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.

SHONEN KNIFE
Super Group
(Good Charamel)
Available on CD, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic

Back at full strength (officially) for the first time in years (the previous few albums were mainly duo situations that had leader/guitarist/primary songwriter Naoko Yamano doing double duty on guitar and bass) and back on an American label for the first time since 2006 (one album released in-between, Fun Fun Fun, is only available as an import), the veteran punk/J-pop darlings hand in their finest album yet in the process. The songs are solid, the harmonies are dead on, and Naoko-sama, while not exactly making with Michael Angelo Batio-esque shredding, is getting looser and more confident with her lead guitar skills (her guitar solo on “Muddy Bubbles Hell” being a case in point). A new album is already coming out in Japan next month; hopefully their new American label won’t hesitate to release it here.

Naoko turned 49 today, which no doubt makes her a MILF for both the punk and the J-pop set! She doesn’t look 49.

It sucks that I had to miss out on their recent US tour (behind their brilliant new album Super Group), but it’s cool to know that the band that straddled the line between punk rock and Japanese pop long before this blog came to be is still out there kicking some serious ass:

Using my last.fm page’s static weekly charts as a guide, I’m going to self-analyze my listening habits and try to put a paragraph to them. Because goodness knows, I’m the only one who can explain why Mission of Burma comes up on my iPod one moment and John Coltrane comes up the next. (I’m sure the guy who has been running Gallery of Sound in West Hazleton since it first opened in 1987 sometimes tells the guys who work under him about the one time in 1992 when I walked up to the counter with a New Kids on the Block remix CD in one hand and the Bitches With Problems CD in )the other…

Just as a general foundation, here’s what my overall last.fm Top10 chart looks like:

1) Morning Musume
2) The Stooges
3) Nine Inch Nails
4) Minutemen
5) Black Flag
6) W
7) Puffy AmiYumi
8) Sayuri Ishikawa
9) Frank Sinatra
10) Hank Williams III

Now, here’s what my listening habits looked like, from #10 on down, as they looked for the week ending Sunday, August 30, with my somewhat pithy/pitiful explanations following each one: (Last.fm usually finalizes these charts at Midnight Greenwich Mean Time on Sundays)

10) Whiteberry. I wrote about their brilliant (and tragically out of print) Chameleon album at length at MotokoAoyama.com v1.0, and I wish that my former web host during that site’s existence wasn’t run by an inept hair metal drummer who apparently isn’t very good at his new real estate ventures, let alone running his half-assed webhosting company. Otherwise, I’d be linking to that blog entry. Anyway, the article in question pretty much cemented why Chameleon rates so high amongst my favorite albums. Last week was one of those times when I decided to start my workday with Yuki Maeda and company rockin’ out from start to finish.

9) KISS. This is as close to a guilty pleasure as there probably is on my iPod right now. I do admit that Ace Frehley is, along with Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, one of the reasons why I picked up a guitar in the first place – although I have to qualify that it was because of the likes of Johnny Ramone, Mick Jones, Steve Jones, Greg Ginn, Richie Stotts, and Philo Cramer that I kept that guitar in my hands. (And then I heard Jah Wobble, Horace Panter and Mike Watt and picked up the bass as well.) So I spun some Kiss favorites last week, although at least half of those spins were Ace’s “Rocket Ride”. They’re putting out a new album soon, as is Ace himself, and I’ll ruminate on both in the immediate future.

8) Motley Crue. Another what-the-fuck-was-I-thinking selection. I felt like listening to Shout at the Devil for the first time in years and that was that. Still a pretty decent album. I’m not bothering with Cruefest though, even though it’ll be in town on Friday – I refuse to sit through the talentless Godsmack just to hear Nikki, Tommy and company play Dr. Feelgood from beginning to end. And fortunately, many of Nikki Sixx’s lyrics aren’t as embarrassing to my matured ears as Gene Simmons’.

7) AKB48. Since they’re hardly an album act compared to, say, Morning Musume, its was their singles – specifically, all of their King Records singles – that were getting enough airplay on my iPod to crack my Top 10. They seem to be pretty quick with the single releases lately, too: it only seems like six weeks ago that “Namida Surprise” came out (in time for my birthday,too), and already there’s a new single (which I’ll get to this week, review wise).

6) Justin Duerr and The Etheric Phoenix of L.O.V.E. Justin is the lead singer of the fine Philadelphia trio Northern Liberties and a good friend of mine. This past Friday was his birthday, so while thinking of my friend I played his first side-project CD, a collection of four-track recordings he did between 2004 and 2006. I played some Northern Liberties, too, but not enough to crack my Last.fmTop 10.

5) Black Flag. Sometime last week seemed like a good Black Flag day, so The First Four Years and Loose Nut came to the rescue. Loose Nut in particular is one of my all-time favorite Black Flag albums.

4) Morning Musume. Yikes! How did my favorite band get kicked so low on the chart last week? Nothing they did wrong, nor did I have any kind of crisis of faith about them. I blame the top three:

3) Mike Hale. Mike does some great, introspective acoustic solo music when he isn’t fronting the trio In The Red, and I got a bit hooked on the highly recommended Lives Like Mine album (Suburban Home Records) as late-night listening last week.

2) Hiromi Iwasaki. Hiromi is one of the first Japanese kayokyoku albums I got ahold of last year when I was looking for some nourishment for my turntable. A few times last week when I got in bed, I put my iPod in my JBL speaker/charger pod and put on her Album album, a very pretty and calming record, at a soft volume and let it help me drift off to dreamland. Speaking of Iwasaki-san, you’ve probably heard one of her songs already, but not her version: Morning Musume covered her song “ROMANCE” last year.

1) Shonen Knife. How’d they get here? Simple. I blame how good their newly released album Super Group is. Review in a couple of days.

(And if you see Aerosmith in the lower reaches of the top ten next week, it’s because I was playing Rocks while I was writing this…)

DIR EN GREY
Uroboros
(The End [US]/Freewill [Japan])
Available on CD, double LP and on iTunes 

I have tried to write about this album several times since both my import CD and my US double vinyl arrived in my PO Box (the latter arriving a month after its release – what’s up with that, The End Records?), listened to it, enjoyed it… and had trouble trying to summarize things well enough for a review at the time.

That having been said, the album – irregardless of its edition – is an absolute masterpiece. Compared with their two previous American releases, Uroboros takes a lot more musical risks than its brutal predecessor The Marrow of a Bone, with songs that have earned comparisons to Led Zeppelin (“Dozing Green”, which could have been on In Through The Out Door) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (“Stuck Man”). The classic DEG instrumental sound and feel is still intact, and of course there’s no singer anywhere in rock whose voice is as multiple-personality as Kyo’s (probably his closest contemporary is Slipknot’s Corey Taylor). Bottom line? Best hard rock or heavy metal album of the year; in fact, so good, it knocked Metallica’s comeback album Death Magnetic out of contention for the Top 10 this year.

Obviously, my intake of Japanese CD’s has continued at a steady rate this year – loyal grabbings of Morning Musume/Hello! Project releases, Koda Kumi’s most recent album and singles, EPs by The Husky and SCANDAL, the best-of anthology from The Possible, Mai Kuraki’s newest effort, and some initial forays into the world of AKB48 (which is going to be an article in and of itself soon) all come to mind. My interest in enka has also taken a turn towards mostly digital works (both CD and legal downloads – another reason to keep the account balance up on my Japanese iTunes account), which is a good thing.

Then I tried to think back to what non-Japanese CDs I’d bought this year. That was harder, as I tried to recall what was the last non-J-Pop CD I bought.

I kept trying to think it was Metallica’s Death Magnetic, given their having Rick Rubin replace Bob Rock and do some music that harkened, if not to their Ride The Lightning/Master of Puppets days, then at least to …And Justice for All. And kept thinking that I was wrong. It’s on my iPod – that much is sure as I went right to AmazonMP3.com for that one. Why am I thinking that the last American CD I bought was Hawthorne Heights’ new release?

I booted up my iTunes and sorted everything by date added, then combed through some rips of old records I did and older CDs that I’d added (for the first time, or added back). OK, research tells me that the last CD I bought was Slipknot’s new album – and then Hawthorne Heights and Black Stone Cherry before that.

Then I took a break from that, decided to fire up the turntable and pull out a few records that I felt like listening to.

While looking for the 4LP heavy-vinyl edition of Radiohead’s Best of album, I came across Metallica’s Death Magnetic. Yeah, I did buy it – on double vinyl. (No, I wasn’t going to spend over $100 on what is nothing more than five 45RPM singles in a fancy black box – nor did I like the idea of getting up and flipping sides for every song.)

That’s when I realized that a lot of the new non-J-Pop albums I’d bought this past year weren’t on CD. Elvis Costello’s Momofuku? Double 180-gram vinyl. Conor Oberst’s solo album? Vinyl. Nine Inch Nails’ The Slip when the opportunity came to buy a physical edition? Vinyl. Coldplay’s Viva la Vida or Death to All our Friends? Vinyl. New Alkaline Trio vinyl? Vinyl. Tokyo Police Club’s Elephant Shell? Vinyl. Against Me’s New Wave? 180-gram clear yellow vinyl (talk about pleasing both pro-analog audiophiles AND collectors!). Even some new reissues and compilations haven’t escaped the opportunity to pick the vinyl option – Morrissey’s Greatest Hits, the remastered third U2 album War, another Coldplay album (X&Y – a Vee recommendation, BTW), Mission of Burma’s Ace of Hearts-era releases… you get the picture.

Yep, my buying habits have taken that odd turn where my owning a nice Numark TTUSB turntable has led me to looking to see if forthcoming new releases will be coming out in vinyl editions. Hank Williams III’s follow-up to Straight to Hell is going to come out on double vinyl with a bonus CD next week. AC/DC’s offering their forthcoming new album in double vinyl as well (but I doubt I shall be buying that one, given that the only way American fans will be able to buy the album without pre-ordering it is to go to Wal-Mart). Given that I own a turntable that can plug into my computer with a USB cable, the lack of a bonus CD or a download code is no barrier to my putting the album on the iPod. Dir en grey’s forthcoming new album [UROBROS]? Already pre-ordered the double vinyl from the label.

My turntable has also become quite the bewildering force to my fiancée Tara, who has already patiently seen me pour through the record bins at record stores all over Eastern Pennsylvania and in the Times Square Virgin Megastore looking for vinyl both new and old. On one recent visit to my favorite record store, Tara watched as I paid $20 for a stack of old vinyl records and said to me, “You do realize that it’s 2008, right?” Tara either sees all records as “old” or as a pointless option in the age of CD’s and mp3s. Given the proliferation of new vinyl releases with either download codes or bonus CDs enclosed, that’s really a moot point.

At this point, it should be apparent (and probably be pointed out if it isn’t) that I’m not a format nazi when it comes to buying music. Obviously I’ve bought CDs this year when no vinyl existed, happily used the enclosed bonus CD in certain releases to save me the time of digitizing the album for my iPod, and done my fair share of legal downloads (Ever since Amazonmp3.com started having daily cheap-album specials, I’ve been checking there every day to see what they’re offering.) But it does beg the question: if Morning Musume’s, Kuu-chin’s, Puffy’s, or any other J-Pop artist that I follow were to start putting out heavy vinyl releases, would I buy them?

Yes… but the idea of MoMusu on vinyl is another column, and besides, this one’s finished.

Last month, when I wrote about this situation (inspired by a friend who hipped me to what was going on with the group of late), I put forth speculation that the band were embarking on a North American tour first in order to secure a new American record deal.

As of today, they’ve already gotten that deal. Dir en grey announced on their MySpace that they signed with American independent label The End Records, a label specializing in metal and other dark/heavy music. The End Records, whose roster includes Voivod, Mindless Self-Indulgence, and ex-Swans member Jarboe, are apparently no stranger to giving American record deals to foreign metal bands that have cult interest in this country: Norwegian black metalists-turned-experimentalists Ulver, Japanese black metal veterans Sigh and Finnish GWAR-meets-glam rockers Lordi (infamous for winning the Eurovision Song Contest, a competition usually more suited to Celine Dion clones, in 2006) are also signed to the label, apparently making the label a perfect fit for Dir en grey.

Also a more promising sign: The End Records also has better distribution than Dir en grey’s previous label. Their distributing partner, RED Distribution (formerly known back in the early 80′s punk and metal days as Important and then as Relativity), also distributes many other labels that are no stranger to being easily found in most record stores (and thus, to sales and chart success); Trent Reznor’s new self-owned label for his post-Interscope releases, The Null Corporation, is distributed by RED, as is Motley Crue’s current label home Eleven Seven Music and the notorious Chicago punk/indie label Victory Records.

For the cherry on top: The End will be going the extra mile for the American release of [UROBOROS]. Unlike what Warcon/Fontana did with Withering To Death and The Marrow Of A Bone, where merely CD editions were released… well, we’ll let The End Records’ press statement as reproduced on their MySpace blog tell it:

In an effort to satiate fans’ unique preferences and desires, [UROBOROS] will be available in the US in four formats: digital album; CD jewel case; deluxe limited-edition CD digipak with bonus track and DVD; and double vinyl LP with a digital download card included.

There’s also an option for fans to grab all three versions plus a T-shirt for a discounted price. I went with the double LP.

How well Dir en grey will fare in their second go-round on an American label remains to be seen, but considering that for awhile it looked like the group would not have an American label to call home again, it’s a very good shot in the arm for them. Every Japanese group with a cult following in this country should be so lucky (cue that A.B. quote again, please…).

For now, though, that repetitive sound you are hearing in the background is probably the staff at Warcon/Fontana kicking themselves… repeatedly.

The punch line is, they don’t have an American record label backing that tour.

As of this writing (August 22, 2008), their official MySpace lists them as being “unsigned” in North America, while still having a deal with Freewill in their native Japan. This ominous sign presents a major problem with the group’s original intended plan to have [UROBOROS] be the group’s first release to see simultaneous worldwide release. Their official English-language MySpace pages gives links to order the Japanese import editions of [UROBOROS] and its advance single, “Glass Skin”, through Amazon.com, although at prices ridiculously inflated to most pockets compared to CDJapan and YesAsia.

Dir en grey’s last two studio albums, Withering To Death and The Marrow Of A Bone were issued in the United States, but at times long after the albums were available as imports. Withering To Death’s US issue came fourteen months after its Japanese release in March of 2005; a mere thirteen days separated the Japanese and American editions of The Marrow Of A Bone.

Now, however, there has been a split between the band and their former American label home, Warcon. Rumors are rampant that business differences between Warcon and Dir en grey’s manager, Dynamite Tommy, are to blame for the split, in spite of Warcon’s sincere determination to market the group as career artists.

Although Warcon had substantial distribution to American record outlets through Universal Music’s independent distribution arm, Fontana, that same distribution leaned towards spotty in some places. While Withering To Death was available in every record store I looked in at the time it was a new American release, The Marrow Of A Bone was curiously not to be found in my otherwise reliable independent record store, only at FYE. Make of that what you will.

So why would Dir en grey, the biggest J-Rock act on the planet, tour North America without having an American record deal? Sure, they have the fan base, and pre-orders for tickets are said to be quite promising.

Is it possible that Dir en grey are using this tour to attract a new American record deal? Odds of this being the main reason for the tour starting in North America are even – word is that the North American tour plans for the group were pushed forward primarily to attract a new label; had their Warcon deal still existed, their North American touring wouldn’t be happening until early 2009.

More importantly, what American record label would be the best fit for Dir en grey? And, keeping those aforementioned rampant rumors in mind, would those potential labels be willing to deal with Dynamite Tommy?

Some new scuttlebutt has also come to light of late that Freewill America may have been cut out of the picture entirely as far as managing Dir en grey’s non-Japanese business is concerned (although current merchandise deals may remain in place for contractual reasons), replaced with a yet-to-be-named American manager.

No answers or public clues are available as yet, but with the American tour and the forthcoming release of “Glass Skin” and [UROBOROS] in sight, most, if not all, will surely be revealed.