Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

Everyone is doing it these days, it seems. Yoko Ono has reunited the Plastic Ono Band. Minnesota punk-funk-rock legends The Suburbs got back together last weekend for a show in honor of their guitarist, Bruce Allen, who passed away late last year. Stew and Heidi, late of The Negro Problem and the musical Passing Strange, have a new show up this week that’s all about breaking up. Anzen Chitai, the kings of 1980s Japanese soft-rock, have likewise announced an upcoming reunion tour.

Everybody’s doing it, it seems….except of course for The Kinks. But at least now we have a new documentary feature film that explains, after a fashion, why that isn’t happening. Do It Again: One Man’s Quest to Reunite the Kinks had its world premiere last month at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Directed by Robert Patton-Spruill, the film follows the quixotic journey of Boston reporter Geoff Edgers, who is determined to bring Ray, Dave, Pete and Mick back together again. I haven’t seen it yet, but the film has been getting good reviews (e.g. here and here) and will be playing at a series of film festivals in the coming months (details available on the film’s website).

504 pieces in all, it took Sonia and me four days to complete. I love doing jigsaw puzzles over the holidays: it gives me this luxurious feeling of burning time, like a millionaire torching twenty-dollar bills to light his cigars.

But do I really have to go back to work tomorrow? I love teaching, but would another week of winter break really cripple the university? My biggest complaint about the quarter system (as opposed to the morally superior semester system) is the short winter break. Sigh.

In the meanwhile, the NY Times reports that even old decrepit types like myself can learn new tricks, if we approach our neurons and synapses from the proper angle. “Disorienting dilemma” is the trick, they tell us. That should be a snap, since I spend most of my time in that state these days anyhow.

Anime god Miyazaki Hayao has granted a rare interview, prior to the opening of his latest work, Ponyo, in the UK next month.

Finally, a ray of hope from Kichijoji, one of my favorite neighborhoods in Tokyo: a new campaign to save the neighborhood sento (public bath) by way of rock music. It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it, and you can get your back scrubbed at the same time. Brilliant!

(Image source)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you all, from snowbound Minnesota. We’ve received about six inches of fresh snow here in the last 24 hours, with more promised tonight, but we’re in a cozy warm house surrounded by mountains of Christmas cookies and brownies, and the refrigerator is stocked with egg nog, so we’ll survive somehow!

I hope that you are all enjoying a lovely holiday season with family and friends, and that 2010 brings you peace and great joy.

Here’s a small Christmas gift for you that I just discovered this morning: an English-language version by Yamashita Tatsuro of his classic 1983 hit, “Christmas Eve.” (For purists, the original Japanese-language version is here. Then again, if you’re a purist, what are you doing here?)

I’ve been working this week on the section on Arai Yumi (a.k.a. Matsutoya Yumi or simply Yuming) for my book on postwar popular music in Japan. Today, while looking for something else, I stumbled upon a remarkable cover version of a Yuming tune by one of my favorite contemporary J-Pop singers.

The song is “Kageriyuku heya” (something like “The darkening room”). First released as a single in 1976 — her last record, in fact, before she married Matsutoya Masataka and changed her name — it’s one of Yuming’s best compositions, inlaid with chord progressions reminscent of classical music. In fact, it all sounds a bit like a hymn, from the pipe organ opening to the swelling chorus on the backing vocals. Here’s the original version, in case you aren’t familiar with it. It’s one of the great moments in mid-1970s Japanese pop.

The cover version I discovered today is by none other than Shiina Ringo, with whom I’ve been pretty heavily infatuated for the last six or seven years. Shiina respects the song’s essential structure, but nonetheless manages to make it entirely her own. The recording comes from Dear Yuming, a 1999 tribute album.

Terrible news from Japan: legendary musician Kato Kazuhiko was found dead in a Karuizawa hotel room this morning. He took his own life, apparently leaving behind a suicide note. He was only 62 and still very much an active, creative musician.

Kato first came to public attention in 1968 as leader of The Folk Crusaders. Their first single, “Kaette kita yopparai” (The drunk who came back) was a huge hit, but even more legendary was their cover version of the Korean folk song, “Imujin kawa” (Imjin River), which was banned because of controversies surrounding the Japanese translated version of the lyrics. Here’s video of the group performing that song at a reunion concert a few years back–their last public performance of the tune, it turns out.

After the Folk Crusaders broke up, Kato went on to found yet another seminal Japanese rock group: Sadistic Mika Band. Headquartered in London, they were a pioneering glam rock band who achieved critical acclaim in both Europe and Japan. Their eponymous debut album (1973) and their second LP, Kurofune(Black ships, 1974) are classics of J-Rock, featuring Takanaka Masayoshi’s guitarwork, (future YMO member) Takahashi Yukihiro on drums, and Ohara Rei on bass. Kato sang lead on and composed many of the band’s best numbers.

Sadistic Mika Band reformed several times over the decades, always with a different female singers as “Mika.” The most recent reincarnation came in 2006, with Kimura Kaera doing the honors. That version of the band released an excellent studio album, Narkissos. I was lucky enough to see the rehearsal show for a television concert special they taped at NHK Hall in Tokyo in 2006. Quite simply, they killed.

On the heels of the death of Imawano Kiyoshiro a few months back, this just seems like too much. I just wanna go back in time and savor the talent of the guys who are passing away far too quickly. Time machine ni onegai (transl: time machine, take me away, please).

Given the generally chaotic state of my life, I have one good twenty minute window for listening to music each day: my morning walk to the office. (By the time of my afternoon walk home, I’m usually so fried that I just want quiet). This morning, for the first time in several years I revisited SAPPUKEI (2000), the brilliant album by the great Japanese postpunk band, Number Girl.

As usually happens when I listen to Number Girl, I became fixated on Inazawa Ahito’s drumming. He’s just astonishing, unleashing a complex array of beats, rhythms, and flourishes. A typical number has him playing a rock back beat with stress on the second and fourth beats in the main section, only to switch over to an anthemic on-the-one pounding for the middle bridge, and spicing it all up with tasty accents and fills. Check out, for example, “Urban Guitar Sayonara”:

On another song, he’ll do a semi-reggae thing, highlighting the third beat, then switch over to a funky rhythm where the upbeat is everything. Just amazing. The producers knew enough to move him forward in the mix.

I think I have drummers on the mind lately. Bobby Graham just passed away. You’ve probably never heard of him, but he’s proof that a single drum stroke can change the world, or at least your mind. Graham was the session musician brought in for the Kinks’ original studio recording of “You Really Got Me” in 1964. Mick Avory, the Kinks’ regular drummer, was a terrific player with strong jazz chops, but the producer lacked confidence in him and so brought in the ringer. It is Graham who played that wonderful offbeat snap on the snare drum at the opening, just after the second repetition of the guitar riff, that catches your attention in the song (Mick supposedly plays the tambourine on the recording).

In the Western music tradition, we’re predisposed to disrespect drummers.

Q: What do you call a drummer?
A: (See the title of this blog post)

But a good drummer can make or break a song, as Number Girl and the Kinks both knew. Even the composer Hector Berlioz knew it–I was just listening to “Symphonie Fantastique” on the radio last night, and as always those damn chimes from hell in the last movement brought goosebumps to my flesh.

Rest in peace, Bobby Graham. And keep rockin’ on, Inazawa Ahito and Mick Avory. You should be aware that I’m typing these words on my laptop with a dandy little touch of syncopation.

While Tokyo gets hit with an earthquake a day, here in Chicago I find myself buried under a mountain (slagheap?) of copyediting, recommendation letter writing, etc. I’m trying to find a bit of time each day to work on the last unfinished chapter of my book manuscript on postwar popular music (the chapter on 1970s “New Music”), but it’s slow going.

Over at Japan Focus, R. Taggart Murphy has a fine new article on the current economic crisis and the changes it bodes for U.S., Japan, and China relations as Beijing replaces Tokyo as the primary purchaser of American debt. He writes that “a world in which the primary external support for the US dollar comes from China rather than Japan is going to be very different from that to which policy makers in Washington and Tokyo have become accustomed over the past half century.” It is a moment of truth for Japan, one potentially disastrous but also, Murphy argues, one that might provide the opportunity to rebuild its social contract on a more sustainable basis. In that vein, Murphy expresses hope for the upcoming election.

Meanwhile, this month on his “Ongaku no Tora-san” television show, Southern All Stars leader Kuwata Keisuku has revealed a hitherto unsuspected literary bent. He’s taking the classics of modern Japanese literature and transforming them into the lyrics for pop songs. Among the victims are Natsume Soseki’s Wagahai wa neko de aru (I Am a Cat), Kobayashi Takiji’s Kani Kosen (Cannery Boat), and the following medley, which includes Nakahara Chuya, Dazai Osamu, and Yosano Akiko.

Let me take a break from my Lollapaloozing this weekend to note that a few days ago in Japan, the 40th anniversary of the first Nakatsugawa Folk Jamboree was commemorated with a new music festival, including several of the performers who appeared at the three legendary Nakatsugawa folk festivals back in 1969-1971. Here’s a brief English language report from the Asahi newspaper. It’s not available on-line, but the August 4 Japanese-language print edition of the Asahi carries another nice report about the event from veteran music journalist Ogura Eiji, who attended the original festivals back in the day. It isn’t just about nostalgia, he stresses.

Before I head off downtown for day two of Lollapalooza, let me leave you with a classic performance from the 1970 Nakatsugawa festival, the Japanese “god of folk music” Okabayashi Nobuyasu performing his protest anthem, “Watashitachi no nozomu mono wa” (What it is we really want). The backing band is Happy End (Hosono Haruomi, Suzuki Shigeru, Matsumoto Takashi and Otaki Eiichi), who would shortly thereafter split from Okabayashi and make Japanese rock history. This, incidentally, is probably the only surviving film we have of the original Happy End in live performance.

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.

The plan on this 4th of July is to head downtown later to hear Booker T’s set at the Taste of Chicago. What could be more patriotic than wolfing down Chicago-style dogs while grooving to “Green Onions” on Independence Day?

In the meanwhile, the brilliant Sheena Ringo has a new album out in Japan, Sanmon Goshippu. The Japan Times doesn’t like it much: check out their review here. Theｙ complain that the new CD doesn’t sound much like her early brilliant solo work, but this somehow becomes a sign that Sheena is repeating herself. Having not heard the new album yet, I can’t say much (my copy is on order), but given the reviewer’s dismissal of Sheena’s fine band Tokyo Jihen, I doubt we’ll agree on much else.

Finally, the Asahi newspaper is reporting (Japanese-language only) that a new notebook has surfaced in which Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) collected haiku composed by himself and other members of his circle, including Natsume Soseki, Takahama Kyoshi, and many others. Many of the poems included in it have not previously been published. If you’re still searching for that topic for your dissertation in Japanese literature….