Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

Just back from a most pleasant evening spent in Millenium Park downtown (after a brief munchies run through the Taste of Chicago across the street in Grant Park), where New Jersey’s underground rock heroes The Feelies played a free show. It was a fine hour-long set, mostly old material (“Let’s Go,” “Deep Fascination,” “Doin’ it Again,” etc.) with a few new tunes thrown in. The crowd really got into it, especially for the last third of the show. The second and final encore was a fiery cover of “Paint It Black.”

It all carried me right back to 1980 and freshman year in college. Except back then I used to hear this sort of Velvet-influenced guitar-noise rock played in small black-box clubs with cheeky bartenders and graffiti-splattered walls. It felt odd to listen to it outside on, admittedly, an absolutely lovely night–in front of a family crowd, at that. The best dancing I saw all night was by the four-year-old boy and his two-year-old sister sitting in the row in front of us.

Here’s the speedy Sun-Times review of the show by Jim DeRogatis. He liked it, too.

(Postscript, added 7/1: Here’s Greg Kot’s review for the Tribune.)

I returned this afternoon from a quick, pleasant trip out to Berkeley for a workshop. Got to love that dry California air….

On my way to San Francisco Thursday evening, as I was changing planes in Minneapolis (can you guess what airline I was flying?), every third person I passed was talking about Michael Jackson. I finally passed a television monitor and saw the news: the King of Pop was dead. The reporters were making their live remotes from outside the UCLA Medical Center, on the campus I know so well.

By coincidence, just the day before I happened to listen for the first time in ages to Rhymefest’s brilliant 2007 unreleased mix-tape, “Man in the Mirror,” a funny yet ultimately respectful mash-up of Michael’s music and words.

To be honest, I was never a huge MJ fan: I don’t own any of his CDs, for example. I was always more of a Prince man. But I grew up in the era Michael dominated, a situation Joe Posnanski described with his typical precision and grace. When I was twelve, my parents gave me a copy of the Jackson Five’s “Greatest Hits” album, and for the next twenty years or so, Michael provided the basic soundtrack to life. I was especially thrilled when he smashed down the color barrier on MTV.

I recall in particular a night in the summer of 1983. My girlfriend had just dumped me for another guy, and I went to the Greyhound Depot in downtown St. Paul to get on a bus to anywhere. I just wanted to get out of town, clear my head–and avoid hearing the roar of my ex’s new boyfriend picking her up on his Harley, just five doors down. I ended up in Mankato, Minnesota, staying for three days at the Holiday Inn. The first night there, I was sitting alone at the hotel bar, feeling sorry for myself, when the deejay put “Billie Jean” on. What a great song to hear at that moment: the vaguely aggressive rhythm, the spiteful lyrics! I walked up to a complete stranger and pointed out to her that it was Michael playing and we simply had to dance. She agreed. Man, it felt good.

One of the great things about MJ was his willingness to embrace the “pop” label. In other words, he was so cool he didn’t need to worry about seeming cool. The self-proclaimed King of Pop didn’t have to pretend to be alternative, hiphop, or whatever. Nothing wrong with that. A good pop song can’t save your life, but it can at least save your evening–like it did for me back at the Mankato Holiday Inn in 1983.

This comes from the right-wing Washington Times newspaper, courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

Extramarital affairs, gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution and sexual pursuit of minors have taken a toll on the GOP.

This evening I’ll be flying out to Berkeley to participate in a workshop tomorrow on Natsume Soseki. It will be my first visit to California in over a year; I can’t wait to feel the dry air when I get off the plane. In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying re-reading Soseki’s Sanshiro, the topic of our discussions tomorrow. We are all just stray sheep….

I’m certainly not an economist, but I was intrigued by this blog post by Jon Taplin I came across a couple of days ago. With a striking combination of hopefulness and pessimism, Taplin argues that the current global economic crisis could be the harbinger of a fundamental change in our basic living patterns, akin to what happened in the 1930s.

It seems to me that the American public has already made a shift to a culture in which spending at the mall will be a lot less important and yet the politicians are acting like their job is to restore the status quo ante–a world the public no longer cares about.

In the meanwhile, however, Japanese television carries on with its usual aplomb. We’re currently watching “Around 40,” last year’s hit drama starring the always terrific Amami Yuki. It’s the tale of a single female doctor nearing her fortieth birthday who increasingly feels her biological clock ticking and decides it may be time to get married. We’ve just finished watching NHK’s similarly themed “Konkatsu Rikatsu” (“Seeking Marriage, Seeking Divorce”), notable above all for the rather everyday quality it lent not only to marriage, but also divorce. Even Japan’s staid public broadcasting network is acknowledging that divorce is a fact of contemporary life, not an unthinkable trauma.

Neither series, however, is anywhere near remarkable as the new animated hit “Unko-san,” in which the leading characters are all turds–literally. According to the Pink Tentacles website, the show is a hit among teenagers in the Kansai area. For your viewing pleasure, here’s a sample, complete with subtitles. Don’t forget to flush when you are finished watching.

Bet you thought I was dead. Naw, just busy traveling and taking care of stuff. We returned late Sunday night from a quick jaunt up to Minnesota to visit family and friends. Along the way, we spent some time in Beloit, Wisconsin, visiting Beloit College (where our oldest will enroll as a freshman this fall) and watching the Beloit Snappers, part of the Minnesota Twins’ farm system, lose a fairly lackluster match to the Clinton Lumberkings, 4-1. There were plenty of scouts in attendance at the ballpark: the focus of their interest seemed to be Snappers’ starting pitcher Daniel Berlind.

Now I’m back in Chicago for a couple of days to pick up the mail, attend to physical therapy on my knee, and putter about the house a bit. On Thursday I’m off to Berkeley for a few days to attend an informal workshop on Soseki, for which I’m currently re-reading Sanshiro. After that, it’s back home for at least a few weeks.

During my travels, I’ve managed to acquire a stack of new CDs, which I will enter into the on-line CD log shortly.

It’s finally summer here in Illinois: high temperatures in the 90s with humidity to match. Luckily, our air conditioner seems up to the task.

It’s been hopping around here the past few days. A cousin and his family have been visiting us from Minnesota, giving us the chance to do some sightseeing in Chicago while ostensibly serving as guides. Sunday we headed down to the Chicago Blues Festival to see Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings deliver the goods as headliners on the final night. It was an energetic set, including a nice guest spot by Chicago legend Syl Johnson. We were so far back on the grass in Grant Park that we mostly watched the show on the giant videoscreen they’d set up.

On Monday, I finally got to take the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s boat tour, which everyone says is the best thing to do in Chicago. Everyone is right, and the weather was perfect for a change in this cold and damp summer. We then whooshed up to the top of the Sears Tower–well, to the 99th floor, anyhow, since the 103rd floor observatory is currently being remodeled. It was supper at Medici Restaurant (“Obama Eats Here”) later that night.

Last night, we saw “Fiddler on the Roof” at the old Ford Oriental Theater downtown, with Topol playing Tevye on his farewell tour. The role fits him like an old, comfortable sweater now, and the rest of the cast was strong, as well. The songs from the show are pretty much engraved into my DNA. We had the original cast recording album when I was a kid, and my sister and I listened to it pretty much constantly (that and Jesus Christ Superstar: it was an ecumenical household).

Today we’re heading up to Wisconsin on a little family trip, including a weekend in the Twin Cities visiting family and friends.

In the midst of all this comes the sad news that Don Bogle, leader of The Ventures, has passed away. Bogle and his bandmates played a crucial role in the history of Japanese rock and roll. The Ventures first appeared in Japan in 1962 as opening act for Bobby Vee in a tour mainly of U.S. military bases, but their two 1965 tours aimed at Japanese fans caused a sensation, setting off the “ereki boom” of rock-and-roll combos playing instrumental numbers. They also made the Mosrite guitar an object of fetishistic desire for Japanese teenagers.

Even after their popularity faded in the States, the Ventures continued to tour Japan annually. The concerts became something of a celebratory ritual for their fan base, as grandparents brought their children and grandchildren out every year to hear those definitive tremolo glissando runs, for which an onomatopoetic name was even invented in Japanese: “dendekedekedeke.” Say it real fast ten times in a row and you’ll start to hear “Walk, Don’t Run” in your head. Rest in peace, Mr. Bogle.

Just as I did last summer, yesterday afternoon I attended the annual quasi-reunion of the old Muddy Waters band at the Chicago Blues Festival. It’s become a multi-generational event: Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Muddy’s former drummer, now plays harmonica, while his son Kenny mans the percussion. Two of Muddy’s sons, Big Bill Morganfield and Mud Morganfield, handled most of the vocals. Bill plays guitar and sings, and he’s clearly inherited his father’s fun, showboating side, while Mud carries on the grave, stately side of the old man’s legacy.

The biggest name in the line up was legendary pianist Pinetop Perkins, looking very fine indeed in his pine green suit and keyboard socks. They closed the set with “Got My Mojo Working.” Pinetop took the first couple of choruses, then the various band members took their turns, and eventually Muddy’s youngest son and widow joined in the proceedings. The context had me wondering, though: what does it mean when 95-year-old Perkins sings “I got my mojo working, but it just don’t work on you”?

Likewise, what happens when Muddy Waters’ classic assertion of black masculine subjectivity, “Mannish Boy,” is sung several decades later by his own sons, who have carved out their own musical careers in their father’s shadow. Context is everything.

We’ll be back at the Blues Festival tomorrow night to see Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings close the joint down. She sings new songs that sound old; we’ll have to see what the context does to them.

Yesterday afternoon, we attended our son’s high school graduation, a lovely ceremony held in Rockefeller Chapel here at the University of Chicago. We’ve been looking at pictures taken his first day of kindergarten and marveling at how quickly all of this has happened. Sigh.

Also yesterday, but way off in London town, head Kink Ray Davies made an informal appearance near Waterloo Bridge, singing “Waterloo Sunset” with members of the Crouch End Festival Chorus and former Kink Ian Gibbons on keyboards. It was all to promote his new album of Kinks Klassiks reworked as choral numbers. It looks to have been a fine day in London:

Somewhat closer to home, blogger Twins Geek has run a fine series of four posts on a topic of concern to all Minnesota Twins’ fans: What the hell happened to Delmon Young? The first installment is available for your reading pleasure here. Unfortunately, Twins Geek has no good ideas about how to fix the disastrous situation–which puts him in the same boat at the Twins. He does show with pinpoint precision how awful the whole mess has become.

To hell with that. I’m out of here, off to the Chicago Blues Festival to catch Pinetop Perkins and his old bandmates.

When Satoko was a teenager, she became badly addicted to Lotte Choco Pies. Sold in boxes of six, they consist of two disks of a rather dry yellow cake separated by a layer of marshmallow cream, with the whole thing coated in a chocolate crust. They aren’t bad, but I can’t imagine getting a deep hankering for them myself. To develop the sort of full-blown Choco Pie habit that Satoko has, I think you need to encounter them as an adolescent. Or, as a worker in a Stalinist socialist regime.

I know the latter is true because of recent reports that the Choco Pie has become a source of tension in North Korea. Choco Pies produced by Orion (one of Lotte’s big competitors) were originally introduced as snacks for the tens of thousands workers in the Kaeson Industrial Complex in the North run by South Korean firms. The workers apparently fell in love, and now there is a rampant black market for Choco Pies in and around Pyongyang. The Asia Times reports that

“North Koreans love Choco Pie,” said Ha Tae-keung, president of NK Open Radio, which beams two hours of news daily into North Korea from its base in Seoul. “It’s an invasion of the stomach.”

North Korean workers, and the friends and family members for whom they save their daily treats, may salivate over Choco Pie, but it’s giving a severe stomach ache to senior officials fearful of the infiltration of South Korean culture in all corners of their Hermit Kingdom.

Choco Pie – along with other favorite South Korean cakes and candies as well as instant coffee – has come to symbolize the image of the capitalist South as a multi-tentacle beast that may be impossible to digest.

I do think the revolution remains safe, at least for the time being. If, however, they introduce Meiji Almond Chocolates, it’s all over for the Pyongyang regime.

Sôtaisei Riron, Haifai shinsho 「ハイファイ新書」 (2009, Mirai). Second album by up-and-coming Japanese indies band, it reached #7 on the Oricon album charts earlier this year. Mabe Shûichi’s original compositions contain hints of jazz and fusion, especially in the off-kilter guitar work. What really makes the band stand out, though, are the whispery, girlish vocals by Yakushimaru Etsuko. The lyrics often contain clever wordplay, but aren’t especially profound. Not perfect, but certainly a band worth watching in the coming years.

“Monsieur” Kamayatsu Hirsoshi, 1939 Monsieur: Monsieur Kamayatsu 70th Anniversary Album 「ムッシュかまやつ 70thアニバーサリーアルバム」 (2009, avex). An even more recent updating of the Monsieur Kamayatsu legend, this time commemorating the great man’s 70th birthday. It features him in duets with musicians of many different generations, revisiting songs from across his long career, stretching from “Ban Ban Ban,” his 1966 hit with The Spiders in a nice punky version here with Hitoto Yô, to “Gauloise o sutta koto ga aru kai” (see below) in a duet with Micro. Other guests include fellow Spiders Sakai Masaaki and Inoue Jun, Thomas Matsumoto, The Alfee, Moriyama Ryôko, Imai Miki, and Hotei Tomoyasu, among others. There’s no point in my hoping I sound this good when I’m 70, since I didn’t sound this good when I was 18. Very nice.

“Monsieur” Kamayatsu Hiroshi, Gauloise (1994, Polystar). Terrific updating of the Monsieur Kamayatsu sound recorded in England under the production supervision of Oyamada Keigo (Cornelius), with first-rate British session musicians. Kamayatsu’s original 1974 recording of “Gauloise o sutta koto ga aru kai,” on which he was backed by Tower of Power, became an unlikely hit in British clubs in the early 1990s, prompting Oyamada to bring the man back into the recording studio.

Benjamin Britten, Serenade for Tenor, Horns and Strings; Les Illuminations; Nocturne, Ian Bostridge, Berlin Philharmoniker (2005, EMI). Nice recordings of three of Britten’s extended vocal compositions.