Return to Michael
K. Bourdaghs homepage
For past entries of
“What I’m Listening To” for the year 2005, click here;
for 2004 click here; for 2003 click here.
Posted on 6/7/07:
Last night at
Shibuya-Ax, I finally managed to see Sokabe Keiichi and his band in concert. I've
been a fan of Sokabe's for six or seven years, ever
since I discovered his old band, Sunnyday
Service. They featured intelligent soft-rock ballads with a Beatlesque flare, along with a quirky sense of style. In
2000, for example, they released Future Kiss, a fine live album --
recorded at 9:00 a.m. on the playground of a local nursery school, with the
kids as audience.
Sokabe went solo in
2001, with mixed results. He reminds me a bit of Paul McCartney without his
John Lennon: a depressing tendency to get too happy and soft. He surprised me
last night, though, by coming out with a hard electric sound, in particular
during the first half of the show: lots of feedback, screaming guitars, and
nonstop energy. In particular, Sokabe seemed to be channelling the spirit of Neil Young, down to the walrus
sideburns and shoulder-length hair. He started out with a basic four-piece
group, but halfway through brought on keyboardist and two horn players -- and
the mood shifted to his pop side, albeit still with a much fatter sound than on
his recordings. The acoustic guitar only showed up once.
His group used
every showband trick in the book: playing guitar
behind the back and with the teeth, riding the shoulders of audience members
out into the crowd while playing solos, constant sing-alongs,
introduce-the-members with each playing solo
flourishes, etc. A very entertaining, high octane show: I ended up running out
of energy before they did (I also had to get up early the next morning), and so
I left after 150 minutes, with Sokabe and mates still
pounding away on stage.
Among the songs
played: "Ajisai" and "Slow Rider"
(these two were originally recorded by Sunnyday
Service), "Ai ni saretai,"
"Yumei ni naritai," "Haruko
Rock," "Jukebox Blues," "Atarashii
Uta," "Telephone Love," "Doyobi no yoru ni," "Mitsu no heya," "Maboroshi no kisetsu," and "Koibito-tachi
no rock." Not surprisingly, the playlist was
tilted heavily toward Love City, his latest CD.
My ears are still ringing.
Posted on 4/5/07:
I’ve been listening a bit lately
to the Japanese folk-singer Tomobe Masato.
Check out his website here. He debuted in the mid-1960s, after having a
semi-religious experience upon hearing Dylan’s “Like A
Rolling Stone.” He recorded with the legendary URC label in the late 1960s
(including some tracks on which he was backed by Happy End), and he remains an
activist/performer today. His new
material is surprisingly strong. I like
his 6-gatsu ame no yoru:
Chiruchiru Michiru wa album from 1987.
He has a great new song, “Speak Japanese, American,” that is just a
gut-explosion of rage at the unfairness of history: why do Japanese have to learn English to
survive, but Americans don’t have to learn Japanese? (Tomobe
conveniently provides an English-translation of the lyrics here, for all you damned Americans who don’t speak the
language).
In fact, good old underground folk seems to be making
something of a comeback in
Posted on 2/7/07:
In terms of the music industry as a whole, this will amount to less than a
drop in the ocean, but in my household (well, in the part of my household that
I directly occupy), it’s a major World Historical Event: Dave Davies, Ray’s little brother and former
lead guitarist of The Kinks, has released Fractured
Mindz, a new solo CD available only through his website. It’s the first full-length album he’s
recorded since he suffered
a major stroke back in 2004. Dave
has given us a collection of nine new songs, many of them hard rockers that
recall the power chords of the early Kinks’ singles. Some of the tracks reflect Dave’s more recent
interest in electronic trance music, as well.
I especially like “Come to the River,” a rocking blues number (watch a
video clip here). The title track, in particular, seems to work
through the fears and anger Dave went through during the long process of
recovery and rehabilitation. Anyhow, it’s
a joy to have new music from the Davies’ brothers. Big Bro’ Ray is apparently recording a
second solo album even as you read these words.
One of the joys of the new world of downloading is that you can bite into a
madeleine and suddenly recollect a song you used to
like twenty or thirty years ago, and two minutes later you’re listening to it
on your I-Pod. That is how I reconnected
recently with the wonderful, oddball music of Ellen
McIlwaine, a brilliant slide-guitarist and songwriter. In middle school, I happened to buy a
compilation, “The Guitar Album,” that contained three of her
slashing, powerful folk-blues numbers: “We
the People” (sample it here), “Losing You,” and “Sliding.” Thanks to I-Tunes, I’ve reconnected with
those songs, as well as several others, including her fierce live recording on “Ode
to Billie Joe” and “Wings of a Horse.”
She used to hang out with Jimi Hendrix back in
the day, and it would have been something to hear them play together. I also located her website and found that she is
still playing and recording today. Like
Dave, she’s well worth checking out.
And from Ellen, the feelers of my memory wrapped their way around another
cut from that same “Guitar Album”: Roy
Buchanan’s soulful “The Messiah Will Come Again,” which is also now busy saving souls
on my I-Pod…..
Posted on 12/31/06:
My best ten CDs of 2006
(drum roll, please):
10) A
many-sided tie between several new albums I’ve listened to with interest
on-line, but not yet managed to buy (in alphabetical order): Cat Power, The Greatest; The Decemberists, The Crane Wife; Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere; MISIA, “Luv Parade” (a single, actually); Outkast, Idlewild; Prince, 3121; The Raconteurs, Broken Boy Soldiers; The Who, Endless Wire; Neil Young, Living With War; Zazen Boys, Zazen Boys III
9) Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People
Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Jagged postmodern punk from
8) Cornelius, Sensuous. More experiments,
less pop than on his previous releases.
Much of the instrumentation is electronic in origin or end-product, but
the music is, well, yeah, kinda sensuous. He continues the language games that marked
his earlier work, with words reduced to almost meaningless syllables; it’s a technique
that locates him on a continuum of Japanese rock that stretches back at least
to Happy End. There’s also a sly sense
of humor hiding in tracks such as “Fit Song” and “Beep It,” with the latter
sounding like a long-lost Devo track.
7) Golden Smog, Another Fine Day New material by the supergroup
made up of members of various
6) Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins, Rabbit Fur Coat. Terrific
solo CD by the lead singer from Rilo Kiley, songs of heartbreak and passion with a nice
alt-country vibe to them. The
cover version of “Handle With Care” is handled with
great care, and the original numbers are built around striking stories: “The Big Guns” and “You Are What You Love”
stand out in particular.
5) Bob Dylan,
Modern Times . Uncle Bob turns in a nice competent set of
rockabilly. Not the earth-shattering
masterpiece that many critics made it out to be, but still a lovely present
from Uncle Bob, a fellow Minnesotan.
4) Soul Asylum, The Silver Lining. I think
it’s their best album yet, a nice come-back set from a
3) Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped. Great new music from Thurston Moore and company. I’m particular enamored of “Do You Believe in
Rapture?” and “Turquoise Boy.” One of
the highlights of my year was seeing these guys play live at the Minnesota
State Fair. Kim Gordon remains
unbelievably hot….
2) Ray Davies, Other People’s
Lives. Former
head-Kink finally (!) releases his first solo
studio album after putzing around on it for several
years—and it’s simply wonderful. It
references all stages of the Kinks’ career, from the heavy guitar sound of the
early singles to the ethereal pop sound and social commentary of the late 1960s
to the American hard rock sound of the 1980s.
The first four tunes on it are particularly strong, and there isn’t a
bad song on it. “Thanksgiving Day” is
the hidden bonus track, and it alone is worth the price of admission: only Ray could capture both the joy and
sorrow of
1)
Posted on 12/7/06:
I’ve been listening lately to Zazen Boys, the brainchild of Mukai Shutoku, former leader of the
band Number
Girl. I saw them in concert last week in
Sendai (well, due to other commitments, I actually only managed to catch the
last three songs plus encore from their set), and I’ve been listening to their
2003 debut album Zazen Boys and their 2005
maxi-single, “Himitsu Girl Top Secret.” I’m also intrigued by the fact that they
recorded a cover of “Emotional Rescue” for a Japanese tribute album to the Rolling Stones,
but I suppose stranger things have happened….
I find their sound quite nostalgic, actually: I spent much of the years 1979-1981 listening
to “No Wave” bands like Richard Hell
and the Voidoids or James Chance and the Contortions,
and that’s clearly the aesthetic here.
The typical Zazen Boys’ number features sudden
rhythm changes, angular guitar chord patterns, and howling vocals. Mukai can actually
sing, too, when he wants to; he also sometimes likes to deliver his words in a hyperwarp-speed spoken voice. Ahito Inazawa, the drummer on the debut album, is perhaps the
finest percussionist in Japanese rock today (another former member of Number
Girl, he left Zazen Boys a year ago,
unfortunately). The lyrics are crawling
with angst, of course, though they often offer up a sly sense of humor: the lyrics to the song “Brain Construction,”
for example, consist of those two words repeated over and over. There is also an
deeply buried strain of James Brown funk in the music here, though you have to
dig pretty deep to get at it.
If Frank Zappa had grown up hanging out at CBGBs
in the 1970s, instead of
Posted on 10/20/06:
For music fans, YouTube.com has become
a miraculous flea market where you can browse a completely random selection of genres,
styles, and eras. This is equally true
for fans of Japanese pop. For example,
from roughly 1989 to 1992,
Any number of great Japanese bands
from the 1990s got their start on the show:
Little Creatures, Flying Kids, Begin, etc. Maybe the greatest of them all was Tama, a
bizarre and wonderful folk-rock outfit whose goofy appearance and dark lyrics
took the show by storm – they were Ikaten champions for many weeks in a row. You can watch their Ikaten debut here, including the baffled
host’s attempt to interview them and their performance of the song “Ranchiu.” And here
they are in subsequent weeks, performing such remarkable numbers as “Sayonara
Jinrui” (Farewell, human race),
“Roshia no pan” (Russian bread), “Machiawase” (Meeting), and “Dance
of Ozone.” Video killed the radio star, and now thanks to YouTube,
we can all witness the crime over and over again….
Posted on 9/16/06:
Bob Dylan has put out a nice, competent
little rockabilly album, Modern Times.
As you’d expect, the lyrics sometimes show flashes of brilliance. His singing voice is still distinctive, but
of course at this stage in his career, it’s pretty much shot. The tunes themselves are enjoyable, if not particularly
memorable. Again, “competent” seems the
apt adjective here. All in all, it’s great to have solid new work from Dylan
today, and that should be enough.
But that’s not enough for many critics. Apparently, the new CD has to be a nonpareil
masterpiece produced by a genius still at the peak of his creative powers. What a load of bullshit! There’s something pathological going on here
that’s not good for Dylan and not good for the critics, either: an inability to acknowledge aging and
death. A certain generation of critics has
staked its own relevance on Dylan: as
long as he remains pertinent, they seem to think, so do we. Dylan has become, that is, the cultural
equivalent of Viagra. Kate Sullivan of the LA Weekly wrote a terrific column on this problem. As I’ve written here before, I think we’re caught
up in a similar vicious circle with Prince: every
one of his recent releases (all of which were decent, if not spectacular,
pieces of work) is greeted as the real comeback masterpiece – in breathless
tones, we’re told, Prince is back,
and we’re supposed to forget that we were told the same thing about the last
CD, a year or two earlier.
Folks, it’s okay to grow old. I’m actually a big fan of late-career
musicians: I habitually buy up new
releases by people like Brian
Wilson, Ray Davies, Paul
McCartney, and I was a huge admirer of Alberta Hunter when she resumed her recording
career in her seventies. These artists have
something to tell us, and not surprisingly they bring great skill and knowledge
to their craft. In other words, there
are still some embers burning in there, mixed in with the ashes. But they shouldn’t still be obligated to save
the world; that task properly belongs to the young—and they can have it.
Posted on 8/4/06:
I was lucky enough to grow up in
Lately, a number of the bands I followed back then have
reemerged with new music. What makes this even better is that none of it
sucks. I already wrote here earlier this year about the fine new studio
album that the Flamin' Ohs released last year.
Since then, the surviving members of the Replacements have also reunited to
record two new songs, "Message to the Boys" and "Pool &
Dive," for inclusion on their new best-of collection, Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? Neither is a timeless
masterpiece, but both sit comfortably alongside the material the band recorded
at its peak. They both have that great, sloppy Replacements' feel. They're, uhm, fun -- you
know?
Soul Asylum has also reemerged with a new album, The Silver Lining. Most of it was
recorded before the death of founding member Karl Mueller last year.
Unfortunately, somebody decided to make "Stand Up and Be Strong" the
lead-off single. It's probably the weakest track on the album, a completely
predictable song that seems designed mostly to fit into conservative AOR FM
radio playlists. I really like most of the
other songs, though, and think this might be the band's best album yet.
Golden Smog is a kind of supergroup
made up of members from a number of Minnesota bands -- Soul Asylum, the Jayhawks, Run Westy Run, the
Replacements (and one foreign band: Wilco, from
Chicago). Their new album, Another Fine Day, is just terrific.
It not only contains a number of sly Kinks' references (the descending piano
chords from "You Make It Easy," for example, which
evoke "
Posted on 6/27/06:
Misora Hibari, Tokusen Original Best Hit kyokushû Vol. 3, 1967-1989
For popular
singers who enjoy careers that last several
decades, there seems to be a fairly typical three-act structure to their
professional lives:
Act
One: The original burst of creativity, when everything comes easy and the
hits are as plentiful as strawberries in early summer.
Act
Two: The hits dry up, the voice loses range, and the songs and
arrangements become stale and hackneyed. Desperate attempts are made to
revive Act One--for example, updated versions of earlier hits are
recorded. All for naught, though: the singer comes to
be viewed as an embarrassing has-been.
Act
Three: The singer stops chasing after the youth market. Instead,
there is a new attention to craft, both in the singing and in the musical
arrangements. The singer's image shifts from has-been to elder
statesman/woman, and young musicians and producers clamor to work with
him/her.
This
pattern fits Sinatra, Dylan, Ray Davies, and many others--including
the great Misora Hibari.
This
3-CD set (the final in a three-box series that anthologizes Hibari's entire career) covers Acts Two and Three in her
life. The first two discs cover the fallow period, from the mid-1960s
through the late 1970s. There are some songs of note here--for
example, "Makka na Taiyô"
(Crimson red sun, 1967), her most successful attempt to sing in the Group
Sounds rock-and-roll style, and "Tsuki no yogisha" (Night train and the moon, 1975), the
number that underground folk legend Okabayashi Nobuyasu composed for her. Mostly, though, what we
hear on these disks are the narrowing of Hibari's
vocal range, the hardening of her singing style into cliché, and
increasingly rote enka-style musical arrangements.
Things begin to
change around 1980--with the pieces included on disk three of this set.
Songs like "Miren no sake" (Wine of regret,
1980) are still conventional enka, but the singing
and the arrangements show a renewed dedication to craft. We also start
hearing new instruments and styles -- notably the wonderful, jazzy "Waratte yo moonlight" (Smile
for me moonlight, 1983) that Sakamoto Ryûichi arranged for Hibari. And finally we arrive at those
astonishing final singles, "Midaregami"
(Tangled hair, 1987) and "Kawa no nagare no yô ni"
(Like the river flows, 1989), recorded just before her death.
Posted on 6/12/06:
Sing Sing Sing: Shôwa
no jazu meishôsen 1928-1962 (Victor) is an
intelligent sampling of Japanese jazz vocal music from across several
decades. The 2-CD set stretches from Futamura Teiichi’s wonderful hits
from the late 1920s and early 1930s, including his versions of “My Blue Heaven”
and “Song of Araby,” to such mainstays of postwar
popular song as the Duke Aces, the Three Graces, and Frank Nagai. The revelation here for me were the numbers
sung by the American Nissei singer Helen Sumida, who
laid down a total of 16 tracks during her 1934-36 stay in Japan. Sumida was one of several Japanese-American singers
who came to
Posted on 5/24/06:
Back in 1984, when I first came to Japan as
an undergrad exchange student, my dorm roommate Honda-kun and I immediately
discovered a shared love for rock music.
I’d brought my tapes of the Kinks, the Who, Prince, the Clash, and a
slew of unknown
Posted on 4/18/06:
I've been
listening a good deal lately to the underground folk/rock legend, Hayakawa
Yoshio. I saw him perform last week
at The Doors, a small livehouse near Shinjuku, and in the days leading up to that
I refamiliarized
myself with his musical output. Hayakawa first drew attention back in the
mid-1960s as the leader of The Jacks, a folk-rock group that featured an
alienated, often cacophonous sound that included elements of psychedelica (fuzz guitar, for example) and jazz (e.g., the
drumming, which aims more at providing color than rhythm). Their first
album, Jakkusu no sekai
(Jack's World, also known as Vacant
World, originally released in 1968), includes such remarkable anti-pop
classics as "Marianne" and "Love Generation." The
second album, Jakkusu no kiseki (Jacks' Miracle, 1968), is a bit
more conventional, but still worth your while..
After that band broke up, Hayakawa signed to the URC
label as a solo act. His debut album with them, Kakko ii koto wa nan ka kakko
warui darô (Cool things are so uncool,
1969), represented a sharp change of direction. Most of the pieces consist
of Hayakawa singing to bare piano accompaniment, slow songs that sound vaguely
like sophisticated French pop from the 1960s (Jacques Brel, Serge Gainsbourg,
etc.). The songs are mournful: it's always rainy and cold, and
someone's always dying. Or wishing they were dead.
That was the last I'd heard of Hayakawa's music.
He retired and ran a bookstore and published books for a few years before
returning to music. His new stuff, at least as evidenced by last week's
concert, sounds like a continuation of his early solo work, but he's clearly a
much happier man these days. In concert, he played piano and sung, and
was accompanied by Honzi, a violinist who also
sometimes played that recorder-thing that looks like a Breathalizer
with a keyboard attached to it. Hayakawa looked remarkably fit for a man
who must be near sixty, and he sang and played with great joy and
passion. The small bar was packed with hipsters of all age,
all dressed in black, all hanging onto the great man's every word. You shoulda been there.
Posted on 3/5/06:
For fans of the Kinks,
2004 was a disastrous year: in January, Ray Davies was shot by a mugger
in
2005 was similarly glum, in that both brothers spent
much of the year recovering. 2006, on the other hand, is looking
up. Ray has just released his
first solo studio album, Other People's Lives, and it's a
marvelous piece of work. It slyly alludes to all of the different musical
styles he's explored over the decades -- the crunching guitar chords on
"The Tourist," the wistful pop melody and nostalgia of "Is There
Life After Breakfast?," the music-hall brass section on "Next Door Neighbour," the sharp-edged pop rock of "Run Away
From Time," etc., etc. "Thanksgiving Day," the hidden
bonus track, is a brilliant paean to the sadness at the heart of contemporary
American culture. Some of the songs sound like latter-day Dylan (e.g.,
"Over My Head" and "The Getaway [Lonesome Train]") as if
Ray were hoping to see the sort of December revival that Mr. Zimmerman has
enjoyed of late.
If that weren't enough, Dave has just issued Kinked, a compilation of his
recent music that includes a lively new composition, "God in My
Brain," that may well be the first rock song ever recorded about the
experience of having a stroke. The other tunes included are well
selected, the real highlights of his sometimes uneven solo releases, which
makes this a fine CD collection: "Fortis Green" and "Unfinished
Business," for example, can sit comfortably alongside the best work of the
Kinks.
To paraphrase Pete Townshend, got a feeling '06 is gonna be a good year....
Posted on 2/16/06:
I've been allowing myself to wallow in mid-1970s pop as of late.
For those of you keeping score on your nostalgia tracking sheets, this for for me means middle school and the early years of high
school. On CD, I recently purchased the Best of David Essex because I had a powerful
hankering to hear his 1973 "Rock On" again. The song is just as
cool as I remember it to be.
Mostly, though, I've been using my new iPod and iTunes to scratch this
particular itch. Those 99 cent downloads are hard to resist, especially
when you can score such tasty snacks as Paper Lace's "The Night Chicago Died,"
The Bay City Rollers' "Saturday
Night," Blues Image's "Ride Captain Ride," and Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the
Middle with You." And those are just the titles I'm not too
embarrassed to 'fess up about.
As for newer
stuff, I've been listening via Yahoo! Music Engine to new releases by Cat Power, The Elected, and The Magic Numbers--all of it intriguing. I
doubt, though, that thirty years from now I'll wake up in the middle of the night
with a burning desire to hear any of it -- as happened recently with Janis Ian's "At Seventeen"
and Golden Earring's "Radar Love"
(both of which have recently taken up residence on my iPod,
of course). Now if I could only find a place to download Blue Swede's version of "Hooked
on a Feeling" (the one with the "ooga ooga ooga chaka"
hook) or the Five Man Electrical Band's "Signs".... For shame, for shame.
Posted on 1/14/06:
During my recent trip back to
The Flamin' Oh's (also know at different times as
Flamingo and The Oh's) were one of the most popular bands in town. They
put out an infectious strain of Midwest garage pop-rock that skirted along the
edges of New Wave without ever fully crossing over into that territory--think
along the lines of, say, Cheap Trick or Tom Petty & The
Heartbreakers. They had a few local radio hits back in the day, but never
broke out nationally. The band has reunited in recent years, and now has
put out Long Live the King, a collection of new material by their
resident singer-songwriter, Robert Wilkinson. I bought it with low
expectations, but was bowled over when I listened to it. It's quite good
-- many of the songs stand alongside the band's best material.
The Hypstrz were (are)
a terrific dance party band. They specialized in rave-up versions of '60s
American garage rock and soul, all played at warp speed with little or no break
between songs. I remember a comment a friend made after retreating from
the dance floor at one of their shows back in about 1981: "It's like
you forget to breathe out there." Listening to Live at the Longhorn: The Complete Recordings, a re-issue of a 1979
live recording with added bonus tracks, you'll know why.
For
a list of all my recent CD acquisitions, see here.