Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols:

Robert Fripp:

Two for one here… Ace Frehley and Slash!

Neil Young:

Jimmy Page:

Zakk Wylde, here playing with the man who should be Idol:

The Stooges’s Straight James Williamson, here doing a warmup gig with the band Careless Hearts before rejoining Iggy and company:

Randy Rhoads:

And while I’m not one to be posting my own guitar wanking on here, today I can make an exception and share something I did this morning on my own Les Paul, nicknamed after my favorite MoMusu:
Les Paul Birthday Riffin’ by thegroovemusiclife

And to finish off, a now-classic beer ad (not a beer I would ever drink, though) featuring Les himself.

If you don’t know who Iggy is after his surprise American Idol appearance two weeks ago, well, downloading the A Million In Prizes compilation from iTunes or AmazonMP3 should help you on your way to discovering and appreciating this man’s wide body of work with the Stooges and as a solo artist.

Yep, the true King of Rock And Roll, Iggy Pop, was on American Idol* tonight, doing “Real Wild Child (Wild One)”, something to tie in with the fact that yesterday the Idol contestants did repertoire from Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame inductees (of which Iggy and The Stooges have been since last year). Nice move, AI producers.

*As you may have noticed, I didn’t do my customary “re-spelling” of the show’s title. When this season’s over, I may elaborate further.

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”:

Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Four laptops (Don’t get me started…)
Two iPods (and I’m planning on finally upgrading soon… I have more music on my hard drive than can fit on my present 60GB model!)
Morning Musume and AKB48 both making their American concert debuts (come back here, both, er, ALL of you!!)
Thirteen Morning Musume singles
Eight personnel changes in Morning Musume
Two personnel changes in C-ute
No personnel changes in Berryz Koubou
More personnel changes in AKB48 than anyone can keep up with… (and don’t even get any serious AKB fan started on those team reassignments!)
Six and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Twelve Berryz Koubou singles (double the amount from two years ago!)
Three and a half Berryz Koubou studio albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Eleven C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Four and a half C-ute albums (I still consider ? mini ~Ikiru to Iu Chikara~ to be an EP)
Four Koda Kumi studio albums (I lost track of compilations and singles!)
Two Ayumi Hamasaki albums (Go ahead and yell at me, Vee…)
One and a half Maki Goto albums (That first one for Avex is pretty much an EP…)
One and a half SCANDAL albums (Again, the half-album is an EP…)
Three post-Whiteberry EPs from bands led by Yuki Maeda (One Yukki, two The Husky)
Seven Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power, and counting the forthcoming deluxe reissue of the original Bowie mix of Raw Power)
The entire Koharu Kusumi solo discography
The entire Buono! discography to date
The entire AKB48 singles discography to date
Five New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of all three studio albums)
Seven Puffy AmiYumi albums
Five Mission of Burma albums (three of them being the new vinyl reissues on Matador)
Two Panic! At The Disco albums
Two Meat Puppets albums
Four Hank III albums (counting the Assjack album and his forthcoming The Rebel Within, of course)
Two copies of Flyleaf’s first album (one autographed)
Three autographed Sick Puppies CDs
One guitar autographed by Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers
One Asheton brother being transferred from the Stooges to Rock N’ Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band (I’m sure Ron is trading Mike Watt stories with D. Boon!)
James Williamson rejoining the Stooges
The Stooges finally making the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame (Next targets: The New York Dolls, Black Flag, and The Minutemen… and that’s a fucking vow and a promise from me!)
Lux Interior being transferred from the Cramps to Rock N’ Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band
A Sex Pistols reunion
A Public Image Ltd. reunion
Malcolm McLaren, the former Sex Pistols “mis-manager” dying of cancer… followed by Johnny Rotten NOT singing “Celebration” or “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” (good on ya, Johnny…)
Seven books autographed by Henry Rollins
One book autographed by Sen. Arlen Specter
Three e-mails from Henry Rollins
Two e-mails from Jello Biafra
Three day trips to New York where I spent over $700 combined in one store (Virgin Megastore) alone
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
Five day trips to Philadelphia
Two day trips to Syracuse, NY
One Stooges concert
One Bon Jovi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two Flyleaf concerts
Two Evanescence concerts
Two Sick Puppies concerts
Two 3 Doors Down concerts (Which makes four times I’ve seen my fiancee’s favorite band, versus zero times I’ve seen my favorite band… that’s gotta be corrected quick-fast)
Two opening sets prior to 3DD by Hinder (Most boring band not named Nickelback or Daughtry, by a long shot)
Two Breaking Benjamin concerts (and unfortunately, although they played well as always, the sound at the second sucked! What was up with that, Ben?)
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
One missed Morning Musume concert (yes, that concert!!)
One missed Mike Watt & The Secondmen concert (sorry, Mike… still!!!)
Four 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Three Blackberry smartphones (no, I’m not getting an iPhone)
Four SD cards
Three phonograph needles
Morning Musume CDs finally being released in the United States (the flipside… well, I’ll get to that soon enough…)
Nine WordPress themes
Seven domain names (on top of the previously mentioned ones, there’s TGML’s URL, the one for the Meetan blog, and a second one for the Reina blog)
Two different Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp header graphics at MotokoAoyama.com (Vee improved on the original)
Ai Kago finally making a comeback
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
One Guns N’ Roses album finally being finished, handed in, and released!
Ace Frehley beating his ex-bandmates to record stores with new material… and not having to sell out to Wal-Mart to do it!
Six Mike Watt-related albums recorded during this blog’s and its predecessor’s lifetime waiting mixdown or release
Two animes with Reina Tanaka doing voice work
Two knocked-up MoMusus
Two instances where I bitched about Nozomi Tsuji getting knocked up
Three instances where I remarked about what a lucky bastard Taiyo Sugiura is
Three snarky remarks made by me about Avril Lavgine
One snarky remark made by “Reina” about Jamie Lynn Spears
One snarky remark made by me to “Reina” about Beyonce Knowles
Countless snarky remarks about American Idle
More American Idle contestants losing their recording contracts
Five Reina Tanaka photobooks
One tire
Two illnesses
Two back-to-back NaNoWriMo wins
Three book projects (two simultaneous, one on hold)
One published short story (”The Man In The Hummer” in Deliver Us From Evil, available from Jaded Silence Press)
All four versions of American Wota
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
Two jokes stolen from Jeff Dunham
One joke stolen from Nothing Nice To Say
Three times I got under the skin of Tony Brummel at Victory Records… that I know of. (Might as well make it four: How does it feel to lose Silverstein AND Bayside on top of Hawthorne Heights and Atreyu, baldy? I hear Aiden’s next…)
Five times my partner at My Sweet Meetan, Chris (CK) went to Japan
Reina Tanaka’s 18th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 19th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 20th birthday
My 40th birthday… I stopped counting after that.
Mike Watt’s 50th birthday… and counting
Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday… and counting – face it, he’s one unstoppable motherfucker, for which we should all be grateful.
Several boxes of CD sleeves
Countless mouse and camera batteries
Countless VitaminWaters
Countless instances where I took to heart David Peel’s adage that “fuck” is not a dirty word
A year and a half of lost blog archives (Don’t trust your webhosting to anyone who stage-names himself “Vikki Stixx”… or for that matter your real estate matters)
Not enough trips to Starbucks or Sonic (yeah, N.E. PA got one of those last summer!)
More money spent at CDJapan than at Gallery of Sound
Not as much money spent on vinyl since 2008, at least I don’t think so… but then again I’ve still taken that option whenever offered)
Virgin Megastore going out of business in 2009
Three Record Store Days (counting the forthcoming one this Saturday, which I’ll be honoring)
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée and soon to be upgraded to wife on 6.26.10

For the first Cake Day in 2008, I posted two MiniMoni baked-goods-related videos – and a naughty pun that Brother Ray Mescallado appreciated about the kind of “pie” two lucky bastards were getting from Ai Kago and Nozomi Tsuji at the time – at this blog’s predecessor MotokoAoyama.com, and a YouTube clip of Reina Tanaka working in a restaurant for a TV skit at So Hot She Shits Fire.

For the second Cake Day in 2009, I posted a different kind of baked good: my smoked paprika chicken thighs recipe here at TGML, and some “cheesecake” (i.e. some bikini shots of Reina) over at SHSSF.

For the third Cake Day, I didn’t know what to do. I cook, but I don’t usually bake (my sole baking attempts have been a couple of instances of buying Pillsbury Snoopy Christmas Cookies and following the package directions), and I could never top my blogging BFF and fellow Cancerian VeePinku’s Yuke Yuke Monkey Cake. Then my fiancee Tara came to the rescue with something she makes on the regular…

Tara makes the best goddamn motherfucking brownies I have ever eaten in my life. Granted, she starts out with a boxed brownie mix, but whatever she does in the process, they come out absolutely moist and brilliant. Say they’re made with love, if you will, but she does these brownies very well.

Of course, to frame Tara’s brownies, I had to represent in true The Groove Music Life style. Grabbing something MoMusu or Reina would have been expected of me, so I figured I’d flip the script and show off something I’d been trying to nail on eBay for months: a Koda Kumi plush bear! (At least, I think it’s a bear. I know Kuu-chin designed it…) Throw in a coffee table book of THE BAND THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME A LOT SOONER THAN THIS PAST MONDAY NIGHT and the assembled version of the pyramid from Ace Frehley’s Anomaly album, and I figured that would make a perfect trio for Cake Day III. (Also, since Gene Simmons admits to having a notorious sweet tooth, I figured the Ace Frehley pyramid would be to “The Demon” what garlic is to vampires…)

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.

From the Detroit Free Press:

No fun? Yes, fun!

The list of other bands to be inducted at ceremonies in New York on March 15 couldn’t provide much more contrast with the Stooges: artsy progressive rockers Genesis, Swedish pop kings ABBA, harmonizing rockers the Hollies and ska-reggae star Jimmy Cliff.

James Williamson, the other Stooges guitarist (he played guitar on Raw Power while Ron Asheton played bass) added his own view on the long-overdue induction on his Facebook page:

“Tonight I’ll be raising a glass to an awful lot of people…secretly I believe we were chosen to balance the choice of ABBA getting in…I do take some pride in getting in over KISS, but am saddened that the great singer/songwriter Laura Nyro wasn’t selected although she was hardly ‘rock and roll’, but then she`d have to stand in line on the point.”

…and to me, who turns 42 today (my last birthday as a bachelor!). AKB48′s new single “Namida Surprise”, with its appropriate chorus and bridge, came out just in time:

…and to the late great Ron Asheton of the Stooges, who would have been 61 today.

Well, three years ago, I started blogging seriously at the first version of MotokoAoyama.com in April of 2006. However, the exact start date is lost to the ages thanks to the business ineptitude of a webhost owned by a part-time hair metal oldies band drummer. For whatever reason, I didn’t commemorate the first anniversary of Stuck In A Pagoda, but decided last year to make April 11th the official anniversary to coincide with the day my fiancee and I witnessed seeing Iggy Pop & The Stooges at the Electric Factory on 4.11.07. The clip of the Stooges doing “TV Eye” below was shot two days beforehand in New York City.

And to cover the other half of this blog’s usual musical equation and remain with the live concert theme, a live version of one of the best singles Morning Musume has done (to date) in that same three-year time period. No slouch to the rest of the top notch material the band has done in that time period (“Eago YES Nude”, “Mikan”, “Kanashimi Twilight”, etc.), but the choice was easy because it happens to be the most played Morning Musume song on my iTunes:

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I’m going to have to update that list I did last year for a later post.