Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

If like me you grew up a Beatlemaniac, the release this month of Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records, a compilation of recordings by the other artists signed to the Beatles’ indie label Apple is a revelation. We finally get to hear music we’ve been reading about for decades—Jackie Lomax’s “Sour Milk Sea??? (1968), written and produced by George Harrison, for example, or the original studio version of Billy Preston’s “That’s The Way God Planned It??? (1969), a song we know from the scintillating live performance at The Concert for Bangladesh.

Some of the material is very familiar (Badfinger’s hits, for example, or James’ Taylor’s debut single, “Carolina on My Mind???), but much of it is new to my ears: Trash, Brute Force, Lon & Derrek van Eaton, Doris Troy, etc. And it all starts off with Mary Hopkins’ beloved Klezmer-meets-The-Band smash hit from 1968, “Those Were the Days.”

I have about 20,000 songs stored on my I-Pod. A few months ago, I became haunted by the bizarre notion that I should listen to them all at least once: some vague idea about the ethics of ownership, about taking responsibility for music that I’d decided to hoard. I started going out of my way to listen to tracks with a 0 play count, proceeding alphabetically by artist name.

I’d gotten up to K with that method. But I was faltering, because this procedure required me to devote, for example, several days to listening solely to the Beatles or Blur. I’d get bored listening over and over to the same artist. Wasn’t there a better way?

I finally figured it out this past Monday: I’ve created a “Smart Playlist” consisting of all the songs that have zero plays (excluding those from the genres of classical and podcast) and then use the “shuffle songs” setting when I play it. The I-Pod now randomly plays songs from the list and, because I used the “live update” setting, it eliminates them from the collection once they been played. I started out with about 3500 songs in the playlist; that’s down to 3300 at this point.

You can’t imagine how pleased I am with myself over this technological breakthrough. I’m exploring the nether regions of my music collection, skipping around from artist to artist so rapidly that I never find any particular style tedious.

While typing in this entry, I’ve listened too:

“All Night Stand,” The Kinks (bootleg unreleased demo)
??????, Southern All Stars
“Love’s Gonna Walk Out on Me,” Toots and the Maytals
“COLORS,” Utada Hikaru

Four down, 3296 to go…. I’m so excited about this.

It’s kinda sad, really.

It’s been a jumbled week, with little time for arranging thoughts into anything so orderly as sentences.

A week ago Thursday, I made my first visit of the season to Symphony Center to see Jaap van Zweden lead the local favorites in a very fine program of Mahler, Shostakovich, and John Luther Adams. Both Andrew Patner of the Sun-Times and and John von Rhein of the Tribune loved the Shostakovich but had reservations about the Adams and the Mahler, but I heard it the other way around. My usual bad taste, of course.

Adams’ “Dark Waves” was a hypnotic piece, a single sustained wave of sound that develops details of texture and dynamics across its twelve minutes. Adams was in the house and took a bow with the orchestra after the piece. The Mahler consisted of four songs from his “Des Knaben Wunderhorn,” in which the composer wears his charming hat, as opposed to his bombastic helmet (think, for example, of the last movement from his Fourth Symphony). Measha Brueggergosman was the guest vocalist, and she performed with grace and wit. Patner and von Rhein complained about her vocal chops, but my only fear was that we might all be blinded: she wore a shiny all-platinum dress and I thought somebody might take a flash picture. The program closed with Shostakovich’s magnificent (and seldom played) Symphony No. 8 in C minor. The local newspaper critics both fall over themselves in their rush to praise the performance, but I thought the long first movement was rather perfunctory. It did come to life in the latter half, though, with particularly brilliant performances from the woodwinds.

I’ll be back to see the Chicago Symphony again in early December, when Pierre Boulez conducts Janá??ek and Schoenberg: more glorious twentieth-century classical. I can’t wait.

In the meanwhile, out there in the world there appears to have been an election of some sort. Why anyone would hand the keys back to the same people who crashed the car two years ago is a mystery to me, but then again democracy always is a little bit mysterious.

David Byrne, in the meanwhile, is marrying folks in NYC. Stew is out on the road, playing gigs (he’ll be here in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art next week). And Dave Davies makes it painfully clear that the Kinks won’t be reuniting anytime soon.

Older brother Ray, on the other hand, continues touring in Europe. Let me leave you with some fan video from Sunday night in Paris and Monday night in Amsterdam. Here’s hoping next week is a quiet one, for you and me both.

We held the memorial service for my father yesterday afternoon in St. Paul at Dayton Ave. Presbyterian Church. That is the church my family attended when I was young. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon in Minnesota, and the whole service was touching and celebratory. Many old friends and family attended (more than we expected: we ran out of bulletins), and they told stories about the good my father did in his life. I was glad, in particular, that my children could learn about the work my dad did on behalf of the poor, the afflicted, the ostracized.

It’s a strange boast, perhaps, but I always liked that fact that my father was on a first-name basis with every panhandler in St. Paul and Minneapolis. He knew them not as cases (he was a social worker), but as human beings. He genuinely liked them and, perhaps even more remarkably, they liked him.

Here is what I said during yesterday’s service:

My dad always told a story about when he was a student at the University of Wisconsin at River Falls when I was born in 1961. He had a keen interest in history, and his professors thought he had real potential to become a historian. One of them even offered to get him into graduate school with a full scholarship. But with a wife and a child, Dad felt he needed to go into something that was more likely to provide a stable income to support his family. He chose to major in sociology and launched into a career as a social worker that was devoted to helping people who needed a hand: ex-convicts, poor people, veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress. It was a life spent serving others.

He never forgot that he was a frustrated history professor, though. He always enjoyed reading history. And as for me, from about the age of five, when we were driving somewhere or out for a walk, I’d find myself being drilled with questions about history: could I name the presidents in order? Who was the first governor of Minnesota? Which American secretary of state bought Alaska from Russia? So I figured out from a pretty young age that I was supposed to grow up and become a history professor.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: I’m now a professor of Japanese literature and culture, and if you read my work you’ll see that I’m really a historian in disguise. This past summer, I finished writing a history of popular music in Japan, and I was planning to surprise my dad next year when the book is published, because it is dedicated to him. My dad is the one who opened my ears to the pleasures of listening to strange music. When I was a child, he brought home LPs for us to listen to that sounded nothing like the music they played on KDWB or WDGY. He brought home copies of Alan Lomax’s field recordings from the American south, the strange blues music of Taj Mahal, the folk songs of Buffy Sainte Marie. One of the lessons he taught me is not to be afraid of the world out there, that when you hear strange music, don’t run away: if you give it a chance, you might end up liking it. It was a lesson that set me up to write the book about music in Japan decades later.

So I didn’t fall too far from the tree: I became the history professor my dad wanted to be. My father did a better job of rebelling against his father: Wilfred Bourdaghs, my grandfather and Ron’s father, was a lifelong employee of Andersen Windows in Bayport, the town where my dad grew up. Wilfred was against Ron going to college in the first place. If Wilfred had any say in the matter, my dad would have spent his life working for Andersen’s. Dad figured out how to run away from home, though: shortly after graduating from high school he enlisted for a stint in the army, where he spent time stationed in Germany, one of the great adventures of his life. It got him where he wanted to be: far, far away from Andersen Windows.

Dad suffered some hard knocks in his life. He lost his mother to cancer when he was just nine years old. Later in life, when he was just beginning to enjoy what looked like it would be a very active retirement, full of skiing and golf, playing with his grandchildren, he suffered another tough blow: during surgery, he suffered a traumatic brain injury that impacted his memory and mobility. His last seven years were hard on him. His loss hurts us all, but we also feel a sense of relief today that he doesn’t have to struggle any longer against a body that had stopped cooperating with him.

I have to say a special word of gratitude to my stepmother, Donna. My sister and I both live away from Minnesota, and during these last years, when Dad needed constant help, Donna was the one who was there, every day. She has taught me much about devotion and what it means to be a caregiver, about not giving up even when the situation seems impossible. I am eternally grateful, Donna.

My dad was a wonderful, patient grandfather who so obviously loved my children, Walter and Sonia. When I talked to him on the phone, he just wanted to hear how they were doing. He also always wanted to know how my wife Satoko was doing. He didn’t have to ask about what I was doing. He already know what I was up to, because I had become the history professor he intended for me to become.

23 years ago, my dad spoke at the funeral of his own father—the man who wanted Dad to go to work at Andersen’s. I remember vividly the conclusion of my dad’s eulogy for my grandfather that day. He said, “My father was not a famous man or a wealthy man. But he was a good man and a responsible man. I believe that his whole life he never knowingly hurt another human being.???

My dad didn’t end up working at Andersen’s, like his father wanted him to. And he didn’t end up as a history professor, like he wanted to. But he did end up a good man and a responsible man, just like his father, and I too believe that my dad his whole life never knowingly hurt another human being.

Last Tuesday afternoon, as I was driving up to Minnesota from Chicago after hearing the news, I suddenly had the unmistakable sense that my dad was there in the car with me. I couldn’t see him, of course, but I could feel his presence strongly. He was happier and more content than I had seen him in many years. Dad, rest in peace. We will miss you, but you are in a better place now, and you should know that you made the world a better place.

Bourdaghs, Ronald J. Age 73, of St. Paul, passed away suddenly on October 12. A lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, he also served in the U.S. Army and the Minnesota National Guard. He graduated from Stillwater High School and the University of Wisconsin – River Falls, and held a masters degree in social work from the University of Minnesota. He spent his life serving others, working as a clinical social worker for the Veteran’s Administration, the Hennepin County Mental Health Center, and others. He was a co-founder of People Incorporated, a Minnesota nonprofit organization providing innovative mental health services to the community. A native of Bayport, MN, he was the son of Wilfred and Clara Bourdaghs, and stepson of Alice Bourdaghs. Ron loved to ski and golf, as well as to study history. He is survived by his loving wife, Donna G. Anderson; son Michael (Satoko); daughter, Jeannine (Hans Hoek); grandchildren, Walter and Sonia; brother, Lynn (De); and niece, Britta. A memorial service will be held Saturday, October 16, 2:00 P.M. at DAYTON AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 217 Mackubin Street, St. Paul. The family will greet visitors following the service. In lieu of flowers, memorials are preferred to People Incorporated or Doctors Without Borders. Bradshaw 678 South Snelling Avenue 651-698-3878

Last night, we took in the last of Aimee Mann’s weekend shows here in Chicago. It was our first visit to the Old Town School of Folk Music concert hall, a compact little room with great sight lines and sound. The entire weekend was sold out; the crowd was mostly old (like myself) and took a little while to get loosened up, but Aimee’s painfully beautiful songs won them over and earned enthusiastic standing ovations at the end.

I’ve been a fan of Aimee’s music for twenty years, but this was the first time I’d seen her in concert. She has a kind of skitterish stage presence, an absence of polish that begins to take on its own charisma as you get used to it. Through the course of the evening she carried on a running gag about what it meant for her to playing in a school of folk music. She opened the show with a solo version of “The Moth,” but then was joined by Jamie Edwards on keyboards and Paul Bryan on bass (both also sang harmony). No drummer, though Aimee did tap on a high-hat cymbal during one number (and she and Edwards dueted on recorders on another). She was in magnificent voice all night, the only signs of strain coming on a few very low notes near the end of the concert.

The core of the set list consisted of a series of tunes from the musical she is currently composing based on her terrific 2005 concept album The Forgotten Arm. This included three new compositions, including the stunning “Easy to Die,” which Aimee described as the most depressing song she’s ever written. The regular set closed with several songs from the Magnolia soundtrack, including a fine jazzed up version of the old Harry Nilsson, Three Dog Night hit “One,” with pianist Edwards vamping away.

You know how when you’re a longtime fan of a musical artist, over the years you fade in and out. I’ve been following Aimee Mann for nearly two decades now, but lately I’ve been on a “fade out” cycle. I haven’t much listened to her recordings the past six months or so. But in the lead up to last night’s concert, I started listening to the CDs again and remembering why I like them so much, and then the live show performed a kind of emotional rescue on my spirits after an inexplicably depressed weekend. Like a homeopathic remedy, Aimee’s melancholic songs lifted me out of my own melancholy, and I find myself in love with her music again.

The Set List (done from memory, so it might not be exact):
The Moth
Freeway
Little Bombs
31 Today
Medicine Wheel (Aimee on the piano)
Going Through The Motions
Easy To Die (new song)
Conflicted (new song)
Eiffel Tower (new song)
I Can’t Get My Head Around It
Guys Like Me
Build That Wall
Save Me
Wise Up
One

Encore: (Aimee switched over to playing bass)
Lost in Space
Driving Sideways
Red Vines (someone in the front row was holding up a package of Red Vines licorice)
It’s Not (Aimee introduced it as the “second most depressing song I’ve ever written)

(Here’s the Chicago Tribune review of last Thursday’s show.)

My first three summers in Chicago, something always came up on Labor Day weekend to keep me away from the Chicago Jazz Festival, despite my best intentions. I was bound and determined to catch at least one evening’s worth of performances this year–and, for once, it worked out as planned. We nearly froze to death: for the first time all summer, it was actually a cold evening, but as more than one person noted, this was well suited to the “cool jazz” we were enjoying.

We arrived Friday evening at Millennium Park as the Mike LeDonne Trio with special guest saxophonist Eric Alexander were winding down a groovy, organ-driven set. This was followed by flutist Nicole Mitchell and her Black Earth ensemble, a double orchestra: two cellos, two trumpets, two drummers, two flutes, etc. They opened with a short piece and then proceeded to the main event, the premiere of a new 40-plus minute composition titled “The Arc of O.” It’s a complex piece of music, with one foot in twentieth-century classical idioms and the other in avant-garde jazz. Episodic in structure, it ranged across time signatures, styles, and keys, though there were a few repeated gestures that seemed to link the pieces together: the swelling crescendos played by the whole orchestra, for example, or emotional passages of scatting by the two vocalists. Mitchell spent most of her time conducting, though she did perform a few exciting passages on her flute. They closed their set with another short piece which she introduced as “The Arc of the Wind.”

Next up were the headliners, veteran Chicago pianist Ramsey Lewis celebrating his 75th birthday with a very sharp set by his trio (Larry Gray on bass, Leon Joyce on drums, both excellent). They opened with a creative workout on the old spiritual “Wade in the Water,” which Lewis has been playing for years. But much of the program was devoted to recent Lewis compositions, including “To Know Her….” from his recent collaboration with the Joffrey Balley. They also performed several keenly intelligent new pieces that had never been played live before–several of which don’t even have titles yet. The set featured terrific, confident interplay among the veteran musicians. For his encore Lewis turned in a very playful version of his 1966 hit, “The In Crowd,” including allusions to Chopin, the “Sex in the City” theme song, and who knows what else. At the end, the crowd serenaded Lewis with a round of “Happy Birthday to You.”

My teeth were chattering from the cold by the end of the evening. But I am delighted to have finally attended the Chicago Jazz Festival, and I look forward to many return visits in the future. Next year, I’ll try to remember to bring a jacket.

Here’s Howard Reich’s review of the evening from the Chicago Tribune. And here’s fan video of the Lewis encore:

Well, our upcoming fall concert-going season is pretty well set, and I’m looking forward to some exciting live music. Here are the events we’re planning to attend. How about you?

September 4-5: Chicago Jazz Festival (one of the nation’s premiere jazz events, and it’s all free!)

September 19: Aimee Mann (Old Town School of Folk Music)

September 25: Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Almost as good as the Chicago Jazz Festival, and it’s all free, too)

September 30: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Center; Riccardo Muti conducts Mozart and Haydn)

October 1: Eels (Metro)

October 26: Sakamoto Ryuichi (Vic Theatre)

November 13: Stew and The Negro Problem, featuring Heidi Rodewald (Museum of Contemporary Art)

December 2: Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Symphony Center; Pierre Boulez conducts Schoenberg and Janá??ek)

Yesterday, we braved the heat and humidity here in Tokyo to attend World Happiness 2010, the annual musical festival organized by the members of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Luckily, the sun stayed behind the clouds all day, making it almost bearable to be outside the whole afternoon and evening.

We arrived around 2:00, just as punksters Mongol800 were finishing up their set. This meant that we missed Love Psychedelico, who I’d really hoped to catch. Maybe next year. Arriving late meant we also had to set up our “leisure sheets” on the grass far, far back from the stage, so that we mostly watched the performers via the giant video screen.

At any rate, the first band we saw were Ohashi Trio (?????), who played a tidy set of country-rock, including a mandolin and an upright bass. They remind one a bit of Happy End back in the day. Worth exploring more in the future, I thought. They were followed by Okinawan singer Cocco, whose stage patter is a tad overly precious. But she delivered some solid J-Pop with a rock edge: imagine Bruce Springsteen as a girl raised in the Ryukyu islands. (Granted, this requires a particularly vivid imagination).

Kahimi Karie (???????) followed, doing her Brigitte Bardot imitation — in fact, the first tune she sang came complete with French lyrics. She did a set of slow-tempo chanson numbers, and was the only lead performer to sit down while singing. I like Kahimi’s breathy style and soft, melancholic songs, but on the whole, she would work better in a jazz club than in a mass outdoor setting like this.

The energy level leaped back up with the next act, Rhymester. They got the crowd going, with jokes about being the only authentic hiphop act on the bill and having to follow Kahimi Karie. They performed “Choudo Ii” and several other numbers with energy and verve. They were followed by ??? (I still don’t know how to pronounce the name of the band), another group grounded in hiphop, albeit with live instruments. Leader Ito Seiko had a terrific stage presence as they performed “Everyday is a Symphony” and other tunes.

Next up were pupa, one of the bands I really wanted to see. Formed by Takahashi Yukihiro from YMO and featuring Harada Tomoyo on vocals, pupa have released two terrific albums. Yesterday they did a fine job of reproducing their sound live: their mid-tempo melodies weave together electronic and acoustic musical instruments, male and female vocals, to produce a lush, beautiful sound. Takahashi looks more and more like the older Groucho Marx every time I see him….

Ando Yuko (??????) followed with a set of her original numbers that, I confess, I mostly sat out. A fellow has to make difficult choices, after all. But I’ve just picked up one of her CDs to make up for it.

Next came one of the acts I was most looking forward to: Moonriders (????????). Formed by Suzuki Keiichi and other former members of the band Hachimitsu Pie in the mid 1970s, they’ve been an innovative collective who’ve changed styles repeatedly. What would they look like in 2010? Unfortunately, they turned in a confused, confusing set–and perhaps were having technical problems with the sound equipment. They opened with a long drone-style jam, even before they were introduced. After about ten minutes, this morphed into the song “Kurenai futo,” complete with a vuvuzela. This was followed by “Tabula Rasa” and “I Hate You and I Love You,” among others. Kojima Mayumi joined them to performed the ending theme for the forthcoming film version of “Gegege no nyobo,” a psycho-rockabilly-ska number that is kind of a mess. Kojima stayed on to perform an updated cover version of “Never on a Sunday,” and they closed with the classic “Muscat Coconut Banana Melon.” The band seemed a bit out of it throughout their set and never really connected with the audience: disappointing.

Things picked up with Sakanaction (???????), who immediately grabbed the crowd by opening with some tribal drumming, followed by a playful allusion to YMO’s “Rydeen,” before launching into a set of their own terrific material. This was in fact their second show of the day: they’d played several hours earlier just a few train stops away at the “Summer Sonic” festival. It’s great to see a young band perform just as they are cresting, overflowing with energy and creative ideas, and they had the crowd up again. Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra then followed with one of their typical joyful, high octane sets (albeit with some technical difficulties at the start). Terrific.

Next up were one of the rarities: the veteran punk group Plastics. Their set started off a bit rough, with their minimalistic new wave sound (think B-52s or Devo) not quite connecting. But then they hit a powerful No Wave groove that carried me back to CBGB’s circa 1977, grooving to the likes of James Chance and the Contortions. A really powerful noise that had me dancing — but most of the young ‘uns didn’t seem to get it, I’m afraid.

Finally, it was the headliners, Yellow Magic Orchestra, backed by Oyamada Keigo (Cornelius) on lead guitar, with a full horn section (augmented for a few numbers by the guys from Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra). They opened with one of my favorite YMO numbers: their deconstructive take on the Beatles’ “Daytripper.” For me, the highlight of the whole day was finally getting to see Hosono Haruomi live: there is basically a whole chapter about him in my forthcoming book on Japanese popular music. He sang the opener and played bass, keyboards, and even some nifty xylophone as the evening wore on. All in all, YMO gave a fine performance, although their Sly Stone cover (“Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa”) with guest vocalist Crystal Kaye was surprisingly unfunky. The encore was another Beatles’ tune: the very appropriate “Hello Goodbye.”

The full set list:
Lotus Love (Hosono on vocals)
Daytripper
ONGAKU
TAISO (Sakamoto Ryuichi sang through a loudspeaker, issuing orders to two male dancers who joined the band onstage for this number)
Thousand Knives
Behind The Mask
Tibetan Dance
Thank You For Talkin’ To Me Africa (with Crystal Kaye on vocals)
Rydeen
Fire Cracker
Encore: Hello Goodbye (Takahashi Yukihiro on vocals)

I’ll leave you with some fan videos of YMO’s performance from yesterday:

Greetings again from Tokyo, where we continue to melt in the heat and humidity.

At the party following our workshop on early postwar Japanese literary criticism at Waseda University last week, one of the graduate student participants asked the professors attending an interesting question: at what point in your career did you start feeling like you were an actual scholar (she used the Japanese phrase ????????????) as opposed to a mere student?

I enjoyed listening to everyone’s responses. For me, I flashed back to 1994, when I was doing my dissertation research in Japan. I was interested in the connection between novelist Shimazaki Toson and the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Toson owned a couple of books by or about Bergson, and when I visited the Toson Kinenkan museum in Magome, they were kind enough to let me examine his copies. When I opened one (the 1936 Japanese translation of Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion), I was shocked when a handwritten letter dropped out from between its pages. I wasn’t the only one to be surprised: the museum curator who was helping me nearly jumped out of her shoes.

It turned out to be nothing of major importance. A simple one-page note, it was from the book’s publisher and addressed to Toson, a cover letter sent along with the complimentary review copy of the volume. But until I came across it on my scholarly quest, no one even knew of the letter’s existence. In fact, probably the last hand to touch that letter before mine was that of Toson himself, who had tucked it away into the pages of the book (which I bet he never actually read) more than half a century before.

In sum, it was about as minor an archival discovery as there could be. Yet it was undeniably an archival discovery, one that I had made and one that seemed to verify my credentials as an actual scholar of literature–at least in my own mind.

I doubt I’ll turn up anything quite as interesting on this pass through Japan, but I’ll keep my eyes open.