Monday Michiru Corner

[rostasi]

Thanks for all the feedback tonight.

Enjoyed doing it as usual and I think

some pocketbooks (do we still have those?)

may be far lighter, but what's to do until she's signed

by someone who can trust her to bring home the goods.

Anyone see her in NYC this last Monday?

Just got in tonight from a show,

so there's no reason why I can't just let this

run overnight for those that may have missed out.

hands free and tired,

Rod

[JSngry]

Looks like Dusty Groove' put up a bunch of Monday listings. http://www.dustygroove.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap...ru&issearch=yes

Most of it's already out of stock (hit the 'Send Request' button! ), but Selections '97-'00 isn't, and it is about as good as an "introductory sampler" (although by necessity it's incomplete - the woman's made so much music of so many different "genres" that a truly representative sampler would have to be a multi-disc set) of her more mature work as you're going to find, and this is about as good of a price as you're going to get on it.

For those who might be interested, you might wanna carpe diem.

[jazzbo]

Looks like Dusty Groove' put up a bunch of Monday listings. http://www.dustygroove.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap...ru&issearch=yes

Most of it's already out of stock (hit the 'Send Request' button! ), but Selections '97-'00 isn't, and it is about as good as an "introductory sampler" (although by necessity it's incomplete - the woman's made so much music of so many different "genres" that a truly representative sampler would have to be a multi-disc set) of her more mature work as you're going to find, and this is about as good of a price as you're going to get on it.

For those who might be interested, you might wanna carpe diem.

Various -- Shibuya Jazz Classics -- Monday Michiru Collection (Toshiko Akioshi) --Looks interesterating.

[JSngry]

That one's a collection of Toshiko material, mostly big band stuff from the 70s. But not all. There's one cut where a teenaged Monday plays flute. She was good! And yeah, it's an interesting enough compilation, although I don't know how much of it's really "rare" if you were keeping up w/Toshiko back in the 70s/early 80s. GREAT trio version of "Long Yellow Road", btw.

The liner notes are entirely in Japanese, I'm told, although Monday's put up a translated version on her website.

Love that cover, though!

Edited 6 May 2006 by JSngry

[jazzbo]

That one's a collection of Toshiko material, mostly big band stuff from the 70s. But not all. There's one cut where a teenaged Monday plays flute. She was good! And yeah, it's an interesting enough compilation, although I don't know how much of it's really "rare" if you were keeping up w/Toshiko back in the 70s/early 80s. GREAT trio version of "Long Yellow Road", btw.

The liner notes are entirely in Japanese, I'm told, although Monday's put up a translated version on her website.

Love that cover, though!

Yeah, I think I have a lot of that stuff. Just thought it was an intriguing idea for a compilation and I bet it's a nice liten.

[JSngry]

Not sure if anybody cares, but...

I've done a complete 180 on her lyrics. She believes in life, and so do I. Life's too short to let years of accumulated crust bury belief in life, even if it's a belief that begs to be crushed by "reality". So be it.

And I've done a complete 175 on Delicious Poison after repeated headphone listening. It's not just Really Good Pop Music, it's DAMN Good Pop Music, with a lot of sonic detail and vocal nuances that I missed on previous, semi-casual listening.

Also just got Epsiodes In Color, a flawed but ultimately touching record of intimacy with all the flaws intact. Some of the best Dave Kikoski on record here btw, that I've heard anyway. Makes you wonder what would happen if more jazz players and more pop artists would think for themselves, stop being afraid of just playing music, and stop being such damn tools of their own stupid notions of what they "ought" to be doing.

[ValerieB]

has anyone here seen the latest downbeat re monday? i haven't as yet but heard something about it. so glad she's getting some of the recognition she definitely deserves!

[JSngry]

Valerie, have you caught any of her recent NYC gigs?

[RDK]

I'm confused. So how exactly is she related to Ravi Shankar?

-_-

[ValerieB]

Valerie, have you caught any of her recent NYC gigs?

unfortunately, no, since i'm 3,000 miles away and during my recent nyc visits, she sadly wasn't appearing locally. i can't wait for the opportunity to present itself!

[jazzbo]

Not sure if anybody cares, but...

Just for the record, I care. Been distracted lately, but I care.

And you may have saved me a half a spin!

[JSngry]

Hey Free For All Paul - you've got both Optimista and Harry Whitaker's Black Renaissance, right? Listen to "Magic Ritual" off the latter and "Oasis" off the former and tell me if you think there's a little bit (or more) of harmonic similarity. This just hit me last night while listening to "Magic Ritual".

Considering that the acid-jazz "legend" of Black Renaissance began in Japan years before it did anywhere else, and considering that Monday was a pioneer of the Japanese acid-jazz scene (she was a club DJ before she started recording, I think, routinely dropping in jazz sides for dancers), I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for the similarity between tunes to be intentional.

[Free For All]

Hey Free For All Paul - you've got both Optimista and Harry Whitaker's Black Renaissance, right? Listen to "Magic Ritual" off the latter and "Oasis" off the former and tell me if you think there's a little bit (or more) of harmonic similarity. This just hit me last night while listening to "Magic Ritual".

I'll check it out and get back to you.

[Aggie87]

has anyone here seen the latest downbeat re monday? i haven't as yet but heard something about it. so glad she's getting some of the recognition she definitely deserves!

There's a nice half page article about Monday in the current issue (w/Allen Toussaint & Elvis Costello on the cover).

[Dmitry]

I just listened to an hour of streaming audio from this woman's website and I don't see what the big deal is about...

Nothing special, imo.

[rostasi]

Listen to "Magic Ritual" off the latter and "Oasis" off the former and

tell me if you think there's a little bit (or more) of harmonic similarity.

This just hit me last night while listening to "Magic Ritual".

I can hear a little connection,

but my ears may be burned by

my just listening to Lattimore do their version of

What You See Is What You Get but calling it

Sweet Vibrations instead.

[Shawn]

Do any of the download stores carry her stuff? I've been very curious to hear what she sounds like, but I haven't been able to locate anything yet. And I've been too busy packing to search very hard.

Edited 24 May 2006 by Shawn

[Noj]

Shawn, Sangrey posted a link to full length clips from one of her albums below. I'm listening now, pretty cool. Her instrumentals are good quality.

HEY KIDS!!!!

Free (full-length) streaming audio clips of Routes (as well as per-song mp3 purchase options, full lyrics/production/recording/personnel data, and a nice, basic bio) available here:

http://iacmusic.com/artist.aspx?ID=23232

The stylistic labels this site gives each song crack me up, but then again, if that's how the core of the existing audience relates to these things, then that's how you target them. They call "Touch The Sky" "nu-fusion". I call it "a dazzling blend of Weather Report harmonies, house beats filtered through Africa (or vice-versa), and Carl Wilson-produced-era Beach Boys layered vocals carried into infinity". Same thing, I suppose, and "nu-fusion" is a helluva lot easier to remember.

A lot of musical ground/styles covered here, and the only songs that I myself can't get too excited over are "Be Who You Are", "Remember" & "Dig Deep" (they don't suck by any means, but they're less to my liking than the rest). "The Right Time" I've already discussed above, but "Don't" is another impressive work in the arc that it takes from beginning to end. Another excellent Sipiagin horn arrangement here as well - one that goes from Gil Evans to Woody Shaw/M-Base without as much as a blink. But then again, I think they're all "above and beyond" contemporary pop music artifacts. Songwriting, arranging, production, everything. There is no better pop music being made today, imo. And when pop is this good, yes - it matters!

Check it out - an indie artist (outside of Japan, where apparently she's still a BIG star and is still contracted to some arm of Universal) with a global following offering free streams of the complete album (American version), online per-song mp3 purchases, and full album credits online. Surely this is the future of the record business!

Now, Ron Goldstein (allegedly) had the chance to get her stuff out in America and took a pass. Routes probably could have been released in America on Verve (much to the cries of "jazz purists", but ain't nuthin I can do 'bout that). Tell me again why this guy's not an idiot?

[rostasi]

Yup, that's the link that I was gonna send out.

Maybe another day long rodcast is in order?

[Shawn]

Thanks guys...man, I must be tired to have missed that link.

[jlhoots]

I just listened to an hour of streaming audio from this woman's website and I don't see what the big deal is about...

Nothing special, imo.

It's turd in the punchbowl time.

That's usually Chuck's job.

[JSngry]

The "big deal" is relative, I suppose, to what you're looking for and/or get excited about. And on that, of course, mileages can, will, and should vary wildly.

For me, it's the creation of a "unimusic", one in which any and all heretofore "genres" can (and do) exist simulataneously, not as grafted on or otherwise self-conscious "fusions", but as a natural, organic, whole. This is the way the world is moving, and this is the way that popular music is eventually going to have to end up if it's ever again going to be a truly relevant form instead of a simple catering to people's prejudices and limitations.

Is she the only one doing something like this? I don't know. I do hear some "jazz" groups trying to do much the same thing, and I do hear the occasional "pop" artitst who's musically literate enough to approximate some of waht she does. But I've yet to hear anybody do it so naturally or so totally.

What relevance does this have to me as a "jazz" musician? Plenty, really. In the first place, jazz as we've known it isn't dead, but it's on it's way. Has been for quite a while, really. The sociological environment that produced the really real shit is all but over. We can play the various styles of the last 100 years or so with all the sincerity and conviction we can muster and it will still be "good music". But will it be as relevant to the "now" as the originals were? No. Can't be, and won't be.

That may or may not matter to some of us, and that's cool, but to those of us for whom it does, we're faced with the quandary of having acquired all this knowledge and all these skills and not really having an end with which to put them other than holing up in a niche-world and feeling "special" because we've got what we've got. Hey, go for that if you want, but that's not my idea of a good time.

There's a lot of musics that are inthe same awkward position. Jazz is just one of them. There's all these tools to put to use, but what use really matters? Well, Monday's music has a place for damnnear all of them, and the thing I like about it is that it doesn't sound in the leat bit "retro" or "fusion-y". That's because she's got as much of an ear for contemporary music as she does for the older styles. In her stuff, a Joe Henderson-inspired tenor solo on a house track that also has African-derived percussion and phrasing in the vocals just ain't that big of a deal. That's the way she hears that shit.

That's also the way that I think a lot of us are feeling things internally/subconsciously. It's just that we're very much in the midst of a paradigm shift of consciousness right now, and a lot of us aren't quite yet able to hear what it is we're feeling going on around us. And if we can't hear it we can't play it. Or, if we can only partially hear it, we can only partially play it. That's where the various "fusions" come in, I think, the sincere ones anyway.

But Monday feels it and hears it, so she can write it and play it. I've had the reaction more than once of listening to one of her things and not being really blown away by it until I listen closer and suddenly WHOA! Just what the hell IS this? An examination of the "ingredients" reveals that there is no one "style" at play here that dominates over the other. There's a mixture, and if you could take any one of them away, you'd be left with something altogether different in both intent and execution.

This notion of a "unimusic" excites me, because as far as I'm concerned, it's the only logical "next step" not just for music, but for humanity as a whole. Progress, evolution, whatever you want to call it is inevitably a process of thingsgrowing indivdually for as long as is healthy and then eventually losing their specific identity into the formation of a new whole. From there, of course, the process of separation begins anew, but the process is dependent on an eventual assimilation at some point. We're at that point now, I think. Have to be. And "unimusic" is going to be the result. Has to be. Monday's music is just the first (or among the first) to sound the call. There will be a helluva lot more to follow. But right here, right now, somebody's doing it. It's a taste of things to come, again, not just musically, but socio-culturally.

That's what the "big deal" is to me.

[Peter Johnson]

Si, por favor!

Yup, that's the link that I was gonna send out.

Maybe another day long rodcast is in order?

[ValerieB]

The "big deal" is relative, I suppose, to what you're looking for and/or get excited about. And on that, of course, mileages can, will, and should vary wildly.

For me, it's the creation of a "unimusic", one in which any and all heretofore "genres" can (and do) exist simulataneously, not as grafted on or otherwise self-conscious "fusions", but as a natural, organic, whole. This is the way the world is moving, and this is the way that popular music is eventually going to have to end up if it's ever again going to be a truly relevant form instead of a simple catering to people's prejudices and limitations.

Is she the only one doing something like this? I don't know. I do hear some "jazz" groups trying to do much the same thing, and I do hear the occasional "pop" artitst who's musically literate enough to approximate some of waht she does. But I've yet to hear anybody do it so naturally or so totally.

What relevance does this have to me as a "jazz" musician? Plenty, really. In the first place, jazz as we've known it isn't dead, but it's on it's way. Has been for quite a while, really. The sociological environment that produced the really real shit is all but over. We can play the various styles of the last 100 years or so with all the sincerity and conviction we can muster and it will still be "good music". But will it be as relevant to the "now" as the originals were? No. Can't be, and won't be.

That may or may not matter to some of us, and that's cool, but to those of us for whom it does, we're faced with the quandary of having acquired all this knowledge and all these skills and not really having an end with which to put them other than holing up in a niche-world and feeling "special" because we've got what we've got. Hey, go for that if you want, but that's not my idea of a good time.

There's a lot of musics that are inthe same awkward position. Jazz is just one of them. There's all these tools to put to use, but what use really matters? Well, Monday's music has a place for damnnear all of them, and the thing I like about it is that it doesn't sound in the leat bit "retro" or "fusion-y". That's because she's got as much of an ear for contemporary music as she does for the older styles. In her stuff, a Joe Henderson-inspired tenor solo on a house track that also has African-derived percussion and phrasing in the vocals just ain't that big of a deal. That's the way she hears that shit.

That's also the way that I think a lot of us are feeling things internally/subconsciously. It's just that we're very much in the midst of a paradigm shift of consciousness right now, and a lot of us aren't quite yet able to hear what it is we're feeling going on around us. And if we can't hear it we can't play it. Or, if we can only partially hear it, we can only partially play it. That's where the various "fusions" come in, I think, the sincere ones anyway.

But Monday feels it and hears it, so she can write it and play it. I've had the reaction more than once of listening to one of her things and not being really blown away by it until I listen closer and suddenly WHOA! Just what the hell IS this? An examination of the "ingredients" reveals that there is no one "style" at play here that dominates over the other. There's a mixture, and if you could take any one of them away, you'd be left with something altogether different in both intent and execution.

This notion of a "unimusic" excites me, because as far as I'm concerned, it's the only logical "next step" not just for music, but for humanity as a whole. Progress, evolution, whatever you want to call it is inevitably a process of thingsgrowing indivdually for as long as is healthy and then eventually losing their specific identity into the formation of a new whole. From there, of course, the process of separation begins anew, but the process is dependent on an eventual assimilation at some point. We're at that point now, I think. Have to be. And "unimusic" is going to be the result. Has to be. Monday's music is just the first (or among the first) to sound the call. There will be a helluva lot more to follow. But right here, right now, somebody's doing it. It's a taste of things to come, again, not just musically, but socio-culturally.

That's what the "big deal" is to me.

whoa, JSngry, that is a very interesting and profound post!! i am applauding you very strongly! thank you for sharing.

[rostasi]

Si, por favor!

OK, maybe on Monday...