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Chillaxing guitar with Clapton and David Gilmour

Thursday, April 23rd, 2020

Liona Boyd
L’Enfant
Sorceress
Labyrinth
Persona

Liona Boyd’s wikipedia page says that she is “often called the first lady of the guitar” with a big fat [citation needed] next to it because it’s probably not true. She has an album called First Lady of the Guitar, but using an album title to designate yourself a grandiose moniker is like trying to give yourself your own nickname the first day of junior high; it’s just kind of sad. If I was forced to designate someone as “first lady of the guitar” I guess I would probably choose Bonnie Raitt? I don’t know, the title itself is kind of demeaning, doesn’t it mean that the woman is married to her guitar? Am I overthinking this? Probably, I got a lot of free time, after all.

So who the hell is Liona Boyd and why the hell am I sharing her music? These are valid questions. Liona Boyd is a guitarist (duh) with a lengthy career that goes back to the 1970s with over 20 albums. She’s not a shredder or anything like that, she’s a classically trained guitarist who specializes in acoustic music. She primarily performs classical music, with some excursions into other, equally mellow genres. She has a lot of Christmas albums, which makes sense.

I don’t know anything about her career. I’m very sorry for all of the die-hard Liona Boyd fans out there. The songs I’m featuring by her tonight are from her 1986 album Persona. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not featuring said songs because of Boyd herself, but because of who joins her on said songs.

The tracks “L’Enfant,” “Sorceress” and “Persona” all feature guitar by Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, while “Labyrinth” includes electric guitar by one Eric Clapton. The entire album is full of guest appearances, actually. Yo-Yo Ma pops up at one point, and nearly all of the album features work by composer Michael Kamen (Lethal Weapon, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Dead Zone), performing various other instruments. He also arranged the entire album. I have to imagine that the guest spots by the two superstar guitarists were the work of Michael Kamen as well. He had worked with Clapton on the Lethal Weapon movies, and he’s worked with Gilmour quite often.

I typically can’t pick out instrumentalists just by hearing them, but I was able to guess pretty well which tracks Clapton and Gilmour played on this album without even seeing the liner notes beforehand. Sure, it helped that they’re both playing electric guitar on an album that is largely dominated by acoustic guitar, but I think that nearly everyone with even just a passing interest or knowledge in Clapton would be able to instantly recognize his style on “Labyrinth.” The obvious blues influence, the sustain, even the pacing of the notes, it all screams Clapton.

Gilmour is a bit harder to spot on a few of his tracks. I hear hints of him on “L’Enfant,” but the only reason I think he’s playing anything on “Sorceress” is because the liner notes tell me so. However, about two minutes and twenty seconds into “Persona,” an electric guitar solo kicks in that sounds like it was taken from outtakes of the “Comfortably Numb” sessions, it’s that recognizable at Gilmour’s work. It’s always hard for me to define what makes a Gilmour solo sound like David Gilmour, I guess I just know it when I hear it, like on the absolutely stellar “Pink and Velvet” by Berlin, which features one of Gilmour’s best solos of all-time. Listening to that track for the first time, I could tell instantaneously that it was Gilmour kicking out that solo. That album also features a shockingly good guest solo by Ted Nugent too. Weird record.

Again, hope everyone out there is staying as safe and as sane as humanely possible. Do whatever it takes not to go crazy. I’m trying my best and losing, so if you got any pro-tips in that area why don’t you pass them along.

 

Posted in David Gilmour, Eric Clapton | No Comments »

Radical music by Radical TV

Thursday, April 16th, 2020

Radical TV – AV Kids (complete album download)

Just when I thought that I had hunted down every Yellow Magic Orchestra associated act that ever existed, no matter how incidental their connection to the uber-influential Japanese synthpop legends was, I stumble upon something that proves that I probably have even more to find, an incredible piece of lost techno-pop that renews my entire interest in the genre: AV Kids by Radical TV.

It’s very hard to dig up information on Radical TV in English. Strike that, it’s literally impossible to dig up any information on Radical TV in English. I suspect that when this blog post is complete, it will be the most anyone has ever written about the group in English.

A quick glimpse at Radical TV’s Discogs page shows that they only have two releases to their name, this mini-album that I’m sharing tonight, and a video release that was done in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto of YMO. That video album came out in 1988, while this EP preceded it by two years. They could have more releases though, Discogs is not all-knowing and all-seeing. In fact, their Discogs page had several mistakes that I am just now fixing as I’m writing this. Originally, the album’s page only had one credited artist on it, a man by the name of Yoshifumi Ito. Now, while Ito did seem to be a predominate creative force behind the group, in the album’s liner notes he’s not even credited as a member, the only people credited as actually being part of the group were Daizaburo Harada and Haruhiko Shono. Harada performed vocals on the album, but Shono’s role is a bit of mystery. While every other performer on the record is credited, in detail, with their contributions, he is not. He’s just listed as a member of the group, and nothing else.

Neither Harada nor Shono were very prolific in music, according to Discogs anyway. Outside of Radical TV, they only have a couple of credits to their names, all of which are visual or technical. While they’re credited as composers on a few tracks, I suspect that they were primarily responsible for the visual element of the band’s performances, which was something else (and I’ll be getting to in a bit).

The group was probably Ito’s baby, it certainly sounds like other albums and artists he was working with at the time. He produced records for synthpop acts like Shi-Shonen and Hajime Tachibana, who shared Radical TV’s sampler/fairlight-heavy sound. He also played keyboards on albums by Togawa Jun and Yukihiro Takahashi, who also had a sampler heavy sound at the time. He was very prolific throughout the 80s, according to Discogs I own 43 releases in which he receives some sort of credit.

While Ito was a keyboardist, he’s not the credited keyboardist on this album. The keys here are played by Hiroaki Sugawara. He also worked with several of the artists already mentioned here, as well as Ryuichi Sakamoto. In fact, he handled the Fairlight programming for Sakamoto and David Byrne’s Academy Award winning score to The Last Emperor. So hey, he’s got that going for him.

This may be a synthpop record with keys a plenty, but it’s also an 80s pop record, which can mean only one thing – extraneous saxophone! Saxophone duties on the album were handled by Hiroyashu Yaguchi. While he had a short-lived solo career in the later half of the decade, with two albums to his name, he was much more prolific behind the scenes. He also worked with Shi-Shonen and Hajime Tachibana, and was a member another synth act from the time, Real Fish. Additionally, he played on some albums by my favorite 80s pop idol, Epo, and everyone’s favorite city pop star, Taeko Ohnuki.

Finally, the album was “executive produced” by Yukihiro Takahashi, but I think that just means he thew some money and/or keyboards at it. The album was released on the T.E.N.T. sub-label of Pony Canyon, which handled a lot of Takahashi’s (very bad) solo albums from this period. I don’t know if T.E.N.T. was a vanity label that Takahashi set up, but they were obviously strongly connected.

So, that’s a lot about the people behind this music, but how is the music itself?

It’s fan-fucking-tastic.

Given the amazing quality of this record, and the people associated with it, I’m surprised that it took me this long to discover it. This is really a quality piece of late-80s synthpop, with Fairlight-a-plenty. The instrumental opener “Shot,” has a fantastic drum machine sound and an absolutely stellar keyboard melody. This sounds like a lost YMO track, it’s so good. The quality keeps up throughout the EP. “Frontier” sounds like a perfect amalgamation of Takahashi’s (good) solo work from the first half of the 80s, thanks to Harada’s wonky vocals, and Sakamoto’s sampler-heavy sound that he experimented with on Futurista. It has a fantastic groove to it as well.

With “愛のソビエト” (Soviet Love), things slow down a bit, but that Fairlight sound shines through, and Harada drops his Takahashi impression to deliver his best vocals of the album. It’s a nice quiet bit that is immediately brought to a close with the incredible, and incredibly jarring, “XYZ,” which features Speak and Spell samples and absolutely bonkers vocals that seem to combine actual singing and cut-and-paste samples. It’s a crazy track that reminds me of Thomas Dolby’s more adventurous material and some of the stuff that Takahashi would be doing nearly a decade later, when he would get out of his late-80s nadir.

A mechanical beat serves as a backbone for the ballad “TVアイドル” (TV Idol), which is probably the most standard pop song on the record. If this one was translated into English I could imagine Howard Jones or Nik Kershaw covering it, for good or bad. The synths on this one are actually a little bland until about halfway through, when a bizarre collage of nearly-random noise breaks things up. What really keeps the song going is that 80s sax. A slow jam, but a jam nonetheless.

And then we end with a cover of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” with all vocals delivered through a vocoder, with a steel drum sound that sounds like it was taken out of Super Mario Bros. 3, because why the hell not. It’s awesome.

 

As radical (he he) as the sound of this album is, the main members of Radical TV were visual artists first and foremost. The visual element of their persona seemed to be just as, if not more, important than the music. Despite only a single EP and a collaborative video album to their name, there’s quite a bit of Radical TV video up on YouTube, and it’s all really amazing with a lot of computer video effects that were definitely cutting edge. Some of it even has a digital/”cyber” aesthetic to it that feels a decade ahead of its time.

Much of their collaboration with Sakamoto can be found on YouTube, and I really suggest checking it out. From what I can gather, their collaboration, TV War, was used as a showcase for the then brand-new Sony Jumbotron, as you can see in this video and this one. The music/soundscapes are fantastic, and it’s all a really great look at how visual artists of the 80s were using the then-nascent technology of computer graphics to create some really fabulous stuff in a style that is largely forgotten today.

The group also released a video for the track “XYZ” and while it’s not as cutting-edge as their work with Sakamoto, it’s still pretty damn awesome.

 

He-Man! By the power of Grayskull! And a digital sampler!

I say “this shit is dope” a lot, but yo, “this shit is dooope.” I hope everyone likes it.

Posted in Complete Albums | 4 Comments »

SELF-ISOLATION DISCO PARTY WHAAAAT

Thursday, April 9th, 2020

My boyfriend and I have taken the whole “not leaving the house” thing as far as we can, as things are really starting to ramp up here in Tokyo. Did you know that you can buy junk food in bulk on Amazon? Guess who has a cupboard full of potato chips, fried squid, beef jerky, and Oreos?

Yo.

We also bought a shitton of puzzles on Amazon. They’re a great way to kill the time, and we can listen to music at the same time. Right now, we’ve been burning through the massive 33 CD Encore Donna Summer box set. That thing is a monster. So many remixes and single edits. It came at just the right time for me to ingest a massive amount of music too, so at least I got that going for me, which is nice.

All that disco has certainly put me in a dance mood lately, and in the rare hours where we’re not shaking our jigsaw-solving butts to extended remixes of “Hot Stuff,” we’ve been rocking out to this album.

That’s Eurobeat Non-Stop Megamix
Michael Fortunati Mega Mix
Stock, Aitken & Waterman Mega Mix
Eurobeat is so fucking stupid I love it so much. Ironic music is for assholes, give me something that is base-level designed for mindless brain dead stupid motherfucker gay ass bullshit any day of the week, especially right now. World in shambles, society collapsing, pump these beats directly into my cerebral cortex so hard and so loud that they jackhammer all the bullshit out of my head and replace it with four on the floor beats until my brain is mush and I can’t think of anything at all. Give me shit that makes Abba seem deep. Give me shit that makes Erasure seem low-key. I want the musical equivalent of Richard Gere in American Gigolo, dumb as rocks, hot as hell, and with gay subext.

This LP of two non-stop Hi-NRGH mega-mixes certainly fits that bill. One mix for each side, on side A we got a mix of tracks by Italo Disco superstar Michael Fortunati, and on the B-side a selection of lesser-known tracks by uber-hitmaker dance music factory Stock, Aitken & Waterman, the people who brought you “You Spin Me Round,” “I Should Be So Lucky,” “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and “I Don’t Wanna Get Hurt.” Sure, most of those songs sound the same, but who cares. SAW are the Motorhead of dance music. They basically write two or three songs over and over and over again, but they’re such bangers no one complains.

I’m not that familiar with Michael Fortunati, but if this mix is any indication as to the quality or style of his work, sign me the fuck up. Great shit. “Into the Night (Slip and Slide)” is a fantastic amazing opener to this mix, and the (high) energy keeps going throughout the entirety of it. His side is actually more upbeat than the SAW side which start out with a medley of slightly more downbeat tracks by Princess. I know that she was rather popular in the UK for a bit, but I had never heard of her, and didn’t recognize any of the songs that make an appearance in the mix.

Their mix really picks up after the Princess tracks though, as it segues in Hazell Dean’s absolutely lovely “Whatever I Do (Wherever I Go).” I only recently discovered Dean’s music (this type of stuff never broke through in the states) and damn it’s good. No wonder she’s called the queen of Hi-NRG, she’s like a white Donna Summer on ecstasy.

From Dean the mix shifts hard into “I’m So Beautiful” by Divine. Yes, that Divine. Divine was a fantastic drag queen and a wonderful actor. She could not sing. Like, not even a little bit. But she owned it. And her horrible raspy, driveway gravel of a voice ends up somehow working in the end. Maybe just by sheer willpower or a complete lack of anything even remotely resembling shame. Gotta respect that level of not giving a fuck.

Fellow drag artist Lana Pellay closes things out with her single “Pistol In My Pocket.” I’m not 100% sure I’m using the right pronouns with Lana, who also goes by the name of Al from what I’ve read? Please forgive me if I’m fucking up here, it’s not out of disrespect. This song slaps. She can certainly sing better than Divine, but I think I like the message of Divine’s “I’m So Beautiful” more than this track. There’s something about a morbidly obese drag queen screaming violently at me to tell me that she, and I, are beautiful that I just get with on a deep, philosophical level.

Although I do love “Pistol In My Pocket.” It’s basically a prolonged dick joke and I can get behind that.

When this whole thing ends let’s gay dance party outside, okay?

Posted in Complete Albums | 3 Comments »

Not keeping it together, no matter how many times Madonna tells me to

Tuesday, April 7th, 2020

No need to comment on the current events. Things are bad and they’re about to get worse. Short post tonight too. I wanted to write a bit more but every time I try to my chest starts to feel like it’s about to cave it. Panic attacks are fun.

Anyways, here’s more Madonna. Sorry it’s not better Madonna. That’ll come soon.

Madonna
Keep It Together (Single Remix)
Keep It Together (12″ Remix)
Keep It Together (12″ Mix)
Keep It Together (12″ Extended Mix)
Keep It Together [Instrumental]
Hanky Panky (Bare Bones Single Mix)
Hanky Panky (Bare Bottom 12″ Mix)

“Keep It Together” is my least-favorite single from Like A Prayer. Let’s be real, it just can’t compete with that album’s title track, “Express Yourself,” or “Cherish.” And I might be in the minority here, but I even prefer the tragic “Oh Father” and the charming “Dear Jessie” (an underrated tune) to the bassy, 90s deep funk vibe of “Keep It Together,” a sound that has not aged very well for me, perhaps because I wasn’t a very big fan of it in the first place aside from some of the stuff that Janet Jackson was doing at the time.

That’s not to say it’s a bad song. Low-tier late-80s Madonna is still high-tier pop music, it’s just not my go to jam. Good remixes though. And if, unlike me, you dig the heavy bass sound of this track then I got good news for you, because these are hella bassy. In quarantine? Crank up your apartment’s woofer and drive your fellow isolating neighbors bonkers.

Now, for “Hanky Panky”….boy, this song, huh? It’s always weird when swing jazz makes its way to the pop charts. Feels like a fluke. It’s certainly a move that only an established artist can ever get away with. And let’s be clear, Madonna really didn’t get away with it here. Sure, the song did okay on the charts but when you compare it to other singles from this time, including “Vogue,” it didn’t make the same splash and it certainly didn’t have the same kind of staying power. Still, as songs about getting your ass slapped go, it’s good enough. I’m certainly happy that she went with a retro-jazz vibe for the tune and not an overly seriously, heavy R&B vibe that she would embrace with Erotica. “Hanky Panky” is a song about a fetish, albeit a rather tame one, but it’s certainly not a sexy song. It’s a goofy song. Because singing about how you get off on getting your behind beat is inherently goofy. Trying to make it sexy would just make you sound like Meghan Trainor or something.

Enjoy the spanking song. Just remember to wash your hands before (and after) you smack it.

Posted in Madonna, remixes | 3 Comments »

Synths with my man Barry

Thursday, April 2nd, 2020

It’s April 2nd. The number of cases of coronavirus in Tokyo has just about doubled in a week, but the government still has not declared a state of emergency so people are still going to work everyday. Literally everything I see is bad news and there is no good news on the horizon. It is soul-crushing.

Let’s talk about some new music.

I’ve gotten way into synthwave lately. I’m buying almost everything that New Retro Wave has to offer at the moment. Of that, I highly recommend the latest albums by Wolfcub, Turboslash, Akuma & Tokyo Rose, and Tonebox. Yes, none of this is exceptionally original or groundbreaking but I don’t really care. It sounds good, it’s fantastic background music for writing, and it keeps me in a good headspace.

I’m also getting way into a group called Magic Sword. Their album Endless is also synthwave, but it has a bit more of an organic sound. I don’t know if they use acoustic drums, or if they just go for acoustic drum sounds. Regardless, it has a good 70s electronic vibe to it, kind of Tangerine Dream at times, and I’m into it. You can pick up their album on Joyful Noise’s website.

Video game music! A dude going by the name of Space Quest Historian has been remixing and reworking the soundtracks to the Space Quest video games by Sierra. He already did a limited release of the Space Quest IV soundtrack, and now he’s prepping his Space Quest III reworking. It’ll get a vinyl release eventually, but as of right now you can pick up a digital copy at your own price. For fans of the series, I highly recommend it.

Since I can’t go to record stores at the moment, I’ve been ordering some new releases on Amazon right now. I got the soundtrack to Link’s Awakening, which includes both the music to the original Game Boy release and the Switch remake, but I haven’t gotten around to listening to it yet. I have been listening to the new Early Years box set by Def Leppard and do enjoy that. Some good live and rare stuff on there from back when the band was more of a heavy metal group and Joe Elliot was not a good (but very energetic) vocalist.

I’m also still on my stupid old synthesizer album kick, hopefully my boyfriend (who is cooped up with me and has to hear all this shit), doesn’t mind.

Barry Leng
This is Synthesizer Sound! (Complete Album Download)
There aren’t enough Barrys in music, am I right? John Barry doesn’t count. I’m talking about first name Barrys. We only got Barry Manilow. That’s it. You don’t hear a lot of “give it up for Barry on guitars!” at concerts. Women aren’t lusting after hot lead singers named Barry. No up-and-coming Soundcloud rappers go by Barry. .

The only other Barry I can name-check in music is Barry DeVorzon. He did the fantastic score to the 1979 all-time banger classic movie The Warriors. So I guess he’d have to be my all-time number one Barry in music.

Coming in behind at number two (of two) is Barry Leng, thanks to his 1978 collection of synthesizer pop song covers, This is Synthesizer Sound! The exclamation point is in the title. I do enjoy this album, but I’m not that excited about it.

Far as I can gather, this album was released in Japan only. But many of the songs on it were on a 1974 album called
Golden Hour Of Golden Instrumental Hits Featuring The Many Moogs Of Killer Watts. As great as the name Barry Leng is, I’m going to have to say that “Killer Watts” is even better, wonder why he didn’t stick with that.

The fact that it was first released in 1974 didn’t surprise me. By 1978, the synthesizer album market was drying up, save for Japan, where they kept pumping them out until they just morphed into synthpop records. As synth albums of the mid-70s go, this one feels much more acoustic than others. A lot of the drums are acoustic, and it also features guitar and other instruments. I don’t know who’s playing those instruments, as no liner notes, English or otherwise, are included with the album. maybe Barry was a virtuoso.

He certainly was an accomplished producer. In the 1970, Barry pumped out a steady supply of mid-level disco and soft rock before striking it big in 1978, producing Amii Stewart’s hit cover of “Knock On Wood.” He would then go on to chart on the European charts some more as a producer for dance acts E’voke and Rage. It looks like he hasn’t done anything since the mid-90s though, if his Discogs credits are any indication. Hey Barry, you still out there? What are you up to?

As I said, this isn’t really entirely a synthesizer album, it’s more of a hybrid that mixes synths and more traditional instruments. It’s not the best record of its type, but I think what it lacks in originality it makes up for with production (ti sounds great) and a stellar tracklist. We get a great cover of the theme to For A Few Dollars More, a nice take on the Godfather love theme, and dope covers of “Apache,” “Help” and “Live and Let Die,” just to name a few. It also has a fantastic rendition of “Telstar,” which I’ve already mentioned is one of my favorite instrumentals of all time. Barry does it justice with his version here. I also have to call out the version of “Help.” The synthesizer work isn’t all that remarkable, but the drumming is fantastic. Ditto for “Hey Jude.” I hate “Hey Jude” but I love dope drums and this version has them in spades. The best track in terms of pure synth work is “Soul Coaxing” (google it, you know it). Very ethereal with lots of groovy pitch-bending sounds.

The album also has a cover of “Red River Rock,” another song that you definitely know even if you don’t know the name. You probably heard it on the soundtrack to Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The version on that was recorded by early synthpop act Silicon Teens. I wonder if they somehow came across Barry’s version and were inspired to create their own rendition because of it. Seems like a hell of a coincidence that two different synthesizer-based acts would decide to cover the same song so close together without one inspiring the other.

Fun music for not-so-fun times. Pipe it up loud and drown out the existential dread the best you can.

Posted in Complete Albums | 11 Comments »

Madonna for snowy isolation

Sunday, March 29th, 2020

I wrote half a post earlier this week, but things are changing so fast in Tokyo that it all became instantly irrelevant so I had to start over today. Teach me for procrastinating.

I had no reason for putting off that post, I just didn’t have the motivation I guess. Self-isolation, even with someone (my boyfriend is at my place, riding this out with me) can be draining. I moved to Tokyo because it seemed like a city with endless things to do. Each day brought upon it a new adventure, exploring the various nooks and crannies to find new and exciting places (that hopefully had good record stores). But in the course of the past two weeks, I’ve left my apartment three times. One was for a late night walk alone in a relatively deserted place, another was for an emergency grocery store run with my boyfriend. The third was a short trip across the street to a vending machine, panic buying a mountain of Coca-cola and Dr. Pepper. I try not to drink that much soda, but with everything going on, one unhealthy habit had to resurface, so I chose that one. At least I’m still able to workout at home thanks to my Ring Fit. I don’t know what I would be doing without that – probably getting mad fat. I’m used to walking about 13,000 steps a day. I don’t even want to look at my phone’s pedometer now. My steps are probably in the double digits. My world has shrank to an area about a quarter of the size of a city block. Apartment, supermarket, vending machine. That’s it.

I think this wouldn’t feel so emotionally draining if I thought that I wasn’t in it alone, but the people of Tokyo really haven’t seemed to grasp the severity of the impending situation, and the indescribable importance of isolating oneself. As of this writing, there are less than 250 reported cases in Tokyo. Now, Japan is still not doing the level of testing that is recommended by the WHO, but it’s still apparent that the virus has not really taken hold in this city yet. There just aren’t that many people who are obviously ill, and hospitals seem to be managing the ones who are just fine. That is all the more reason why isolation is important now. Before things get bad, before there is a spike in cases, people need to stay the fuck home so the virus can’t spread among those who appear to be healthy, but are harboring the virus without showing any symptoms.

A mandatory, one-to-two-week lockdown would do so much to flatten the curve and save lives. But for whatever reason, both the Tokyo government and Prime Minister Abe refuse to take that step. Instead, both issued what they called strong recommendations for people to stay home. That was it. No other action was taken. Some shops did follow the advice and have shuttered their doors this weekend, but others remained open. And while some of the most popular cherry blossom viewing spots were closed to the public, Twitter and Instagram were still full of new pics by idiots eager to take photos of the blossoms, rushing to them like moths to the flame.

Even the national news was contributing to the problem, showing a forecast of the cherry blossoms and explaining that this weekend, the weekend of the “strongly recommended” stay-at-home request, was the absolute best time to see them. NHK is owned by the government. The fact that they can’t stay on message is a travesty.

It did snow today, a lot. And it wasn’t a fun light snow that makes the cherry blossoms all the more beautiful, it was some straight-out-of-Ohio nightmare slush shit. That probably did more to keep people indoors than any government request. However, that’s only one day, and the government request was only for the weekend. Starting tomorrow, businesses will be open as usual, people will be going to work. Nothing will change. A weekend is not enough, it was a futile gesture. It’s hard now to look at the terrifying news coming out of New York City and not imagine that Tokyo will be under similar conditions in just two weeks time.

The company I teach for remains open. I am refusing to go in because the danger in doing so is apparent. It’s a private school with one-to-one lessons in confined spaces. It’s the absolute worst place to be right now. But they keep trying to justify it, to rationalize it. They say it’s safe. They’re providing masks and hand sanitizer. They’re making sure students who don’t feel well have to go home. Whatever. It’s not enough. I’m just waiting for the inevitable notice that my school will be forced to shutdown due to an instructor (or 20) getting sick. And my company will say that it was entirely unpreventable. And that will be a lie.

Sorry if all of that was redundant of my last few posts and/or depressing. It’s just where I am right now.

Sigh. Let’s listen to some Madonna.

 

Madonna
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Wet Dream Mix)
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Dreamy Drum Dub)
Bedtime Story (Orbital Mix)
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Sound Factory Mix)
Bedtime Story (Junior’s Single Mix)
Madonna save us in this time of great duress.

All of these are taken from a CD single, part of my massive haul from a few days back. Again, I think I posted these eons ago, but they were vinyl rips and these sound better.

“Bedtime Story” has aged very well, it has that 90s trip-hop alternative-dance thing going on, but in all the right ways, especially when compared to some other tracks on that album. This single also has “Survival,” and that’s some hella generic 90s white girl RnB. This has a vibe to it that was unique at the time and remains unique still. If you’re reading this blog, then you probably know this already, but this song was co-written by Björk, and it still totally sounds like it. I wish mid-90s Björk and mid-90s Madonna would’ve collaborated more. Hell, I wish both of them would’ve collaborated more with other artists at the time. I also wish that Madonna and Orbital did more work together. Their mix here is the real standout, even better than the excellent Junior Vasquez ones. When Madonna hooked up with William Orbit, she chose the wrong Orb-monikered dance act. She should’ve stuck with Orbital, or gone with The Orb (man that would’ve been rad).

Anyways, drown yourself in music, whiskey, video games, or whatever the hell is getting you through this latest chapter in our stupid apocalypse. Hope that it gets better for those in need, and worse for the bastards in charge.

And here’s hoping Abe and Trump are forced to lick Boris Johnson’s infected eyeballs.

Posted in Madonna, remixes | 2 Comments »

Anxiety, anger and Aaliyah

Saturday, March 21st, 2020

Two posts in two days is what happens when you’re trying to stay (sane) inside your home. Remember when this blog was just as much me ranting and raving about random shit that pissed me off as it was dance remixes of popular music from the 80s and 90s? Well hey, consider this post retro.

Not much has changed since yesterday, at least as far as the public knows and/or cares. There were fifty new confirmed cases in Japan, I don’t know how many in Tokyo. Fifty is a big jump, the biggest in a few days. It just goes to show that Japan has not dodged any bullet and that we are still teetering on the edge of a full-blown outbreak.

You would not know that if you went outside today though.

Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) was in full effect today. The government asked people not to go out. Some of the major viewing spots were partially closed so people could not set up picnics. Neither of these things seemed be much of a deterrent. While crowds were smaller than usual, they were still large and packed enough to make any kind of efficient social distancing impossible. Masses of people everywhere.

Many travel sites and twitter accounts were tweeting out photos of cherry blossoms as well as guides to the best (and most crowded) places. One such account is Japan Travel Advice.

Yes, this person may live in a safe, rural area, but most people in Japan do not. It is irresponsible for them to tweet out guides on cherry blossom viewing without mentioning the virus or that people should maybe just sit this year’s hanami out. I countered their advice with my own.

 

They blocked me.

It’s also worth mentioning that on their website they say the following.

Fucking irresponsible assholes. Is it safe to travel to Japan? ABSOLUTELY NOT. NO. NOT AT ALL. And even if it was (and it’s not) it wouldn’t be safe for the people of Japan for someone from another infected country to come visit them on a damn vacation. There is absolutely zero reason for anyone to come to Japan right now. And there is zero reason for anyone to go out for hanami.

Tomorrow is Sunday. The weather will be perfect. The cherry blossoms of death will be in near full bloom. I expect an entire other group of selfish pricks to go out on picnics in large groups, share drinks, share food, and share a crowded train home with hundreds of others who will do the same.

It’s too bad the people who they’re helping kill aren’t themselves.

Aaliyah
The One I Gave My Heart To (Soul Solution Club Mix)
The One I Gave My Heart To (Soul Solution Dub)
The One I Gave My Heart To (Bonus Beats)
One In A Million (Nitebreed Mongolodic Mix)
One In A Million (Armand’s Drum ‘n’ Bass Mix)
One In A Million (Geoffrey’s House Mix)
One In A Million (Wolf-D’s Big Bass Mix)
Long time back, I would always check the US iTunes store before I shared something here. I try to stick pretty hard to my “nothing in print” rule. I’ve only purposely broken it a handful of times. More recently though, I’ve also gotten in the habit of checking streaming services, since that’s how most people consume music in the year of our apocalypse, 2020.

It turns out that there’s not much of any Aaliyah on Spotify, or any streaming service, or even the US iTunes store for that matter. You can get Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number (ew) but not much else. Wonder why that is? Is there some clusterfuck regarding Aaliyah’s estate that I’m not aware of? Is this R. Kelly’s fault? Can we just blame R. Kelly regardless?

I’ll be real and say that I wasn’t a big of Aaliyah when she first burst on the scene. I was never into R. Kelly’s production style, even as a teenager. Although as a white boy teenage grunge fan in the suburbs, I really wasn’t their target audience.

I did, however, get more into her music once she split from pissface and started working with Missy and Timbaland. “One In a Million” is an classic of the era. No doubt. And it has aged very well, just like a lot of the prime R&B from that era has. While the unfortunately named “Nitebreed Mongolodic” mix of the track ain’t all that hot, “Armand’s Drum ‘n’ Bass Mix” is rad. I like it more than the original. I’m not always big on Armand Van Helden’s work, but he really nailed it out of the park here. Other mixes are tight too.

While I’ve always dug “One In A Million,” I was definitely not a fan of “The One I Gave My Heart To” when it came out. It sounds like wannabe Whitney Houston to me. I looked it up today and found out that it was written by Diane Warren because of course it was. The original version of this track screams “should be on the soundtrack to a forgettable romantic comedy.” It’s so bland.

The “Soul Solution Club Mix” fixes all the problems of the original. It opens with a fade in of Aaliyah howling, it lets you know right up front that she’s in actual, physical pain over her break-up. It takes the original version three minutes to get to that point. I’m sure the intent was to have a build-up, but by then it’s too late. The overarching blandness of the production has created a vacuum of suck that make any sort of build-up impossible.

The beat of the remix fixes this problem. Gone is the literally identical to every other mid-tempo easy-listening ballad beat that was on the radio in the mid-90s. In its place is a standard, yet effective, high-energy beat that makes the song more urgent and emotional. And yeah, the house piano chords aren’t exactly breaking new ground, even for 1998, but they certainly create a better sense of desperation and heartache than the click track beat of the original version.

And the remix has a hell of a build-up and drop that just annihilates the original. Damn.

Good remixes for bad times, enjoy.

Posted in Aaliyah, remixes | 3 Comments »

Madonna in the time of coronavirus

Friday, March 20th, 2020

Hi. How you doing.

Yup.

I thought I would use this space to write a bit about what life is like in Tokyo right now, because with the utterly disastrous situations unfolding across most of Europe, America, and, well, pretty much the rest of the world, news about Japan has fallen a bit to the wayside.

Shit here is just weird.

There’s been no massive outbreak here, no pandemic conditions. Very little panic. About a month ago they closed all the schools and theme parks, postponed all the concerts and delayed all the major sporting events. Masks have been very hard to come by, as has toilet paper (Japan was the first country to start that unnecessary bit of hoarding, always the trendsetters). As an English instructor at a major English conversation school, I haven’t been at work all month. Thankfully, I’m still getting paid, and even if I wasn’t, I’m very fortunate financially so I don’t have that issue to really worry about.

But other than that, nothing changed. Stores are all still open. A few have cut down their hours, but most haven’t. Most people still aren’t telecommuting, so the trains are all packed. Restaurants and bars are always crowded. The streets are only less crowded because of the lack of tourists. Life is just going on as normal, seemingly oblivious to the massive human tragedy and economic depression that is gripping what feels like every other person and every other country on the planet.

And the calm here might be completely unfounded! The government still has not ramped up testing to a degree that most experts find satisfactory. No one knows how many people are really sick. As of this writing, there have been only 1,670 confirmed cases of the coronavirus here in Japan, and over 700 of them were from that damn cruise ship. That sound great, and it is when compared to other countries. But only 14,000 people (at most) have been tested since the beginning of February! So who the hell knows how many people have actually gotten sick. Now, a lack of testing can’t hide dead bodies, so Japan obviously isn’t covering up an exceptionally dire situation, but how can anyone know what appropriate actions should be taken when we can’t get a clear number regarding how many people are sick?

Like I said, I haven’t been working for the entirety of March. In the beginning of the month, I treated it mostly as a vacation. There were very few cases in Japan, and the situation in most other countries wasn’t bad either. I went record shopping, had friends over for pizza and movies, drank a lot of whiskey, and so on. But since the explosion of cases in America and Europe, I feel that it’s best to practice everyone’s new favorite pastime of 2020, social distancing. I’m not going to crowded areas. I’m avoiding the train. I even stopped going to record stores.

I. Stopped. Going. To. Record. Stores.

If that doesn’t help explain to you the seriousness in which I am taking this, nothing will.

But while I’ve radically changed my behavior in hopes of keeping myself and others healthy in the ever increasing odds of a full-on explosion of cases here, I seem to be the only one. Again, stores have not closed. People are not telecommuting. Restaurants are still open. We’re in the middle of a three-day weekend now, and it’s also cherry blossom viewing season. While the government has prohibited picnics at several of the most high-profile spots. People can visit those places. And they are. En masse. And there are several other, huge, parks that don’t have any restrictions at all. Over the next two weeks, tens of thousands of people will congregate in these places and spend long periods of time together in close spaces, sharing drinks and food.

And now my employer has said that I’m supposed to return to work next week. Despite the fact that cases have yet to peak, despite the fact social distancing is the best way to reduce outbreaks, despite the fact that the threat is very far from over, they decided that it’s time for me to go back to work. Their messaging has been atrocious every step of the way and they have done nothing to make me feel like my workplace is a safe environment. As an immigrant, I don’t know my options here. I don’t know what happens to my visa if I quit. I don’t know if they can fire me. It’s equally confusing and terrifying.

I don’t have to return right away. In a strange coincidence, I got sick in an entirely unique way. While everyone else is afraid of a potentially deadly viral infection, my body decided by all hipster about it and give me a life-threatening bacterial infection. About a week ago I noticed a lump in my armpit, a few days later it swelled up to the size of a golf ball and hurt like hell, followed by red streaks on my arm. Somehow my lymph node got a bacterial infection. The doctors were so concerned about it when they saw it that they immediately injected me with a round of antibiotics, and had me come back for a second injected dosage before giving me an additional week of pills. That gives me a legit excuse to avoid work, but only for a week at most. I have no idea what I’ll do after that.

As to be expected, this is all giving me quite a bit of anxiety. And, as it should go without saying, I’m also being kept up at night with thoughts of my friends and family back in other countries, where the odds of infection are much higher. I say this should go without saying, but whenever I mention that I actually have worries and concerns about other human beings, a lot people seemed shocked at that. People are selfish sociopaths it seems.

So yeah, I got my own health problems, the possibility of becoming infected with a potentially deadly virus, thoughts of the economic impact of the pandemic, the uncertainty of the future of my job and visa, and the safety of my friends and family all running through my mind. I’m freaking out. I don’t know what to do. I’m losing my mind.

But, hey, before shit really hit the fan I managed to buy 33 Madonna CD singles and some 7″ singles too. So…yay?

Madonna
Angel (7″ Version)
Angel (Dance Remix)
Angel (Dance Remix Edit)
I’m trying to avoid using the trains right now because, well, duh. But as I said before, before things really started to get real, I was still going out a bit. I was just walking. It wasn’t that big a change for me actually, I try to walk about 13,000 steps a day. One day I decided to trek up to Coconuts Disk in Ekoda. It’s one of my top five record stores in Tokyo. Every time I go there I end up buying some weird prog LP, an awesome Japanese pop record on CD, and even the occasional tape. This trip was no different, in addition to snagging that rad Star Trek cover I shared a while back, I also managed to find the Japanese 7″ single for “Angel.”

While I’ve been an avid Madonna collector for nearly 20 years now (hi I’m gay), I only recently starting diving into 7″ collecting. They don’t always interest me, to be honest. I mostly collect singles for the remixes. That’s why I’m so into 12″ singles, they almost always have the most and best remixes, with CD singles often a close runner-up. Seven inch singles usually don’t have anything all that different aside from the radio remix, which, let’s be real, usually aren’t that different. But for those of you who really dig 7″ remixes, here you go. Enjoy the minute differences!

But the 7″ for “Angel” does have one rarity of note, an edit of the dance remix. While the full-length dance remix made its way to a few different formats over the years, I think that the 7″ edit of said remix was exclusive to the 7″ single. I could be wrong. I’m wrong a lot.

I know that the proper full-length dance remix was on CDs because the rip I’m sharing right now is from one of those CDs. If you got the dance remix from my blog eons ago, redownload it now. The CD rip sounds better, as CD rips are want to do. I found this CD at Recofan in Shibuya, another amazing store. When I saw on Twitter that they were having a sale on Madonna CD singles, I made the decision to walk all the way there and back, nearly 20,000 steps. Not gonna let something like social distancing stop my gay ass from getting my Madonna, motherfuckers.

I’m very stressed and recently bought a boatload of Madonna. Listening to Madonna makes me feel better. Expect more Madonna next week.

Stay safe out here. If your boss wants you to go to work in a pandemic kick them in the groin.

Posted in Madonna, remixes | 1 Comment »

From the turntables of Lesbos

Tuesday, March 17th, 2020

 

Nights Of Love In Lesbos
Side 1
Side 2
This is a stupid record and I own it because I’m a stupid person who buys stupid things stupidly.

Released in 1962 by Fax Records, Nights Of Love In Lesbos, promises “a frankly intimate description of a sensuous young girl’s lesbian desires.” In actuality, it is little more than a very abridged and slightly more ribald reading of Pierre Louÿs’ Songs of Bilitis, a rather well-known piece of lesbian erotica from the 1890s that Louÿs attempted to pass off as legit historical texts that he discovered and translated. He later was exposed as a fraud, but people still held the works in high regard because I guess French people of the late 1800s were really into reading about lesbians.

I have not read Songs of Bilitis in its entirety. My gay ass is not the target market I suppose. But in glancing over it, I found that this record took several extreme liberties with the source material. Male characters from the poem are excised entirely, with entire sections not related to lesbian lovemaking are torn out as well because, well, why bother with them I suppose. The erotic aspects are changed also. Whoever wrote this abridged version was very much a boob man. Boobs abound here. The narrator talks about her own breasts, the breasts of her lovers, how men are inferior because they don’t have breasts, and so on. It feels like it was written buy a guy who assumes lesbians just look in a mirror all day and get turned on by their own tits. However, while this record is all about the boobs, anything below the waist is strictly off limits. Even words like “loins” are removed. I guess they wanted to be better safe than sorry in case the law came after them.

When the time comes for the record to get down and dirty with tales of sapphic deeds, descriptions are so flowery and peppered with metaphor that a casual listener might pass over them without actually understanding what’s going on. The most explicit sexual act I could find on this album was this line: “sometimes she makes me kneel and place my hands on the bed…then she slips her little head underneath and imitates the trembling kid which sucks from the belly of its mother.” That has to be the most unerotic description of oral sex I’ve ever heard. There’s also a reference to lips opening but that might just be my pervy ass reading too much into things.

The only credit on this record is for the narrator, performing under the mononymous pseudonym “Ilona.” No one is credited with adapting the original text, and all production work is left uncredited as well. Obviously, the people who worked on the record were either too ashamed to be named, or too worried that they might face charges for obscenity.

As stupid as this record is, I think it’s an interesting historical document that showcases what passed for “scandalous” before the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and it’s a real shame that the stories behind it, and the countless records like it, are lost to time. If there is any information about the production of these records online, it’s very hard to find. Most searches for “fax records” turn up auction listings, blogs like this, or pages by dudes who collect pin-up art. If anyone out there does know any actual information about how records like this were produced and/or sold, hit me up in the comments!

I hope this softcore tale of lesbian lust helps you during these trying times. And a reminder, if you need further distractions from our virus-enduced hellscape, I have a new podcast where I talk about prog with Jeremy Parish and Elliot Long. You can check that out here.

Take care of yourselves and stay safe.

Posted in Complete Albums | 3 Comments »

Obscure covers of obscure songs (one by Jim O’Rourke!)

Friday, March 13th, 2020

So the world is on fire in like every way imaginable but the need for shameless self-promotion lives on!

I have a podcast now! I’ve teamed up with Retronaut Jeremy Parish and fellow music geek Elliot Long to work on Alexander’s Ragtime Band – a podcast all about prog rock (the one true music genre). You can listen to the first episode for free over at our Patreon page and if you like it, toss a few bucks our way so we make even more episodes about songs that have 20 minute keyboard solos.

But if you don’t like prog (for some strange reason) and would rather me ramble on about lubriciously obscure music, don’t worry this blog isn’t going anywhere.

Transmission
Telstar
Happy Holland
This is the second version of “Telstar” that I’ve shared on this blog. The first was by Japanese prog/jazz keyboardist Yutaka Mogi. That was quite an obscure track. This one even moreso. I don’t think that this has ever been shared online ever. Damn shame. It’s dope.

This is by the Dutch artist Transmission, also known as Martin Agterberg. This is his only release as Transmission, and was a single that he put out in 1977. I bought it because I recently discovered the first two solo albums that Agterberg put out under his own name, Flyer and Synshine, and dug them quite a bit. The dude has a vibe to his work, sometimes reminiscent of the Berlin School but other times really bombastic and over-the-top. I’ll probably end up sharing some of it in the future.

I really, really love this version of “Telstar.” It’s probably my favorite to date aside from the original by The Tornados. “Telstar” is a song that screams “give me a drum machine and a sequencer so I can truly come alive” and Agterberg obliges, delivering one of the most purely electronic versions of the song that had been released to date (the drumming might be acoustic, hard to say). Aside from the nearly 100% electronic production, it doesn’t vary all that much from the classic original, because why fuck with something that doesn’t need to be fucked with?

The b-side, “Happy Holland,” is…well…less good. It feels like the theme song to a 1970s Dutch game show, or the background music to a particularly unfunny Benny Hill sketch or something. Music shouldn’t be allowed to be this bouncy. This is criminal bounciness. I kind of hate it and I kind of love it.

 

Jim O’Rourke
Thanks But No Thanks (Sparks Cover)
I recently picked up an obscure compilation from 1999 called Drive From 2000. On the obi strip it advertises itself as a collection of Japanese electric pop music – so of course it opens with American Jim O’Rourke covering fellow Americans Sparks’ glam rock classic “Thanks, But No Thanks.”

At least the liner notes by the album’s producer explain the odd inclusion. Apparently the producer saw O’Rourke DJing in Japan (O’Rourke has lived here since 2000 or so), found out that he loved Japanese new wave music, and asked him to contribute a track. When he found out that O’Rourke loved Sparks, he asked him to perform a Sparks cover because he liked Sparks too. Kind of a cute story.

I wanted to see if this cover by Jim had made its way to other compilations or releases, and it seems that it’s still exclusive to this release. However, in doing my research, I found that Jim has, on multiple occasions, made his love for this track abundantly clear. Here’s a 2011 Tumblr post where he declares that “Thanks But No Thanks” might have one of the best guitar breaks ever written, and here’s a video of him performing the track on stage kind of half-live/half-karaoke style.

 

I get a big Jack White in High Fidelity vibe there. Love it. Anyways, this cover is FUCKING RAD. He absolutely nails the frantic energy of the original and it’s clear that the dude is having just as much of a blast singing it in the studio as he was on stage in that clip.

I haven’t fully digested the rest of this album yet, but I hope to share more of it in the future.

Posted in B-sides, Jim O'Rourke, Martin Agterberg | 2 Comments »

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