The Not So Great Korn-holoio
I shouldn’t be giving this band ANY press on this blog solely on the grounds of their being totally and completely lacking in musical talent and intelligence… but I couldn’t let this pass without comment:
During an interview to promote his band Korn’s attempt to ride the dubstep trend – as well as repeat a tactic where they use the outside talents of more musically inclined “collaborators” [read: the "collaborators" do most of the actual writing and playing while the no-talents in the band still get the dominant credit, because without outside help, all of their music sounds like badly written ripoffs of side two of Black Flag's My War album being played on completely out-of-tune instruments by incompentent "musicians" that make The Shaggs look like King Crimson] – slacker trash poster child Jonathan Davis proceeded to [falsely, of course] accuse President Obama of being “an illuminati puppet”. How someone can be a puppet of an organization that doesn’t really exist beyond being a keyword for conspiracy theory lunatics is beyond me, but consider the source, folks.
I won’t even bother quoting his nonsensical ramblings that are only a degree or so removed from the Teabagger nonsense about President Obama being everything from an illegal alien to a Marxist to a Nazi – you’ll have to read the Billboard interview for that.
Rather than waste server space on a picture of a shitty band, we'll use this highly appropriate political cartoon that sums up this post quite well.
Hilariously, several years ago, he “wrote” a song called “Politics” about how because “It’s just about how I don’t like to talk about politics…Korn has never been a real political band.” Well, with idiotic statements like the ones he made today, they never will be – except maybe to the Teabagger crowd. Not like anyone would ever confuse Davis with someone like Jello Biafra (in either the musical or political fields) in the first goddamn place.
REVIEW: SHONEN KNIFE “Sweet Christmas” single / FEAR “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” single
“Sweet Christmas” single
(Good Charamel)
Available on 7″ single, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
Rating:
“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” single
(The End Records)
Available on 7″ single, iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic
Rating:
OK, Christmas season is here, and as much as you might like the holidays, there’s a good chance you might not want to put up with the same fucking Christmas songs all over again. And what’s out there for new Christmas music, anyway? Justin Bieber? Too easy of a target, and besides, he’s had a rough enough time being falsely accused of paternity – leave the little Canucklehead alone. A fourth volume of Now Christmas repeating some of the same songs as Volumes 1, 2, and 3? Blech! Where’s my Christmas mix CD with select cuts from the Punk Rock Xmas comp, Mojo Nixon’s Horny Holidays album, various Hello! Project-related Christmas songs, and of course, Spinal Tap’s “Christmas With The Devil”?
But wait! Could it be? New Christmas releases from ARTISTS I ACTUALLY WANT TO LISTEN TO ANYWAY? Yes, please.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that Shonen Knife would drop a Christmas record – the great majority of their back catalog, save for their wonderful Ramones tribute album (which had some of the darkest moments ever recorded by them), is peppy, poppy, rockin’, and puts a smile on your face instantly. The title track of their “Sweet Christmas” single is a typical punk-pop concoction in the Shonen Knife vein, with frontwoman/songwriter/J-Pop & Punk Rock MILF Naoko Yamano’s vocals and guitar leading the way. Not wanting to blast your grandmother across the room, however, the girls throw in an acoustic mix of the song for good measure, then close things out with a power trio arrangement of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” whose only flaw is the stiff 3/4-time beat from drummer Emi Moriomoto. Otherwise, all three of the SK ladies (bass cutie Ritsuko Taneda, down with the Knife since their brilliant Super Group album, rounds out the trio) share lead vocals and redeem the track.
The bigger surprise comes from the notorious punk band Fear. Yep, the same bastards that caused a few thousand dollars (so called) of damage during their national TV debut on Saturday Night Live, then went straight into the studio to record their landmark debut long-player The Record. The A-side is a major surprise – a very straight cover of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” sung very sweetly by frontman Lee Ving over clean jazz guitar and some lonesome-sounding Western harmonica. “Wait a fucking minute,” you say – “Lee Ving singing SWEETLY? The same dude who sang ‘I don’t care about you, FUCK YOU!’ on national television?” Yep. Look up his performance of “The Impossible Dream” from Fame on YouTube sometime – this isn’t new territory for him. This being a Fear record, you might expect the jazz guitar to be interrupted by a rapid shout of “1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4!” followed by a typical punk rock poleaxing of the song. But with Fear, you get what you deserve, not what you expect. And since anyone buying this single deserves at least some typical Fear thrashing, they deliver it on the B-side with the original “Another Christmas Beer”. Yeah, it’s not “Fuck Christmas”, but then again, Lee Ving has written a LOT of songs about beer. This single is a lead-in for a re-recorded version of their first album to be entitled The ReRecord, which should be at least interesting to hear.
4.5 for the Shonen girls and 5 for Lee and his crew.
Perfume Doesn’t Like You, Get Over It!
This is something I originally let pass without comment, but since it cropped up to the top of my Flipboard and on my Twitter feed almost out of the blue today after two months, the situation is getting even more annoying and pathetic and thus, I’m going to speak up.
Most of us in the J-Pop Blogosphere know the story of an old, rather creepy fan of the trio Perfume, screennamed Perfume444, who used to post video blogs on YouTube, spurred on by his love of the group. I hadn’t heard of the guy until this article was posted on International Wota, so he was nowhere on my radar until that particular post, and only for a few minutes. He openly declared, according to IW, that since the objects of his, um, interest, basically blew him off after a token few minutes at the Cars 2 premiere in L.A., he was done doing videos.
That was two months ago. Since he saw fit to comment almost randomly on the IW post again, he’s apparently not done whining.
What is especially disturbing is one of his claims as to why he did the video blogs in the first place – to get more attention for his favorite group. It disturbs me because one of the reasons I do this music blog is to do the same for Morning Musume and other Japanese bands.
The difference is plain: I go about the goal by writing about the music, and writing about it on the same level playing field as any other music I write about. What this Frank dude does… yeesh! It definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the music, far as I can tell. The fact that he has bitched about the lack of attention Perfume and their management gave him says volumes.
Perfume444′s goals, then and now, are selfish. He wants the focus to be around him, not his favorite band, even though he claims otherwise. Perfume and their management apparently know this and, without a doubt, their private policy is described as succinctly as, “Forget that loser.”
I want to see Morning Musume and other groups get a better profile in the States and elsewhere. That’s a rather generous intention. Would I love to meet them? Of course, but I’m not going to go about it the wrong way and it’s not my primary motivation for supporting them and groups like them in this blog – meeting them would be a bonus.
Happy Halloween!
This is a bit of classic music-related TV that I’d totally forgotten about until friend and fellow musician Dom Cassise posted a link to this clip on his Facebook this evening.
Back in the early 70′s there was a program originating in Canada called The Hilarious House of Frightenstein, produced by the same production company that would later create SCTV. (The Wikipedia link embedded in the title will give a pretty good summary of what the show was like). The segment I always liked on this show, at a point when I was already a young music lover, was the Wolfman’s radio station segment. Pretty much every Wolfman segment was like this one: Sly And The Family Stone’s “I Want To Take You Higher” would introduce the segment, the Wolfman (played by the late Billy Van) would do his DJ rap, take a phone call, slap a 45 onto the turntable (randomly dropping the needle anywhere on the record), grab his bat-shaped prop electric guitar, and dance in front of a blue screen along with some of the other characters. Most certainly, this program segment was another early musical influence on me way back when (and I was out to absorb pretty much anything I could get at that young age, believe me).
There have been home video editions of this program but many of them lack the Wolfman’s segments thanks to master licensing issues. Thankfully, some folks did archive reruns of the program and upload the Wolfman segments to the web, preserving for eternity otherwise lost classic TV footage like this.
She’s Baaaaaack…
A little more than a year after she graduated from AKB48′s Team K, Erena Ono is apparently going to make a return to show business. Earlier this year she had opened a new blog and mentioned “It’s been too long… too long.” Somehow, her announcement back in July was a shade premature because her original “new blog” disappeared. But now she has a new blog (with only one entry so far, the one mentioning her return to show business) and she seems a bit serious this time around.
I’m all for it. And I hope it means she’ll be making music again as well – anyone who heard her solo vocal on the “Namida Surprise” B-side “FIRST LOVE” is well aware how pretty her singing voice is. I would definitely be first in line to pre-order an Erepyon solo album:
REVIEW: GIRLS’ GENERATION “The Boys” single
GIRLS GENERATION (SNSD)
“The Boys” single
(SM Entertainment/Interscope)
Available on iTunes
Rating: 
Let’s be honest and brief: I am a big Girls Generation/SNSD fan. I’m glad they signed a major label deal with Interscope/Universal. But this first single under their new deal is a disappointment.
The English-language vocals are fine, save for the unnecessary rap-style vocal breaks – the girls handled themselves admirably here. But musically, this single is just not on the level of “Gee”, “Genie”, or “Hoot”. It is a shade better than much of what is overpopulating Top 40 radio currently and lately, but knowing what I know of what they’re capable of, this was a poor choice for a first American single. I would have much preferred that they cut an English language version of “Genie” or “Hoot”, which would have smoked the likes of Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus into either retirement or suicide.
Even sadder was the choice of producer Teddy Riley to handle this. What was wrong with SM’s own stable of producers and songwriters? Teddy Riley has some classics under his arm but he hasn’t had a hit single as either a producer or songwriter since Bill Clinton was president. At least it wasn’t some low-talent, overpriced, overrated chump like Timbaland that can only write one riff at a time, talk annoyingly in the background behind the featured vocalist, and call it a complete song.
The only silver lining to this is that those that hear this, if they choose to dig further, will get to hear what the band is capable of. But even that’s not a given. I hope the new album is a lot better than this!
3 out of 5 stars. Sorry, ladies.
ALBUM REVIEW: MORNING MUSUME “12, Smart”
MORNING MUSUME
12, Smart
(Zetima)
Available on CD, CD/DVD combo, and on iTunes US and Japan
Rating:
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.
Thanks, Steve.
While I’m catching up on things, and on a less snarkier note…
I would be beyond remiss if I let the day pass without giving infinite props to Apple founder Steve Jobs, who lost his battle with cancer last night.
Without Steve Jobs, much of what I do would not be possible. My blogging activities started on a PowerBook G4. I listen to music on an iPod when I’m writing. The main character in Resonant Blue was “born” on the PowerBook G4, as was the world of Here Is The Wonderland. I use an iPad to help stave off my Mac jones (my PowerBook died in 2007 and I’ve been dealing with Windows machines since then, albeit reluctantly), and I was already planning to switch to an iPhone upon their next upgrade (the iPhone 4S, revealed this past Tuesday and going on pre-orders tomorrow) after several months of battling a BlackBerry.
Most of us owe Steve Jobs a world of thanks, especially if my (and your) Twitter and Facebook feeds are any indication. I don’t think there’s a single reader out there who doesn’t use an Apple product of some sort, even if it isn’t one of his computers. My own Apple experiences go back to the Apple IIc back in my high school days (Reina Tanaka’s parents probably hadn’t even met, let alone had sex, back then – we’re talking 1984-85, here, folks) – and all the better for it. They got me interested more sincerely in computers, which got me started on writing more seriously long before there was an Internet, and I used to go for the Apple computers in Penn State Hazleton’s computer lab when my friend and I used to visit there on occasion before we got our own PCs and Internet accounts. Simply put, without this man’s vision and testicular fortitude, very little of what we all do would be possible.
Thanks for everything, Steve.
Macs at half-mast.
All His Rowdy Friends Are Probably Just As Uninformed And Ignorant As He Is
Quite honestly, I’ve tried to hold my tongue as long as possible on the whole Hank Williams Jr./ESPN brouhaha. I was ready to let it pass without much comment beyond the occasional smartass remark on Twitter and Facebook, but now that his firstborn son has spoken up and that ESPN made the only move they could make, I’m going to comment.
Over the weekend, by coincidence, I happened to read the book Family Tradition: Three Generations of Hank Williams by Susan Marino (Backbeat, 2011). Quite honestly, I was never as much of a fan of Hank Jr.’s music as I am of his father’s and son’s, and I’ve always seen him as someone who, initially by his mother’s heavy hand, made a lifetime career out of riding his esteemed father’s reputation. I did gain a small bit of respect for him thanks to one incident in his story about how he was genuinely upset with some of his backing musicians who had openly cheered the news of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination. That bit of respect went down the shitter after news of his remarks (on Fox News, of course) comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler went viral.
One has to wonder how much undetected brain damage Hank Jr. suffered in his near-fatal fall of that mountain in Montana, just as he was starting to reinvent himself as a country-rocker, or how lingering or long-term the effects of his multiple injuries have been since then. I ask that not as a mockery or as an insult, but as a sincere inquiry as to whether or not those injuries may have impacted Randall Hank Williams’s judgement and common sense in the long run.
Since the remark occurred the day of a Monday Night Football broadcast, ESPN wisely pulled that night’s opening intro tape (which for years has consisted of Hank Jr.’s regular rewritings of “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight” for every Monday night football game). Hank Jr., at first, gave what was pretty much a non-apology apology on his website and Facebook where he spent more time boasting that he didn’t have a press agent writing the statement for him than he did apologizing or explaining himself (or double-checking his typed statement for randomly capitalized words).
Lest anyone was left wonder what Hank 3 felt about the whole thing, he was pretty blunt… albeit with more intelligence than his estranged father showed in the first place, stating that his father shouldn’t talk about politics, period, and that the only musician that was qualified to discuss politics, in his opinion, was Jello Biafra.
Jello Biafra and Hank Williams III after one of III's recent West Coast shows.
This morning, ESPN chose to pull the plug on Bocephus for good, issuing a professional statement this morning to confirm as such. Not surprisingly, Hank Jr. chose to take the typical road of the right-wing liar, falsely claiming that he chose to leave and that, trying to further make himself look like the hero and ESPN the villains, falsely claimed that “stepped on the toes of the First Amendment” and that “me, my song, and my rowdy friends are out of here.”
What’s that old expression about not letting the door hit you in the ass on the way out, again?
His son’s more educated opinion not withstanding, Hank Jr. is rumored to still be looking into running for U.S. Senate in his native Tennessee as a Republican. So much for his talk a couple of years ago that he was going to put out records on his own after following his son out of Curb Records’s front door (especially since last month, Hank 3 has run circles around his father in that aspect, putting out three albums simultaneously on his own label). None of that should be any surprise, though – Hank III has been outpacing his father in a lot of aspects to the point where I’ve always wondered if the musical talent in the Hank Williams family skipped Hank Jr. and went right from Hank Sr. to Hank III.
Whether that’s possible or not, one thing is for sure – Hank Williams Jr. is not even a fraction of the man that either his father or his firstborn son is.
My own impression of Hank Williams Sr., especially after reading Family Tradition, is that he was a gentle and generous man despite his substance abuse problems. If Hank Williams Sr. – who was taught how to play guitar by a black blues musician, by the way – were alive to see what an embarrassment his son has become, he’d probably sober up and smack the shit out of him. And I wouldn’t blame him.
Morning Musume Are Still My Favorite Band But Wait A Minute…
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.
