Has It Been That Long Already?
Yep, it’s been that long… it actually has been five years since I started blogging (this site started in 2007, and I apparently miscalculated last year… fuck it!) Time to update the annual list of what I’ve been through since I started blogging:
Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Four laptops (Don’t get me started…)
Three iPods (I finally upgraded to a 120GB model!)
One iPad
Morning Musume and AKB48 both making their American concert debuts – and way fucking overdue to return to these shores on a regular basis… no excuses, please, just book the dates and get on the plane! And yes, I know AKB were just in DC last week…
Twenty-one Morning Musume singles
Nineteen (soon to be twenty) 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 I’m not even going to bother trying to anymore!)
Seven and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Twenty-one Berryz Koubou singles
Five and a half Berryz Koubou studio albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Eighteen C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Six and a half C-ute albums (I still consider 2 mini ~Ikiru to Iu Chikara~ to be an EP)
Seven Koda Kumi studio albums (I lost track of compilations and singles!)
Four Ayumi Hamasaki albums (Go ahead and yell at me, Vee…)
Two albums and three EPs from Maki Goto
Three albums, two EPs, one best-of, and four guitar tab books from SCANDAL
Three post-Whiteberry EPs from bands led by Yuki Maeda (One Yukki, two The Husky)
Nine Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power, and counting 2010’s 2CD and four-disc deluxe reissue of the original Bowie mix of Raw Power and the Raw Power Live album released last Record Store Day)
The entire Koharu Kusumi solo discography
The entire Buono! discography to date
The entire AKB48 singles discography to date
Six New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of the first three studio albums)
Eight Puffy AmiYumi albums
Five Mission of Burma albums (and a new one on the way)
Three Panic! At The Disco albums
Three Meat Puppets albums
Three Cannibal Corpse albums and two DVDs
Three Deicide albums
Five Hank III albums (counting the Assjack album and the overdue legit release of the This Ain’t Country sessions as Hellbilly Joker) – and Hank III finally getting to say “fuck off” to Mike Curb.
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
Captain Beefheart succumbing to Multiple Sclerosis after several years… and the original version of Bat Chain Puller finally being released by the Zappa Family Trust a year later!
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…)
A fIREHOSE reunion (!!)
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
One day trip to New York where I didn’t spend any money in any record stores (Virgin Mega closed two years prior!)
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
One visit to an Apple Store where I finally bought something (my iPad!)
Six day trips to Philadelphia
Three 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 Michael Angelo Batio personal appearance
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
One missed Morning Musume concert (yes, that concert!!)
One missed Mike Watt & The Missingmen concert (which I made up for on April 2, 2011!)
Six 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Three Blackberry smartphones (never again!)
One iPhone
Four SD cards
Three phonograph needles (I’ll be needing a fourth soon.)
Morning Musume CDs finally being released in the United States (until a certain “label” dropped the ball… REAL indie labels like Matador and Merge, the opportunity is now…)
Ten 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… then blowing it… then joining her fellow ex-W in the world of MILFdom.
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
The original version of SMiLE going the opposite direction of W3: Faithful (and in a big way… five CDs PLUS double vinyl and two 45s? Got it!)
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!
Four of the many Mike Watt-related albums that were recorded during this blog’s and its predecessor’s lifetime finally seeing release… and getting sneak previews of a couple of them from the man himself the day before hypenated-man came out!
Two animes with Reina Tanaka doing voice work
The return of most of my favorite O.G. MoMusus
Three 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… and a sixth finally on the way!
Two tires
Three illnesses
Three 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)
One novel coming out on my own book label next month!
All four versions of American Wota
All three versions of International Wota
No getting the Sunn O)))-themed IW 4.0
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
The debut of IdolMinded
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…)
Seven (or was it eight by now?) 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
Reina Tanaka’s 21st birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 22nd 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
Five new electric guitars, all named after J-pop idols
Five effect pedals (two formerly owned by essential brother/up and coming guitar shredder/fellow MoMusu fan Maxxxwell Carlisle!)
Several packs of Ernie Ball Slinky guitar strings… and then I wised up late last year and switched to D’Addario .10′s, except for the Dean MAB3 I named after Erena Ono which will still get .09s!
A year and a half of experimentation with different kinds of guitar picks before I finally settled on 1.50mm Dunlop Tortex Sharps (heavy and pointy is best, it seems… – I could probably do a whole blog post on that subject!)
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 in 2008!)
Two coffee pots
One K-Cup machine (about fucking time I got one of those… the aforementioned second coffee pot is now on reserve duty)
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
Five Record Store Days (counting the forthcoming one this Saturday, which I’ll be honoring)
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée and then to wife on 6.26.10
BEST ALBUMS OF 2011: #10: MEAT PUPPETS “Lollipop”
Lollipop
(Megaforce/Red Ink)
Available on CD, LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
It took them a couple of albums and a change of drummers, but the Kirkwood Brothers really got their footing back with this album, which while occasionally nodding towards past achievements (some of this material, as I stated in my review earlier this year, could have fit nicely on past MP’s long-players), is fresh from beginning to end and is pretty much a timeless album already. At this rate, I can only imagine how the next MP’s album will sound like.
REVIEW: MEAT PUPPETS “Lollipop”
MEAT PUPPETS
Lollipop
(Megaforce/Red Ink)
Available on CD, LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
Rating: 
I welcomed the return of the Meat Puppets ever since Curt Kirkwood polled fans as to whether they wanted to see a reunion of the original lineup through his MySpace page. The first result of that question’s aftermath, 2007’s Rise To Your Knees, was the indie-rock equivalent of Star Trek: The Motion Picture: It was great to see/hear from some old friends again, even if the end results didn’t fully live up to the anticipation built up from years worth of passing time even before a return to action became reality.
With that seemingly odd comparison having been made, it’s not a stretch to suggest that the follow-up, 2009’s Sewn Together (which made TGML’s Top 10 Album list that year) is the Meat Puppets’s Wrath of Khan. Fully recharged after the test run that was Rise To Your Knees, Curt and Cris Kirkwood and then-drummer Ted Marcus had delivered in Sewn Together a long-playing effort that was (and is) fully worthy of standing up with the best albums (II, Up On The Sun, Mirage, Huevos, Too High To Die) of their classic back catalog.
Now, two years later, comes Lollipop; While they’ve had a major personnel change – Shandom Sahm, son of the late Sir Douglas Quintet/Texas Tornados leader Doug Sahm and also a former Meat Puppet back in the short-lived Golden Lies period, replaces Marcus behind the trap set – they not only haven’t lost a step, they’ve progressed nicely without losing an ounce of what makes the Meat Puppets who they quintessentially are, be it Curt Kirkwood’s lead lines or his and Cris’s brotherly harmonies. Much of the material could have fit nicely on Up On The Sun or Mirage, but there are also a few welcome twists and turns, like the reggae/ska rhythms that propel the verses “Shave It”, or the almost Coldplay-esque piano chords that open “Orange” only to get near-obliterated by “My Sharona” drums and some nasty fuzz bass from Cris Kirkwood. All of it works.
So, if we’re going to fool around with Meat Puppets/Star Trek comparisons, does that make Lollipop their Search for Spock? Well, put it this way: Search was a must-see flick back in the day. Lollipop is a must-hear album. Enough said.
(Hot tip: Advance order customers who ordered Lollipop from the band’s website – your humble reviewer included – initially received a high-quality digital download of the album with the songs in their original, pre-manufacture sequence [but accidentally labeled with the final sequence’s song titles] – an error long since corrected and rectified by the band’s management. To emulate the original sequence, program your CD player or iPod playlist in the following order: 2, 3, 11, 10, 9, 5, 6, 7, 8, 4, 1, 12.)
Stream: Meat Puppets “Damn Thing”
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
NEW MUSIC: MEAT PUPPETS “Damn Thing”
If this advance single is any indication, the Meat Puppets’ third post-reunion album Lollipop (out April 12th – the day after my fifth blogging anniversary) is going to be a good one. The Kirkwood Brothers and returning drummer Shandon Sahm (who played on Golden Lies, the only MP studio album without bass brother Cris) still sound like the years between their initial split and their reunion never happened. Stream the tune below, then snag it from the app (courtesy of Rolling Stone) above!
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
A Humble Beginning…
Every record label has had its unusual beginnings. Had one label in particular not started out in another area, it’s likely that a lot of things we take for granted simply would not exist. Case in point, the advertisement below:
An impromptu bit of Googling revealed the above scan: a print ad in a ham radio magazine called Check-Off for a company called SST Electronics.
If that logo and their PO Box address look familiar, you’re absolutely right – that same logo and address would get a lot more exposure on a long list of punk, alternative, and indie rock releases that are now considered classics.
In brief, Greg Ginn had already been running a pretty good business selling ham radio equipment of his own design (if I remember correctly, he may even have a patent or two under his belt for some of that stuff). Around the time this ad was being seen by ham radio enthusiasts all over the country, Black Flag had already recorded the session from which their first EP Nervous Breakdown – and a few years later, the first half of Side A of Everything Went Black – would be derived. They were waiting on Bomp! Records to release it, but when delays proved too long, Ginn decided to put his business skills, some of the profits he had made from his ham radio products, and the PO Box he already had to good – soon to be better – use, found a pressing plant in the phone book, and, with a first pressing of about 300 to 500 copies (stories vary), SST Records was born.
Both SST Records and SST Electronics would exist side by side for a few years – according to Michael Azzerad’s book Our Band Could Be Your Life, the Minutemen all even had jobs assembling some of SST Electronics’ products – but by 1982 SST would strictly be a record company, leaving ham radio enthusiasts in the dust but giving music fans a reason to live and then some.
For even having a small business of his own to help fund what would become one of the most influential labels in contemporary American music, music fans should be grateful. Had Greg Ginn not taken that first step, none of us would have ever heard of Black Flag, The Minutemen, The Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Saccharine Trust, Bad Brains, fIREHOSE, Sonic Youth, or Dinosaur Jr., countless bands of today that we take for granted would never have been influenced by artists like the aforementioned in the positive manner they were, and blogs like this one might not even exist.
Definitely something to think about.
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”:
Continue reading
BEST ALBUMS OF 2009: #10 (tie): MEAT PUPPETS “Sewn Together” / GIRLS GENERATION “Genie: The Second Mini-Album”
MEAT PUPPETS
Sewn Together
(Megaforce)
Available on CD, colored-vinyl LP, iTunes and AmazonMP3
GIRLS GENERATION (SDSN)
Genie: The Second Mini-Album
(SM Entertainment)
Available on CD
One of the reasons this year’s list took me awhile to finalize is because there were some albums I simply couldn’t bring myself to cut out of the list. This installment is one of the most extreme cases.
The Pups’ first album since brothers/founding members Curt and Cris Kirkwood reconvened, Rise To Your Knees (Anodyne, 2007), was a nice restart, but wasn’t completely up to the level of their classic back catalog. This time around, however, the group returned with all cylinders firing, recalling much of their glory days (Up On The Sun, Mirage, Too High To Die, Huevos) without breaking as much of a sweat. The album’s title seems more indicative of the band’s unlikely label for this release (the more metal-oriented Megaforce label) than for the state of the band’s lineup, which is playing like they never left in the first place.
As for the group known in their native Korea as So Nyeo Shi Dae: K-Pop isn’t something that I ever seriously delved into, and to be honest, I still really haven’t, except for this particular band (via the recommendation of my female counterpart, Vee from PinkWota.com). Genie, their current EP, got me hooked in with the title track and went from there. Besides the very catchy title song, the shameless 80’s pop of “Girlfriend” and the Strauss-interpoating “My Child” are the EP’s other high watermarks that had me going back and getting the rest of the group’s back catalog, which didn’t hook me as quickly as this EP did. But that’s OK, because if this EP is their current creative high point, then that’s enough to have me looking forward to future releases from them.
