Les Paul Would Still Be Proud…
In honor of Les Paul’s 96th Birthday, some of my favorite players of his signature axe:
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.
Happy Birthday To The True King and Heavyweight Champion of Rock and Roll!
James Newell Osterberg, Jr. – better known to all and sundry as Iggy Pop, the true king and heavyweight champion of rock and roll – celebrates his 64th trip around the sun today. I hope he lives another 64 years, and then 100 more years after that.
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.
This Week’s Entry In The Totally Fucking Unexpected Department…
I did not see this coming…
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.
Happy 4th!
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”:
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Happy 3rd Cake Day, International Wota!
OK, let’s review:
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…
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This Next Year Is Going To Be Crazy…
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.
This Week’s Entry In The About Fucking Time Department…
From the Detroit Free Press:
No fun? Yes, fun!
After failing to move past the nomination ballot seven times since becoming eligible in the mid-‘90s, legendary Michigan band the Stooges has made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was announced this morning.
The group, formed in Ann Arbor in 1967 by singer Iggy Stooge/Pop (born James Osterberg) and brothers Ron and Scott Asheton and Dave Alexander, is considered one of the most influential of its time — an era that was among the fertile in Michigan’s storied music history, producing contemporaries like the MC5, Bob Seger and Ted Nugent.
The Stooges were in many ways the ugly stepchild of that scene, never widely popular even in their heyday. But the band — creator of hard-rock templates such as “I Wanna Be Your Dog” and “No Fun,” — later came to be seen as spiritual and musical godfathers for legions of punk and alternative bands. Nirvana, Sonic Youth and the White Stripes are among those who’ve cited the influence of the band’s grinding, grimy sound and bored — and often nihilistic — perspective.
The Stooges had been broken up for nearly 30 years when Iggy and the Ashetons reformed in 2003, winning wide acclaim for a series of live shows, and even a gig backing Madonna when she was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2008.
The sad footnote to the coming induction is that guitarist Ron Asheton died in January at his home in Ann Arbor of natural causes. By several accounts, he was the Stooge who was most desiring of the respect that only came his way long after the Stooges had disbanded.
“We’ve been rejected seven times, and we would have set a record, I think, if it happened again,” Iggy Pop told Rolling Stone of the band’s election. “It started to feel like Charlie Brown and the football. I had about two hours of a strong emotional reaction after hearing the news. It felt like vindication. Then I kind of scratched my head and thought, ‘Am I still cool? Or is that over now?’ ”
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.”
Happy Birthday To…
…Asami Kimura, ex-member of Country Musume, who turns 24 today:
…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.
Happy 3rd Blogging Anniversary!
Yeah, I know, some of you are saying, “say what”? Didn’t TGML start up back in August of last year? What’s this “third anniversary” shit?
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:
I’m going to have to update that list I did last year for a later post.
