Birthdays
Originally posted on July 25, 2005:
A few days ago, I'm having an early dinner at a favorite restaurant on the way to a job interview, sitting across from an old friend whose name escapes me. She has curled and put her hair up for the occasion; black boots and thigh-highs attached to a garter belt. Exchanging provocative stares over a nice, quiet dinner is certainly no way to prepare for an interview for the position of Japan's very first male Tea Bitch. (In every department of almost every Japanese company, a Tea Bitch can be found. She can be called on to make and serve tea for office visitors at any moment--even if she is in the middle of filing, another known duty of the Tea Bitch. She is usually seen wearing a uniform. This is the position for which I have applied.) A waiter I’ve never seen before approaches and starts in, “good to see you again, sir, and welcome. Our specials today are marinated and grilled herring with pickled asparagus tips and a peanut soup...”, and the heated stares across the table completely lose their zeal as the recital continues, “…roasted pheasant rolled with thin slices of gingered ham…”, which makes me shoot him a hurried smile and interrupt, “I’m…bored.” The waiter exits, and like a peck on the cheek, she leans in over the table and interjects, "happy belated birthday," and ducks right back into her chair. She slips me something under the table, and I react, "yes, birthday." As I’m opening what was handed to me, I'm trying to remember when it was and how old I am this year. For a second, I consider asking her, but conclude that the selfish bitch would just think I was joking and carelessly laugh without answering anyway. I’m looking down at my gift: several professionally shot 3x5's in an envelope--some of her in lingerie and some completely nude. I take a second to look up at her with a raised eyebrow and can tell from the expression on her face that she is touching herself while watching me look at the photos. If this had been five years earlier, I would have wanted to crawl under the dinner table and enjoy the show, but the REAL me--the new me gets up and leaves early for my interview, shoving the envelope into my jacket pocket and managing a "thanks for dinner" under my breath. I sell the photos to a friend for five thousand yen three days later.
A few days ago, I'm having an early dinner at a favorite restaurant on the way to a job interview, sitting across from an old friend whose name escapes me. She has curled and put her hair up for the occasion; black boots and thigh-highs attached to a garter belt. Exchanging provocative stares over a nice, quiet dinner is certainly no way to prepare for an interview for the position of Japan's very first male Tea Bitch. (In every department of almost every Japanese company, a Tea Bitch can be found. She can be called on to make and serve tea for office visitors at any moment--even if she is in the middle of filing, another known duty of the Tea Bitch. She is usually seen wearing a uniform. This is the position for which I have applied.) A waiter I’ve never seen before approaches and starts in, “good to see you again, sir, and welcome. Our specials today are marinated and grilled herring with pickled asparagus tips and a peanut soup...”, and the heated stares across the table completely lose their zeal as the recital continues, “…roasted pheasant rolled with thin slices of gingered ham…”, which makes me shoot him a hurried smile and interrupt, “I’m…bored.” The waiter exits, and like a peck on the cheek, she leans in over the table and interjects, "happy belated birthday," and ducks right back into her chair. She slips me something under the table, and I react, "yes, birthday." As I’m opening what was handed to me, I'm trying to remember when it was and how old I am this year. For a second, I consider asking her, but conclude that the selfish bitch would just think I was joking and carelessly laugh without answering anyway. I’m looking down at my gift: several professionally shot 3x5's in an envelope--some of her in lingerie and some completely nude. I take a second to look up at her with a raised eyebrow and can tell from the expression on her face that she is touching herself while watching me look at the photos. If this had been five years earlier, I would have wanted to crawl under the dinner table and enjoy the show, but the REAL me--the new me gets up and leaves early for my interview, shoving the envelope into my jacket pocket and managing a "thanks for dinner" under my breath. I sell the photos to a friend for five thousand yen three days later.
Love Psychedelico, What's Your Excuse?
I have never liked Japanese pop or rock music...ever. Both musically
and stylistically, it reflects everything wrong with the kinds of songs
that appear in U.S. and U.K. pop charts. Nevertheless, it attracts a
great many listeners and fans (hence the name of the genre).
Back around 2000, however, I was hearing bits and pieces of something...different in CD rental stores, cafés, clubs, etc. I immediately began to research what the source of this new sound was (since, at the time, Shazam was still in its early stages of conception). After months and months of blaring J-pop boom boxes and shitty band recommendations from friends, I finally found a band I could possibly stomach, and I obsessed over it Like a diver, submerged deep in the ocean on an empty tank, struggling to reach air, I frantically rushed around to find out who they were and what they were about.
And when I did, the first listen to their then-newly released album made it all worthwhile. I mean, it does not get any better than a debut album entitled "Greatest Hits". The style of the album, from beginning to end, was something I had not heard from any other Japanese band, and the impression it gave me had little or nothing to do with the fact that almost half of its lyrics were in English. Musically, I could hear ideas within the composition of each song that sounded wholly unique, and for the first time, I was taken aback by a Japanese band, and I had no clue as to how or why...
...until recently.
Last year's release of Sheryl Crow's Detours inspired me to go back and listen to all of the albums I had missed between Sheryl Crow
and C'mon C'mon (1996-2002). I had, of course, heard all of the songs that got radio airplay, but I learned from Wildflower and Detours that it wasn't always the songs that were on the air that I enjoyed the most. (In fact, there are SOME songs that will remain nameless that reached wild popularity as singles that I literally cannot stand to listen to.)
You can imagine my dismay when discovering, while listening to this six years' worth of work, that I had actually been listening to those albums all along, but the music had simply been credited to another band. In other words, there's a thin line between "influence" and "musical plagiarism", and Love Psychedelico crossed it.
Some specific examples of where Love Psychedelico went from "flattering imitators" to "cover band" are in the styles, voicings, and studio engineering of tunes like These Days (see Strong Enough) and Everybody Needs Somebody (see There Goes the Neighborhood). It's in the guitar in I Saw You in the Rainbow (see Every Day Is a Winding Road), the vocals of LOW (see The Na-Na Song), and even compositional elements in Lady Madonna 憂鬱なるスパイダー (see Superstar).
I don't believe, however, that Love Psychedelico, are the only ones to blame for plagiarizing Crow, since, no matter how much they were influenced by Crow's work, they were facilitated by a studio that clearly made the necessary adjustments for matching their sound with hers.
To Love Psychedelico's credit though, the song that first grabbed my attention and sent me on the quest to identify them sounds nothing like anything that has come from Crow.
Back around 2000, however, I was hearing bits and pieces of something...different in CD rental stores, cafés, clubs, etc. I immediately began to research what the source of this new sound was (since, at the time, Shazam was still in its early stages of conception). After months and months of blaring J-pop boom boxes and shitty band recommendations from friends, I finally found a band I could possibly stomach, and I obsessed over it Like a diver, submerged deep in the ocean on an empty tank, struggling to reach air, I frantically rushed around to find out who they were and what they were about.
And when I did, the first listen to their then-newly released album made it all worthwhile. I mean, it does not get any better than a debut album entitled "Greatest Hits". The style of the album, from beginning to end, was something I had not heard from any other Japanese band, and the impression it gave me had little or nothing to do with the fact that almost half of its lyrics were in English. Musically, I could hear ideas within the composition of each song that sounded wholly unique, and for the first time, I was taken aback by a Japanese band, and I had no clue as to how or why...
...until recently.
Last year's release of Sheryl Crow's Detours inspired me to go back and listen to all of the albums I had missed between Sheryl Crow
and C'mon C'mon (1996-2002). I had, of course, heard all of the songs that got radio airplay, but I learned from Wildflower and Detours that it wasn't always the songs that were on the air that I enjoyed the most. (In fact, there are SOME songs that will remain nameless that reached wild popularity as singles that I literally cannot stand to listen to.)
You can imagine my dismay when discovering, while listening to this six years' worth of work, that I had actually been listening to those albums all along, but the music had simply been credited to another band. In other words, there's a thin line between "influence" and "musical plagiarism", and Love Psychedelico crossed it.
Some specific examples of where Love Psychedelico went from "flattering imitators" to "cover band" are in the styles, voicings, and studio engineering of tunes like These Days (see Strong Enough) and Everybody Needs Somebody (see There Goes the Neighborhood). It's in the guitar in I Saw You in the Rainbow (see Every Day Is a Winding Road), the vocals of LOW (see The Na-Na Song), and even compositional elements in Lady Madonna 憂鬱なるスパイダー (see Superstar).
I don't believe, however, that Love Psychedelico, are the only ones to blame for plagiarizing Crow, since, no matter how much they were influenced by Crow's work, they were facilitated by a studio that clearly made the necessary adjustments for matching their sound with hers.
To Love Psychedelico's credit though, the song that first grabbed my attention and sent me on the quest to identify them sounds nothing like anything that has come from Crow.
Off the Radar: Dash 8 Plummets from Buffalo Sky
Last Friday, an air commuter chartered by Continental Airlines disappeared from radar and radio communication without a single distress call and crashed, nose first, into a home in Buffalo, New York. The plane burst into flames on impact and claimed 50 lives, that of 45 passengers, four crew members, and one inhabitant of the home from which the plane's tail protruded 50 feet above ground resembling something out of Donnie Darko.
Late-night talk show host, David Letterman, called last month's "Miracle on the Hudson" a sign of good things to come in 2009, but one must wonder what this air crash, the deadliest since 2001, means for us. Speaking of which, perhaps the most tragic figure involved in Friday's accident is Beverly Eckert who was widowed over seven years ago when her husband, Sean Rooney, perished from the 98th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower. She was on her way to Buffalo to present a scholarship established in her husband's name. She has testified on the 9/11 Commission numerous times on a range of issues including compensation for families of victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, national defense against terrrorism, and treatment of suspected terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo. For this, President Obama calls her "an inspiration".
The second airplane accident in less than a month has many raising questions about airlines' abilities to deal effectively with nature (geese, icing, etc.) as well as aviation safety standards in the U.S. The Dash 8 is a model that has been grounded by Scandanavian Airlines System for prior safety violations.
Late-night talk show host, David Letterman, called last month's "Miracle on the Hudson" a sign of good things to come in 2009, but one must wonder what this air crash, the deadliest since 2001, means for us. Speaking of which, perhaps the most tragic figure involved in Friday's accident is Beverly Eckert who was widowed over seven years ago when her husband, Sean Rooney, perished from the 98th floor of the World Trade Center's south tower. She was on her way to Buffalo to present a scholarship established in her husband's name. She has testified on the 9/11 Commission numerous times on a range of issues including compensation for families of victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, national defense against terrrorism, and treatment of suspected terrorists imprisoned at Guantanamo. For this, President Obama calls her "an inspiration".
The second airplane accident in less than a month has many raising questions about airlines' abilities to deal effectively with nature (geese, icing, etc.) as well as aviation safety standards in the U.S. The Dash 8 is a model that has been grounded by Scandanavian Airlines System for prior safety violations.