame the Christmas holidays.) Let’s do the math quick: This is Morning Musume’s third album in nineteen months (I can’t help but recall back when Husker Du dropped New Day Rising, Flip Your Wig, and Candy Apple Grey – solid albums, all – within a similar time frame back in the mid-80′s). And it’s the soonest they’ve followed up a studio album since the three-and-a-half month gap between Cover You and Platinum 9 Disc. (The second shortest gap was between Second Morning and 3rd Love Paradise). And this album is coming out on the heels of Ai Takahashi’s graduation from the band and the addition of four new members that have yet to see the inside of a recording studio, and that’s on the heels of four more members being added at the beginning of this year. Things are getting way busy over in MoMusu land, and that’s a good thing. They’re also changing a mite too fast, but thankfully, the new album is giving veteran MoMusu fans like myself a chance to catch up.

I do have to admit that I was a little wary of how the songwriting quality of the album was going to be considering the tough double act 12, Smart has to follow with the two solid albums that bookended 2010, the semi-experimental 10 My Me and the more group-centric Fantasy 11. [Which I still wish I had written a review of last December; If you haven't bought that album yet, go get it now 'cause it still holds up.] I also wondered how the 9th Generation members were going to mesh in an album setting, considering there were basically thrown front and center their first single in, before being reined in by Tsunku afterward (and quite wisely) on the two singles that followed.

Tsunku has had a pretty good game plan as far as sequencing the opening tracks of the past several Morning Musume studio albums – new studio track followed by one of the recent singles – and he adheres pretty much to that same operating procedure. “Give Me Ai” (sung as “Give me love” in the lyrics itself, if you didn’t know what the word “Ai” meant in Japanese) recalls both Platinum 9 Disc‘s “SONGS” and Fantasy 11‘s “Onna to Otoko no Lullaby Game”, with an arrangement that mixes some of the best elements of both tracks.

“Only You”, one of the current lineup’s best single A-sides, follows “Give Me Ai” out of the starting gate. Tsunku’s songwriting for Morning Musume singles has been displaying a determination to have more than two strains of music (in other words, not just a verse and a chorus ad infinitum) in a pop song if he can get away with it. Here, he gets away with it in spades. Ai Takahashi, Reina Tanaka and Risa Niigaki are in excellent voice (even if some of Gaki-san’s vocals are deliberately effected with AutoTune in the song’s prechoruses).

One of the unique things about the last Morning Musume album, Fantasy 11, was that the album was dominated by group performances, with only Ai Takahashi and Reina Tanaka getting solo cuts and no subgroup features to speak of. This time around, the band gets splintered around for four of the album’s twelve tracks. On “Silver no Udedokei” Reina is paired with Riho Sayaski (the only member of the 9th gen to get any solo lines on “Only You”) for a classic H!P urban R&B workout a-la the ROMANS one-off “Sexy Night”, with Risa and Aika Mitsui brought in to contribute rap-style vocals here and there. Although Morning Musume can pull off pretty much any style they are confronted with, modern R&B is one of their strongest suits.

Sayumi Michishige and newcomer Mizuki Fukimura take their turn at a subgroup cut next with “Suki da na Kimi ga”. Apparently Mizuki is cut from similar cloth vocally to Sayumi, and they get a heavily electronic track to play with.

“Kaiketsu Positive A” starts with traffic sound effects before a soul horn section (albeit a synthetic one) kicks in, bringing the entire group along for the ride. Here some of the ninth gen members hold their own very well alongside the veteran members, both with solo lines and harmonies.

Six tracks in and we get our first non-uptempo cut of the album, “Kono Ai wo Kasanete”, a sort of torch-passing duet between Takahashi and Niigaki. Given that the release date of this album was – somewhat stupidly – done a couple of weeks after Takahashi graduated from the band, its fortunate that then-leader and then-subleader were given a chance at a subgroup cut.

The one/two punch of the band’s current double-A-side single “Kono Chikyuu no Heiwa o Honki de Nagatterun da yo!”/”Kare to Issho no Omise ga Shitai!” follows. I’m glad the band and Tsunku retained the crossfade between both songs from the single version for the album. In my mind, this is the best double-A-side single since Husker Du’s “Makes No Sense At All”/”Love Is All Around”.

“My Way ~Joshikou Hanamichi~” combines rock guitar riffing and drum-and-bass percussion loops. That combination shouldn’t work, but here it does. The band members engage in some top-notch harmonizing over the somewhat frantic musical arrangement.

“Otome no Timing” starts with a Motown-esque double-time rhythm on the intro (and choruses) before giving in to a brighter pop arrangement on the verses. Back when Sexy 8 Beat was released, an 60′s-influenced musical bed allowed then-newcomer Aika Mitsui to have some solo space with veteran Eri Kamei. Now, Aika is in the veteran’s spot with a similar song and she has her hands full with newcomers Erina Ikuta and Kanon Suzuki, whose vocals are already starting to remind me of Ai Kago & Nozomi Tsuji circa 2000-2001.

“OK YEAH!” starts off somewhat weak then almost threatens to drown out the band members with its happy-hardcore sound (so much so that one would not be blamed to double check to make sure Anabolic Frolic’s name isn’t in the credits). Fortunately, saner heads prevailed at the mixing desk and the MoMusus are front and center.

“Maji Ka Desu Ska!”, the first single by the new lineup (review from when the single was first released here), closes out the album – not only a further reiteration of standard Tsunku operating procedure for sequencing a Morning Musume studio album of late, but a reminder of how the year started for the band in the first place.

If there are any weak spots on the album, they are when the newest, youngest members of the band are featured so prominently. Perhaps it is because we now have a MoMusu lineup that has members younger than the members of Berryz Koubou and C-ute. Fortunately, the songwriting and the vocal performances of the veteran members are still top notch and sustain the album. Hopefully the newer members will develop more vocal personality by the time the next band’s album drops.

4 and a half out of 5 stars.

Apparently, whilst I was sleeping in (i have today and tomorrow off thanks to Rosh Hashanah… and I’m not even Jewish! [I'm actually a Buddhist]) and gearing up to get the last details of my Kickstarter campaign prepared, Tsunku made his decision and picked out four new members to make up Morning Musume’s tenth generation.

Now, you’d think that after following this band since 2003, I’d be used to things like this: the changes, learning the new members’ names, and so forth. But to be honest, the past year of Morning Musume has been a little hard to keep up with. Not in the musical sense –The quality of their musical input is still very consistently top notch; the new single “Kono Chikyuu no Heiwa o Honki de Negatterun da yo!”/”Kare to Issho ni Omise ga Shitai” is one of the best things they’ve done in recent months (and definitely the best double A-side single since Hüsker Dü’s “Makes No Sense At All”/”Love Is All Around”). So what’s the problem?

For me, the only problem is that there’s too many changes going on in too short a time period. I came into Morning Musume fandom at a time when now-veteran members Reina Tanaka and Sayumi Michishige had only recently joined the band along with Eri Kamei and Miki Fujimoto as the band’s sixth generation. During that next full year of fandom, three more members would leave the band and two others were getting ready to leave in the first half of 2005. After the sudden departure of Mari Yaguchi and equally surprise addition of Koharu Kusumi to the lineup, things started to stabilize within the group. There were still additions, but they were small ones. Hell, the eighth generation came in two parts back in late 2006 and early 2007 when Tsunku added first Aika Mitsui and then Li Chun and Qian Lin to the lineup.

And then things really stabilized. For a good three year period, with Ai Takahashi front and center, we got three albums and only one major lineup change when Koharu left in late 2009 from the band. The music was great (still is), and I could identify everyone in the band by memory.

And that’s really the only problem I have with Morning Musume right now. I still love them. They’re still my favorite band after all this time. But I couldn’t name the members of the current lineup without having to look on Wikipedia or J-Ongaku to rattle off the ninth gen members (I certainly can’t identify them without a scorecard – err, the insert in the regular version of the new single), and now I have to double my workload as a MoMusu fan and learn four new names, and match their faces and voices to them?

With a shrug of the shoulders, I have to admit that I’m probably not going through anything radically different than what fans went through in the band’s early years. That’s fine. Maybe it’s only gotten a little harder for me personally because of how much my life changed between the release of the band’s last two albums 10 My Me and Fantasy 11 (a little thing called marriage tends to do that).

But, jumping Jesus in a mosh pit at a Deicide concert… Tsunku-sempai? As a songwriter and producer, you’re a fucking genius. But seriously, sir: lay off with the lineup changes for a couple of years. Concentrate on something else to make the next couple of years of Morning Musume interesting to the general public… like getting them signed to an American record deal, for starters.

Waking up to see any bad news is never what one wants to see first thing in the morning, especially on a weekend morning after sleeping in. But that’s precisely what happened when I picked up my Blackberry and read International Wota’s headline about her suicide attempt.

Putting the last two words of that last sentence in a paragraph with any entertainer is a sad thing to begin with, but when that name is attached to a Japanese singer associated with happier-sounding works, it’s even sadder.

Like everybody else that is processing this news and blogging or tweeting about it, I am wishing Aibon the best. Given that she was in Morning Musume when I first started to get into the band and also became a XXL fan of the side groups she was in at the time – hell, my Gmail address has been minimoniotaku since 2004! – this is only natural. Shit, she even inspired one of the characters in my almost-complete novel project (although I have no intention of giving her literary doppelgänger such a tragic ending)!

With reference to one of the first posts IW linked to, I don’t believe Aibon needs a permanent break from the entertainment industry. What she needs a permanent break from is the guy she’s been living with for the past couple of years. From what I can tell, he hasn’t been much of a help or a positive influence on her, and his much-reported associations with organized crime certainly don’t help.

Aibon, have a safe recovery, get the fuck away from that guy you’ve been involved with, get in touch with some friends (we all know you’ve been in contact with fellow ex-MiniMoni Mika Todd through Twitter), and by this time next year you should be ending the year on a high note, not a low one.