Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

Impossible. Or, at least, completely out of season. The last week has been spent enjoying the company of visiting relatives, as well as watching our new back patio, fence, and shed take shape. Somewhere along the way, the city came out and demolished our back sidewalk. We’re hoping they’re planning to replace it with a new one, but with the city, you never know.

One noteworthy event was my first-ever visit to the DuSable Museum of African American History, located in Washington Park just west of the University of Chicago campus. They currently have a nice special exhibit (up through mid-December) on the role of the South Side in popular music: “The Soul of Bronzeville: The Regal, Club Delisle, and the Blues.” Lots of old posters, records, photographs, programs, etc. of the legendary soul, blues and jazz clubs from the 1940s, 50s and 60s, including original signs and fixtures from such legendary venues as the original Checkerboard Lounge and the Regal. They also have a number of video installations featuring vintage performance footage. I ended up running out of time before I could see the whole exhibit, so I’ll be back again. I also want to see the collection of paintings in the lower lever.

In other words, the museum promises still more opportunities for avoiding work during these fine summer days. And we still haven’t made it down to the 57th St. Beach or the “Real Pirates” exhibit at the Field Museum….

Under the conditions of late capitalism, Tokyo in the summer of 2009 is apparently undergoing invasion by giant dinosaurs and robots. The Owl of Minerva, perhaps?

In the meanwhile, over in Nagoya, Hakuho (13-1) has the sumo tournament just about wrapped up, if he can just knock off fellow yokozuna Asashoryu (11-3) in the final match tomorrow. The latter pulled off a remarkable win over Harumafuji on Day 13 using the spectacular kimarite (technique) “yaguranage,” last seen in 1975.

Meanwhile, there’s a very nice profile of retired sumo wrestler Konishiki in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper.

No robots, dinosaurs, or sumo wrestlers here in Chicago: just lovely summer weather. Our backyard patio reconstruction project is nearing completion, meaning it will soon be time to fire up the barbecue grill again. In the meanwhile, I’m enjoying reading Jim Harrison’s comic novel The English Major and (for the first time in Japanese) Oe Kenzaburo’s Kojinteki na taiken (A Personal Matter). What are you reading this summer?

There’s a wild and woolly sumo tournament underway in Nagoya. Currently, yokozuna Hakuho and ozeki Kotooshu are tied for the lead at 11-1, with ozeki Kotomitsuki a step back at 10-2. Yokozuna Asashoryu’s injuries and lackluster training have him back at 9-3. Any of the three leaders could take it at this point.

The day before yesterday provided a remarkable bevy of upsets, with Kotomitsuki (who for the first time in years seems to have a fire burning under him) knocking off Hakuho in a ferocious match. Earlier in the card, rejuvenated veteran ozeki Kaio and Chiyotaikai surprised Asashoryu and Kotooshu, respectively. It’s always nice when the second tier of wrestlers come on strong and make the top guys work for it.

The biggest news of the day, however, was former ozeki Dejima’s ninth loss. Ranked near the bottom of the top division at maegashira 13, the loss guaranteed that he would be demoted to juryo next tournament. The 35-year-old chose to retire immediately. He ends up with a career 595-495 record in the top division, including one championship (Nagoya in 1999). He was promoted to ozeki (the second highest rank in the sport) back in 1999 holding the position until 2001. He was never able to regain it after that, but remained a powerful veteran presence. There’s a nice career summary over at Wikipedia.

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Shiina Ringo, Sanmon Gossip 「三文ゴッシップ」 (EMI, 2009). Shiina tries to merge her early noise-pop sound with her most recent jazz bent, with mixed results. She channels the Jackson 5’s “ABC” on “Rôdôsha,” and her inner Edith Piaf comes out on “Bonsai hada.” My favorite track is the rocker “Yokyô,” but there aren’t any really classic Ringo tunes here: nothing cuts straight through to your inner chaos the way her best work does. It’s still several cuts above the usual J-Pop standard, but it leaves me hoping for a return to form on her next work, either solo or with her band Tokyo Jihen.

Dee Alexander, Wild is the Wind (Blujazz, 2008). Alexander is a local Chicago jazz singer—but not for long. This CD doesn’t quite capture the marvel that is one of her live performances, but it still managed to garner a five-star review from Downbeat magazine and is now attracting lots of attention in Europe. It’s not just that she possesses remarkably true pitch: her music burns with intelligence and passion, and she explores a whole range of vocal sounds.

Black Blondie, Do You Remember Who You Wanted to Be (Black Blondie, 2009). Self-produced debut CD by a mostly female group from Minneapolis. They cross hiphop with R&B, avant-garde pop, and jazz, and end up sounding nothing like anyone else. The lead track “Hunger” is very strong (you can stream it at their MySpace page), as is the reggae-styled “Dressed to Kill a Mockingbird”; the rest of the material is uneven, but always distinctive. A group worth watching in the coming years.

Inoue Takayuki, It’s Never Too Late (Sony, 2007). Solo work by former Spiders lead guitarist, originally released back in 1981. Recorded in England, it features local session musicians, including Mick Taylor as guest on several tracks. It’s pretty standard late 1970s guitar-boogie rock, with a few instrumentals thrown in (Inoue composed the hit instrumental theme song for the 1970s television show “Taiyô ni hoero”).

Ray Davies with The Crouch End Festival Chorus, The Kinks Choral Collection (Universal, 2009). Re-recordings of a dozen Kinks’ classics given full choral treatment. It works on some of the songs quite well—“Shangri-La,” for example, as well as the suite of songs collected here as “Village Green Medley,” all taken from the classic 1968 Village Green Preservation Society album. On some of the others, I find myself wishing for a more imaginative use of the vocal resources, as well as a few more oddball song selections. How ‘bout something from Muswell Hillbillies, for example? Then again, I could listen to “You Really Got Me” played on dueling tubas and still enjoy it, and in fact it provides one of the more thoughtful uses of the choir here (though I can’t help wondering what it would have sounded like if they handed off the guitar solo to the singers and allowed them to go wild with it). The U.S. version will be released in September.

Greetings from Tomah, Wisconsin, where we are spending the night on our way back from a family reunion weekend in Minnesota.

From this morning’s Chicago Tribune: University of Chicago named 1 of 5 American universities most like the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

My favorite line about writing reviews comes from Oscar Wilde: “I never read books I must review; it prejudices you so.” But I actually did read Ken Ito’s new study, An Age of Melodrama: Family, Gender and Social Hierarchy in the Turn-of-the-Century Japanese Novel (Stanford University Press), and my review has just been published in the latest issue of Monumenta Nipponica. In what I thought was a fine book, Ito takes up several enormously popular potboilers of the late Meiji period and unpacks the complex, often self-contradictory logics by which they work. I think I got a little carried away by my own rhetoric in the review, but here’s the conclusion:

Ito provides us with illuminating, careful readings of some of the most popular works published in the Meiji period—works whose tainted pedigree has scared away many previous scholars. He demonstrates these novels to be crucial sites of the cultural work needed to produce modern Japan. An Age of Melodrama forces us to redraw our genealogical charts of modern Japanese literature: whether by adoption or marriage, previously neglected relations must be accepted into the family. The proud patriarchs of the canon may scowl when forced to open the gates of their estates to these uncouth relations—but as Meiji melodramas loved to show, there is nothing so turbulent as domestic family life.

I, in turn, have recently become the target of a reviewer’s eye. A glowing notice by Wendy Jacobson on Avery 4: An Anthology of New Fiction appears in the most recent issue of Book/Mark Quarterly Review. She praises the collection as “a fine sampling from a group of talented writers who are on their way to increased notoriety and success” (editorial comment: notoriety, perhaps; success, perhaps not) and highlights my short story “Invasive Species” as being “told with poetic mature insight.” The whole issue is well worth your while, and I promise that reading it won’t prejudice you in the least. You can order it here for a mere ten bucks.

One of my favorite hooks in recent pop music comes near the end of Tokyo Jihen’s “Superstar.” About three-quarters of the way through the song, there’s a tiny pause that’s about eight months pregnant, and then Shiina Ringo finally drops the title word, holding it for almost three bars. In the meanwhile, the band shifts into overdrive: they flip the chords over, and for the rest of the song, it’s all power strumming, squealing guitar solo, and madman drumming, ala The Who. Up to that moment, it’s been a pretty good pop song, but with the hook, it suddenly blasts off into the stratosphere.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any promo videos or on-line mp3 files of the original studio recording, which is on the Adult album (2006). Here’s a pretty fair live version–except that they blow the hook (right around 3:20), which only goes to show you how hard it must have been to produce that bit in the studio version.

Anyhow, what prompted me to revisit this hook was that after spending a fair amount of time listening to Shiina Ringo’s new CD, Sanmon Gossip, I started trawling YouTube to wallow in her fabulous back catalog. I stumbled upon the following piece of video, which I found utterly fascinating. It shows her and the band in the studio, painstakingly working out the details of that amazing hook from “Superstar.” Nice chance to watch a genius at work….

I think this is pretty damned cool.

Roger McGuinn of The Byrds is usually credited with introducing the twelve-string guitar into rock music. Taking the distinct sound of that instrument and then compressing the hell out of it, he created the jingly-jangly timbre that became the band’s trademark. Their single “Eight Miles High” was about as cool as you could get in 1966; it reached #4 on the Billboard charts. McGuinn’s guitar work on the song was supposedly inspired by John Coltrane’s sax on “India.”

It’s an irresistible song, no matter what you play. Guitar virtuoso Leo Kottke has recorded and performed the number as a solo guitar piece, although he uses a six-string instrument. My old Macalester College dorm neighbor (well, we lived on the same floor, anyhow) Bob Mould and Husker Du also recorded it on six strings, bringing out the psychedelic core of the song in spectacular fashion. It’s one of my all-time favorite cover songs.

I’ve just stumbled onto the following 1969 video of Rinus Garretsen from the legendary Dutch hard rock combo, Golden Earring. In his hands, the riff becomes the basis for an extended solo on the four-string bass.

Now I just have to find video of someone performing the tune on a two-string erhu, and my work will be finished.

I spent this afternoon in Grant Park, taking in Booker T and the DBTs hour-long set at the Taste of Chicago. A soft rain fell throughout the show, literally dampening the crowd’s reaction, but it was still fun. 64-year-old Booker T. Jones looked quite dapper in a black suit and matching porkpie hat, and he spoke with his usual soft-voiced gracefulness. Of course, they played “Green Onions,” and Booker even sang on “Sittin’ on the Dock (Of the Bay).” Most of the show was devoted to songs from his new Potato Hole CD, including the title track, “Native New Yorker,” “Warped Sister,” and (the encore) his exhilarating instrumental take on “Hey Ya.”

No one can take the place of the MG’s (Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Al Jackson), but the DBTs (better known as the Drive-By Truckers) did a fine job supporting Booker. They shone especially brightly (despite the gray weather) on the old MG’s number that closed the regular set, “Time is Tight.” All in all, not a bad way to spend the 4th of July, even if Mother Nature wasn’t in a cooperative mood.