Stop! Kyary Time!
I’ve been rather ambivalent about Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and her seemingly overnight success with her first single, the admittedly infectious “PONPONPON”, but I won’t lie: both of her singles, the aforementioned piece of ear candy and the recent follow-up “Jelly” are on my iPod and have been getting regular spins of late. And I’m looking forward to my digital pre-order from iTunes landing on my hard drive and in my iPad later tonight as I write this. Even more so when I discovered the following news item from last week, via the social music chart site Last.fm:
At #1 it’s J-Pop phenomenon (Kyary Pamyu Pamyu). The teenage singer has seen her audience climb by 1,127% in the last week, fueled by the success of single “PONPONPON”, as she gears up for the release of debut ‘mini’ album Moshi Moshi Harajuku later this month.
Now, I’m a twinge edgy about this because I have strongly believed for years that J-Pop has more than a good chance to be more than a cult favorite genre here in the Western world, and like a lot of my fellow serious fans of Japanese pop and rock music, I don’t want the mainstream media to lump the likes of Morning Musume, Dir en grey, SCANDAL, AKB48, etc. under the “LOL Japan” category after seeing someone like Kyary. That ad campaign involving a virtual idol digitally created from bits of various popular AKB48 members probably didn’t help matters. But the more I listen to Kyary’s two singles of late, the more I feel that even though artistically I can’t take her as completely seriously as I do Morning Musume or any other J-Pop artist that I’ve reviewed here at TGML, or at this blog’s predecessor, I can still concede that even Kyary, despite the too-obvious presence of AutoTune vocoder effects on her vocals (hey, it fits the arrangement of the songs, so why complain?), could eat someone of lesser-to-no-talent like Katy Perry alive and shit out Rebecca Black.
Since Kyary’s been gaining a good amount of worldwide visibility through a combination of both word of mouth and Warner Japan’s being foresighted enough to make her easily available to anyone in the world with an iTunes account, I can’t help but parallel her current visibility with that of pop-rap icons of the early 90′s like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Both artists left behind a couple of indelible marks on pop charts with a couple of ridiculously popular singles before basically becoming near-laughing-stock pop culture survivors of a sort that you still can’t help but tap your toes to, but in the process they made mainstream TV and radio, and the people who get most of their culture from those outlets, more open to the rest (and best) of what hip-hop had to offer. Despite the fact that both Hammer and Vanilla Ice are easy targets to anyone who takes their rap music seriously, everyone from N.W.A. to Wu-Tang Clan to Lil Wayne to Odd Future owes at least some thanks to Hammer and Vanilla Ice for kicking those doors down in the first place. By that same token, even though Kyary can be an easy target for mainstream media at their laziest (see “silly” Japanese phenomenom, do thirty-second fill-in piece with “LOL Japan” angle at tail-end of news broadcast), there’s still those that will get a good ear-whiff of “POMPOMPOM”, “Jelly”, or whatever else she drops, get hooked, and start to dig further on the premise of, “OK, this is cool… but I’m sure there’s even better stuff coming out of Japan that most people might not have heard of, and I’m going to look for it!” And if her success means that American record labels (for the most part, preferably the independent ones that prefer to work with career artists – I still don’t trust the major labels and their throw-it-against-the-wall mentality with what Japan has to offer) are going to take a chance on a Koda Kumi or a MoMusu, so be it.
If the end result of that means that a year from now, I can go buy Morning Musume’s and SCANDAL’s 2012 album releases in my local indy record store or at Best Buy, rather than having to just pre-order them from CDJapan, then I’m all for it.
JapanFiles Drops The Ball
JapanFiles.com sent a newsletter notice this morning to their customers, stating that they were “suspend[ing] digital sales of some of the major label artists in our digital store” after September 30. The list of those major label artists the entire Up-Front Works roster (Morning Musume, Hangry and Angry, Berryz Koubou, ?C-ute, S/Mileage) as well as J-Rock artists like Giguramesh and LM.C.
Surely, Western fans of Japanese music have to be looking at JapanFiles like this right about now:
JapanFiles had been distributing much of the Up-Front Works catalog both digitally and as select physical CD releases since November of 2008, starting with the debut EP of ex-MoMusu members Hitomi Yoshizawa and Rika Ishikawa’s J-Rock/goth/electropop duo Hangry and Angry. Morning Musume got three releases – their past two studio albums Platinum 9 Disc and 10 MY ME and their summer 2009 single “Shouganai Yume Oibito” – the single release tying in their their overdue debut American performance promoted by Anime Expo in Los Angeles – out of the deal, and a few other select artists were getting physical CDs pressed in the US as well.
Unfortunately, JapanFiles did a lot of ball-dropping and other mucked plays in their otherwise sincere efforts to make J-music more easily available. Distribution – a big key in that availability – was the biggest factor. Not counting the label’s own site, JapanFiles’s physical CD releases were available only at Hot Topic here in the States. No other retail store in the country – unless they made a few special orders right through the website – carried the releases in store, and none of the other online retailers one would go through to buy a CD had any of JapanFiles’s licensed titles in stock.
Some of the same titles were also coming up as downloads on the US iTunes store, but JapanFiles in general was basically claiming that their own website was the exclusive, go-to place for getting their digital releases.
Which brings up the big kvetch: The artists and their fans deserve better service than that.
Devoted fans might know to go direct to someone like JapanFiles for their downloads, just like they know they could order just about any Japanese CD release from CDJapan, YesAsia, or the Japanese sites of Amazon and HMV – but when it comes to expanding that audience, JapanFiles didn’t even seem to bother. JapanFiles basically suffered from a strain of the same tunnel-vision-like affliction that proved fatal to Tofu Records, who had gone through the whole rigmarole of boasting easier availability of Japanese recordings – Puffy AmiYumi being the biggest act on their roster – but had idiotically focused distribution and product placement (no one outside of the anime department at Suncoast Video seemed to carry Tofu titles; Puffy’s only release through Tofu, Splurge, was nowhere to be found when this writer was at Virgin Mega’s Times Square store in 2006, although their previous Bar-None and Epic releases and the import edition of Splurge were.)
I’ve said this before in past columns, and this bears repeating. “Making Japanese releases more available in the US and elsewhere” is not supposed to mean “Let’s just press a small bunch of CDs and only sell them where the nerds will find them.” Here’s where it really should mean, using the Up-Front roster as examples:
Step One: Get Morning Musume and their stablemates signed to a REAL label – preferably a large independent label like Merge or Matador, or a major label devoted to making career artists, like Octone or Wind-Up. Labels like these will have the promotional clout and the distribution reach that acts like Morning Musume deserve, and they won’t just throw them against the wall like most major labels seem to do in the hope that they’ll stick. They’ll also have a bigger target audience than the JapanFiles/Tofu “let’s target the wota” approach. Someone that already listens to Morning Musume doesn’t listen to most Top 40 pop artists (save for acts like Lady Gaga) – more than likely, they’re listening to alternative and indie rock acts like… well, what a coincidence, the ones signed to labels like (surprise, motherfuckers!) Merge, Matador, Octone, and Wind-Up.
Remember how I said a few paragraphs ago that the artists and fans that JapanFiles seems to be kicking to the curb deserve better? That “better” means making the releases widely available. Widely available means record stores everywhere – chains like FYE, independent record stores (they’re still around) like my beloved Gallery of Sound, big-box stores like Best Buy and Target, online shops like Amazon and CD Universe. Widely available also means digital downloads available in all of the major outlets we know of – not just iTunes but AmazonMP3 (which seems to be seeing iTunes’s taillights at this point insofar as competitive pricing and selection), Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, and so forth.
Just ask Dir en grey. After a good, yet short-lived, association with Warcon here in the States, they found a more receptive American label home with The End Records, a label devoted to the kind of hard rock DEG writes and records that is well aware that their general target audience already has a large slew of fans who were buying their imports (and the Warcon US rereleases) as well as fans who might have heard of them and wanted to know what the fuss was about – and they’ve been on a serious roll ever since.
Just ask Shonen Knife, who has the most devoted American label in their career – seemingly, EVER – with GooGoo Dolls bassist Robby Takac’s indie label Good Charamel Records, who have already released their three most recent albums here in the States and has regularly brought the band on tour here twice in the space of two years.
Music fans are a somewhat peculiar bunch. We tend to like options. A lot of options. And not just CD, mp3 or vinyl, but where we can get those.
Music fans also like to browse. A devoted Morning Musume fan already knows when they’re going to put records out, and where to get them. A more casual music fan that likes to roam the racks of their favorite store or stalk the appropriate areas of their iTunes Store app for something different to jam to isn’t going to know Morning Musume can be easily had (without breaking copyright laws) unless they have a friend or relative that is already a devoted fan.
Labels like JapanFiles and Tofu are always going to shoot themselves in the foot – or elsewhere – if they keep operating in such a manner.
My Two Cents on the MoMusu/Anime Expo Controversy…
I don’t think I could add any more insight to what has already come out from Hello! Blog and Selective Hearing in the wake of much of Anime Expo’s staff getting up and leaving in what is apparently justifiable disgust. I will say this, however:
Although others in the blogosphere have said that the most likely place for popular Japanese acts to bond with their Western cult audience is at conventions like Anime Expo, this is an aspect that I have disagreed with for years. The incidents referred to in that ‘silenced staff members’ post really disgusted me – how the hell did that douchebag think he could get away with disrespecting Morning Musume like he did? I came away from reading that more convinced that Japanese music acts should not rely on the conventions for their American performance venues.
Instead of dealing with anime con organizers, Up-Front Works and other agencies should hook up with established booking agencies outside of Japan and start organizing tours for their acts, much like they should avoid the quick-hit-oriented, throw-against-the-wall approach of most major labels when looking for Western labels for their recorded product in favor of a big independent label like Matador or Merge, or an independent-minded major-label imprint like Warner Bros.’ Nonesuch or A&M’s Octone.
Dir en grey, Puffy AmiYumi, and the many acts that have participated in the yearly Japan Nite package tours certainly don’t need the anime conventions – and wisely bypassed them entirely in favor of performing in more music-centric venues. Neither do Morning Musume or any other J-pop act that we all love. Given that MoMusu drew 7,500 last summer for their sole US show to date, it’s a no-brainer that American J-pop fans would go see their idols at a venue closer to home.
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On a vaguely related note (well, related to MoMusu, anyway) – the MoMusu/AKB48 singles “comparison” will resume shortly, and I’ll explain briefly in the next installment why the series has been taking longer that I would have wished to come to further fruition.
The Inevitable, Part 3: Random Thoughts
- I’m still going OMFG from the news, not even 24 hours after hearing about it.
- Last night I was trying to digest in my mind both the news about Morning Musume’s impending American debut (Up-Front Works confirmed it themselves last night) and continue planning for my wedding next June (my fiancee and I just put the deposit on the hall last night, as a matter of fact).
- Then Vee calls. The two of us, about 15 years apart in age and with birthdays right next to each other, proceeded to continue fangirling (ok, in my case, fanboying) about the news for much of the conversation.
- Vee then dropped a very important question: “What songs are they going to play?” We started speculating on the set list: “Love Machine” obviously has to be there; “Resonant Blue”, “Egao YES Nude” and “Mikan” were also mentioned, Vee kind of hoped “Onna ni Sachi Are” wouldn’t be on the set list as she didn’t think it went well live… that kind of thing. I’m sure speculation about the set list will continue up until the day of the concert.
- Typical procedure for anime convention headlining acts, according to Vee who has been to quite a few, is for the headlining act to perform on Saturday, which means that if this procedure holds for Anime Expo 2009, that Morning Musume will be making their American performing debut on Independence Day – an almost appropriate date for such a milestone, reminiscent of one of the early milestone events in punk rock – Independence Day 1976, when the Ramones made their English debut. Members of the Sex Pistols, Clash, and many other first-wave British punk bands were said to be in the audience that night.
- JapanFiles.com is going to have Morning Musume’s back catalog, starting with the release of “Naichai Kamo”, available for legal download. No word on when or whether tactile copies will be available like they’ve done with HANGRY&ANGRY’s EP.
The Inevitable, Part 2
They had to know we were out here. They had to have known how imported copies of the CDs were going across the Pacific Ocean (and elsewhere). They had to know how mp3s were circulating all over the planet. They had to see Western faces popping up at their concerts lately.Their music didn’t just worm their way onto US iTunes by accident. They had to know.
“They”, of course, meaning Morning Musume, their fellow artists in Hello! Project and their agency, Up-Front Works.
As every American J-pop fan who has a laptop and/or a cell phone knows by now. Morning Musume are going to make their American debut as “First Official Guests of Honor” at Anime Expo 2009 in Los Angeles. Ever since Vee relayed the news to me, I have been in OMFG mode. As my work day was concluding, I grabbed my iPod and started to listen to a different, non-Japanese album that I was thinking of before I heard the news, then realized to myself, “What the hell am I doing listening to something other than Morning Musume, today of all days?”
What I wonder right now is, what is the exact purpose of Morning Musume’s visit (besides performing, of course)? Is this a thank you to the diehard cult American audience that has been literally worshiping them from afar for the past several years? Or is there something else going along with this visit that hasn’t been announced yet? (Like, maybe say, an American distribution deal for their music?)Was having JapanFiles.com do the non-Japanese release of the HANGRY&ANGRY EP (involving MoMusu 4th Gen members Hitomi Yoshizawa and Rika Ishikawa) a sneaky way for UFW to further test the waters, much like I believe the presence of much of MoMusu’s catalog on US iTunes was a first test?
Furthermore, speaking of H&A, was the streamlining of the Elder Club from Hello! Project (keeping them under UFW contract, however) one of the final steps needed by UFW before they started to look into bringing Morning Musume stateside? I don’t think that sounds completely ludicrous – Hello! Project, in a way, is its own entity within Up-Front Works and is, for all intents and purposes, UFW’s bread-and-butter. But what I am getting at is, I don’t believe that Anime Expo’s announcement of today was the result of an overnight decision on UFW’s part. The usual legalities of bringing a foreign performing act – getting work visas, convincing government officials that the act is either in demand or unique (and Morning Musume certainly qualifies as both at this point), and so forth – take time. The frequent travels of the band – both as a whole and as individuals – to Hawaii over the past several years for fan club shows and photobook shoots, no doubt, may have helped with the visa process.
Since the news is still fresh and I am still fanboying from it as I write this, it’s too early to tell why else Morning Musume would finally be coming here, but I will certainly not be surprised by anything that happens related to this new development from here on in.
Now I’ve got to start making plans for the first weekend of July…
The Inevitable, For The Win.
Just when I thought the most J-pop-related eventful thing today was going to be listening to the new Buono! album and getting a couple of other overdue reviews done…
It started with an e-mail from my female counterpart, Vee with the subject line “Oh my fucking god.”: “You win, CJ. You win FOREVER. THEY *ARE* COMING HERE.”
I was at work and not immediately near my laptop, so the second I saw Vee’s message on my Blackberry, I ran to my desk at the first immediate opportunity and hit up hello-online.org. Then it was my turn to go “Oh my fucking god” repeatedly.
Only one thing could make two Cancerians from the East Coast go all fanboy/fangirl like this: Morning Musume in America. Finally.
I’d write more now, but I’m still going OMFG repeatedly. Soon as I calm down, I’ll write more. But one thing is sure: I am so there.
Dir en grey Restarts At The End
When we last left off, Dir en grey were planning to embark on a North American tour this autumn, a tour booked before doing any Japanese dates in support of their forthcoming album [UROBOROS]. The punch line was, they were doing it without an American record deal, having parted company with Warcon/Fontana sometime in 2007.
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.
No More ‘Dozing’ For Dir en grey?
Dir en grey are getting ready to start an American tour to promote their forthcoming album, [UROBOROS].
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.
