Tats Alert

Surfing around on the net you'll only find a handful of "hits" with any editorial content for my favorite Japanese pop music star, Tatsuro Yamashita, on U.S. Google, whilst Japanese Google yields many many times that number. This blog entry might be the only non-commercial post in English about him that is readily available on the net.

Yamashita has remained at the top of the pop-rock heap for nearly three decades in his native land. And it seems as if exactly every seven years sees a release of new material. The new one, due 9/14/05 is entitled Sonorite. Here's the track listing fresh from his official Japanese site:

1. Midas Touch *
2. Mystery That Begins With a Kiss
cover of song by popular Japanese group, Ketsumeishi
3. Forever Mine *
4. Wasurenaide (Forget-me-not) *
5. Propeller
6. Bouquet for a Lucky Girl *
7. Secret Lover
8. Phoenix 2005 remix *
9 Lightning Boy
10. White Umbrella
11. Taiyo no Ekubo (Dimple of the Sun) *
12 2,000 Tons of Rain *
13. When You Wish Upon a Star *

* previously issued (perhaps one or two other tiles have also been previously released?)

FYI: Last Saturday (8/27) in the financial newspaper Nikkei (Nippon Keizai Shinbun) there was a fairly extensive interview with Yamashita, the two main points of which were:

a.) His observation that he is now 52-years-old, the same age that two legendary Japanese musicians Misora Hibari and Ishihara Yujiro were when they died. Therefore, he, Yamashita, is going to redouble his efforts to complete his many musical projects that are not yet fulfilled, and on his own terms.

b.) How much the necessity of having to switch from older technologies (digital tape, etc.) to newer (recording to hard drive, etc.) have caused him to rethink and rework the way he operates in the recording studio.

敬具

ビル・リード

Cat Blog Friday

Kuro and Montebello the Monkey

Three Scrambled epiphanies plus....

1. Duke Ellington was the first metrosexual.

2. If wishes were horses then pigs could fly.

3. "And for your next number, Herr Wittgenstein?"

. . .and for today's GUEST epiphany:

"The difference between Iraq and Vietnam: At least George Bush had an exit strategy for Vietnam." --- Randi Rhodes

Al Carmines R.I.P.

Very sad to read the New York Times (phenominally lengthy) obit for the Reverand Al Carmines in yesterday's edition. Here's an appreciation I wrote about him a couple of years ago on another web page.

AL CARMINES Playing the original cast recording of composer Al Carmines' 1967 Gertrude Stein musical, "In Circles," recently brought back all those extraordinary musicals and oratorios I saw in the 1960s at Greenwich Village's Judson Memorial Church. "Peace," "Faggot," "Wanted," "A Look at the Fifties," "About Time," etc. Among the greatest live productions I have ever witnessed, yet nearly all done on a budget of, to invoke the memory of Norma Desmond, spit and chewing gum. Several of them went on to have an Off-Broadway life of their own. Carmines wrote the music for at least two bigger budgeted productions that I know of: "Promenade," which opened uptown in New York, and another, a W.C. Fields musical starring Mickey Rooney, which went tilt out of town. My god, that stuff was great. I especially loved Carmines and Roslyn Drexler's "Home Movies" and went to see it over and over and over again. It even had a brief run Off-Bway. I never understood why "Home Movies" didn't become a classic of the American Musical Theater. Or for that matter any one of a half-dozen other Carmines/Judson shows. I wonder if there's a bootleg recordings of "Home Movies?" It doesn't really matter, though. I can still hear all the songs word for word in my head: "I Know You Sell It But Do You Eat It," "The Peanut Butter Song," etc. And who can ever forget the wonderful Drexler epigram spoken by one of the characters?: "Her fine points are as unrealized as tadpoles." I just looked Carmines up on the net and he is still with us as the associate pastor of NY's Trinity Presbyterian Church. . .instead of becoming the great white hope of the American Musical Theater as was predicted for him by some. If someone today wanted to mount a revival of "Home Movies," and did a good job of it, I'd wager they'd make a fortune. So would I, not investing in it, but making a killing on my bet.