My cable company just added two more music channels, meaning I have six total music channels to be upset about. But I agree with those new Wieden + Kennedy ads: MTV blows me. For all those people who whine about “I remember when MTV played videos,” I challenge you to spend time watching a music video from start to finish. You are also probably remembering back when “pop music was good.”

Since the Japanese music market is melting down like a butterscotch sundae in a toaster oven on Venus, we are limited to singles that the genius marketing teams have determined interlock perfectly with collected consumer research. Besides Denki Groove’s videos for “Shonen Young” and “Mononoke Dance” (amazing punchline), the suits no longer greenlight anything approximating a “creative idea.” Spike Jonze would be outright rejected as an arrogant auteur for daring to come up with his own concepts. The Sukima Switches, Monkey Majiks, and Yamada Yu’s have taken over 100% — dragging J-pop into a dark hole between the poles of pop-punk and uta-hime barefoot female singers. Now the rock bands have to be salt-of-the-eath, the idols have to be unambiguously robotic, and the song titles have to stick to words that everyone knows like “Arigatou.” Seriously, can you imagine naming a song “Thank You” and then performing it in front of a camera and letting your record label show it to other people? “I Just Called to Say I Love You”? You think these kids read Keats or something?!

Objectively, however, I learn more and more about this elusive “youth generation” with every video. For example, the band Monkey Majik’s new single “Together.” Japanese youth apparently love hearing their own hack pop lyric conventions improperly coming out the mouth of Canadian English teachers. Monkey Majik are the musical equivalent of the giant posters of white people that decorate the façades of discount suit stores in the Japanese suburbs, but hey, those suit stores sell a lot of suits! Between MM, Jero, and Leah Dizon, North America seems to be the new recruiting ground for Japanese talent. The mirror phenomenon would be Japanese people moving to the USA and joining the American Enterprise Institute.

More seriously, the new Kato Miriya — sorry, Kato Miliyah — song “19 Memories” is probably our greatest possible window into the female Japanese psyche. First and most importantly, the song “samples” Amuro Namie’s “Sweet 19 Blues,” which only came out 11 years ago and is probably the worst Amuro Namie song of that era. Miriya must have heard from a friend that recent “Black Music” likes to “sample,” and immediately demanded that they sample her last single for her new one. But when they told her to sample an “old song,” she went all the way back to her roots in 1996, when she was 8.
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In the September 2007 issue of Rolling Stone Japan, contributing editor and Beikoku Ongaku founder Kawasaki Daisuke offered something brand new for Japan: a list of the 100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time. While these master rankings are part and parcel for RS in the United States, Japanese magazines have intentionally avoided compiling such a useful service for those hoping to bone up on local rock history. Kawasaki explains why:

The Japanese music magazine industry resembles what existed in America before the rise of Rolling Stone. That’s to say, record companies — the main advertisers — see their wishes strongly reflected on every page, and because of this, magazines’ main job is to praise new releases. Is that why we’ve never seen one of these lists? It’s a strange situation, almost like the entire industry is infected with the idea that they should not rank releases because it would “make the record companies angry.” But even with Japanese mystery novels, for example, those chosen by critics in the “Best Ranking” become very popular, and rankings are used as a buyer’s guide. Japanese rock music is an even bigger market than mystery novels, so isn’t it strange that there are no trustworthy “Best Ranking Lists”? We must change this ridiculous situation into something more normal.

Besides rare exceptions, Japanese music magazines very rarely give critical or numerical reviews to new music. When Rockin’ On Japan sells the cover story to the highest bidder, there’s no way they can then give that featured record one-and-a-half stars. Within Rolling Stone Japan’s somewhat foreign format, however, editors had wiggle room for an attempt at numerical review — at least in a retrospective manner.

Although no list like this can be perfectly objective nor complete, RSJ were mainly aiming to start a discussion towards a canonization of Japanese recorded music. (With no backlogs of critical review in old magazines to reference, the only way to construct a list like this is basically from “scratch.”) The article does not hide its goal: “With this story, we hope to stir things up. [この特集にて、そうした状況に一石を投じたい。]”

This month, RSJ began to achieve its goal when rival magazine Snoozer felt compelled to offer up their own list of “150 Greatest Albums of Japanese Rock’n'Roll” in the December issue. (The story is oddly titled 「ロック暗黒大陸ニッポン」: “Japan - the Dark Continent of Rock.”) The editors make it sound like they were forced to make their own ranking list in order to battle the suspicious choices over at RSJ: “We have long grown tired of seeing charts that have (Happy End’s) Kazemachi Roman at the top.” Although Snoozer gave the #1 spot to RC Succession’s 『楽しい夕に』(an album not on the RS list), there is generally lots of overlap between the two lists. This, my friends, is how a canon is born!

So for your enjoyment, here is Rolling Stone Japan’s list of the 100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time. In order to give voice to the Snoozer effort, every album on both charts is followed with the Snoozer ranking position in parentheses. Artists who appear in Snoozer although with different album selections will be marked with a dagger (†), the Snoozer ranking position, and the alternate album choice.

2. RC SUCCESSION『ラプソディ』(Rhapsody) / 1980 (#52)
3. The Blue Hearts『ザ・ブルーハーツ』(The Blue Hearts) / 1987 (#20)
4. YMO『Solid State Survivor』/ 1979
   † (#142, 『BGM』)
5. Yazawa Eikichi『ゴールドラッシュ』(Gold Rush) / 1978
6. Shoukichi Kina & Champloose『喜納昌吉&チャンプルーズ』(Shoukichi Kina & Champloose) / 1977
7. Ohtaki Eiichi『ア・ロング・バケーション』 (A Long Vacation) / 1981
   † (#115, 『大瀧詠一』)
8. Fishmans『空中キャンプ』( Kuuchuu Camp) / 1996 (#3)
9. Sadistic Mika Band『黒船』(Kurofune) / 1974 (#104)
10. Cornelius『ファンタズマ』(Fantasma) / 1997 (#9)
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From the “Japan is not unique” file: U.S. magazine Vanity Fair has published a story about the pedophilic tendencies of American boy-band Svengali Lou Pearlman. Although I should not have to explain the problem with pressuring your stable of overambitious teenage employees to perform sexual favors, Japan’s parallel figure to Pearlman — Johnny Kitagawa of Johnny’s Jimusho — still rakes in the millions and basks in public glory in spite of engaging in very similar behavior for nearly a half-century.

At a basic level, the two impresarios seem to be driven by the same joys of wealth, power, and underage sexual activity. The only difference is reception of these deeds in their respective markets. The venerable, corporate-backed magazine Vanity Fair has exposed Lou Pearlman’s behavior, while the mainstream media in Japan lives in abject terror of even mentioning Kitagawa’s homosexual sexual harassment cases. Glorified-tabloid Shukan Bunshun finally gave some big attention to the very old story in 2000 and were greeted with a libel lawsuit from Johnny’s and little-to-no support from the rest of the media.

Vanity Fair may feel the duty to expose injustice with their investigative journalism, but let’s be perfectly frank here: they’re only breaking this story now because Pearlman’s reign of terror on the pop market is ancient history. This journalistic attack has no threat of financial hurt to Condé Nast. Pearlman is a dog and is down and is being kicked.

Johnny’s Jimusho, on the other hand, still provides the Japanese media world with billions of yen every year. Television stations and magazines do not protect Johnny’s Jimusho out of a sense of loyalty, honor, dignity, or a literal cowardice. Truth be told, most record labels and media organizations loathe Johnny’s and their ridiculously selfish demands.

Everything is simply about money. I know that Japanese business is supposed to operate on some higher power than the bottom line, some mystical social responsibility for preserving order and harmony. But the reason that a Condé Nast-esque magazine in Japan will not attack Johnny’s or give voice to the credible witnesses is that the media lives in fear of profit decrease. Without access to Johnny’s talent, ratings may possibly go down, advertising rates drop, and television station employees’ bonuses may decrease. And don’t forget the impact on the stock price! A scoop on Johnny’s Jimusho would certainly give a media organization in Japan a short-term boost in sales, but long-term financial damage would be unavoidable.

The lesson here is clear and universal: if you are going to force your adolescent workers to participate in sexual activity, the secret method of avoiding public or legal prosecution is generating lots of money for other people. Voices of outrage only win amplification once economic relations falter.

The Romanes are a three-girl, Japanese Ramones tribute band. The vowel-reversal may have been their single deployment of imagination to date. Otherwise, they just follow the Ramones blueprints to the letter: leather jackets, perfectly-worn tight 501s, white slipons, striped shirts or Mickey Mouse prints underneath. Their identical haircuts re-imagine “Dee Dee” as a girl’s name. The Romanes’ set consists entirely of songs off 1988’s greatest hits collection Ramones Mania, but the girls have changed the lyrics into Japanese where possible. Lots of 「サイコーセラピー！サイコーセラピー！」A fan favorite is 「電撃バップ」.

(Oh wait, there is another “Romanes” operating out of Portland. Okay, let’s call it a coeval linguistic innovation. We should at least give the The Romanes [JP] credit for copying the actual Ramones and not this Oregon outfit, although I am sure we’d somehow like it more if they were a tribute band to a tribute band.)

The Romanes are terrible musicians. I don’t mean this in a pejorative sense. Half of the shtick of being a female Ramones tribute band in Japan is apparently preserving the original band’s amateur spirit through a dedicated program of non-improvement. Despite the fact that the real Ramones were an incredibly tight music machine by their first record, the idea of “poor musicianship” now looms large in the legend, and thus, must be adopted into the uniform. I overheard someone tell the girls that they “shouldn’t try to get better.” They seem to be heeding the advice. The Romanes may be the first band I have ever seen in practice-makes-perfect Japan where the guitarist and bassists unintentionally end a song in different keys.

Certainly, the Romanes are not any more substantial than something like The Punkles or maybe even Takahashi Jun’s semi-legendary non-band Tokyo Sex Pistols. While Takahashi may have reached enough success with Undercover to want to destroy all memories of TSP, the Romanes are happy to be the Romanes, signed to legitimate indie label Vivid Sound and tearing up the Tokyo “live house” scene. (”They are very popular with people who like the Ramones,” a friend informs me) The Punkles may be essentially a daft joke — beaming with humor to excuse the low added-value of their endeavour — but the Romanes don’t radiate much glee. Maybe it’s the adoption of N.Y.C. Ramones toughness, but they seem pretty serious about being serious.
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As if Mos didn’t have enough problems being unable to fulfill his alimony payments, now Daiso is stocking ¥100 dress socks emblazoned with his half of the main photo from the Black Star album.

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