The Best Songs of 2010

From The Observers, 'A Very Short List' again.

"Said the Gramophone was one of the very first MP3 blogs. It’s still one of the best, and for the past six years, the editors have outdone themselves with truly fantastic year-end best-of lists. This year’s list features 100 of the best songs released in 2010. Better still, every track is available as a free MP3 download. You’ll hear familiar favorites (by Spoon, Sade, Arcade Fire, Kanye West, Vampire Weekend, and Alicia Keys, among not a few others), total obscurities (a Rwandan field recording called “Sara” is especially good), and songs by unknown artists who just might shoot to the top of your playlist. We downloaded every track and set our iPod to shuffle. But if you’re looking for a good place to start, check out Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope” (which features OutKast’s Big Boi), or Peter Nalitch’s “Gitar” (which the editors describe as “part lo-fi pop, part yearning serenade, part post-Borat joke”). The links are still active but set to expire this month, so get these songs while you still can."

RIP - Alex Chilton 03.17.10

Alex Chilton died on March 17th. The problem is that I didn't hear about it until now. I was in Germany at the time and about to be ambushed to cook a birthday dinner for a girl I hadn't seen since October of the previous year. Alex Chilton, who's name will only ring a bell to devotees of Power Pop and a band called Big Star (of course you've never heard of them) was most known as the lead singer of a 60s American band called The Box Tops. When he was 16 they had a #1 hit with a song called, 'The Letter'. "Give me a ticket for an aeroplane", he sang, "Ain't got no time to take no fast train. Lonely days are gone, I'm a goin' home - cause my baby, she wrote me a letter." Rest in peace Mr. Chilton. No one will ever write a song that sets a man's heart traveling because his baby, "she sent him a Twitter". Alex Chilton was 59.

Get Your Metal Head on!

"All you want for Christmas is your two front metal teeth!" For the record, I'm not a metal-head, but I love music and I was cheered to find this site - The Map of Metal. If anyone remembers Jack Black's character in 'School of Rock' mind mapping out the history of rock on the blackboard, this is that concept, but on the Internet. From Black Sabbath to the obscure sub-genre of Swedish Death Metal, this gives you the full tour. Check it out.

Too many mouses in the house!

There's Danger Mouse and Modest Mouse and Mouse on Mars, and I just heard that Mouse on Mars will be playing a show in Saigon tonight. Who knew?

Brian Joseph Burton (born July 29, 1977), better known by his stage name, Danger Mouse, is an American musician and producer. He came to prominence in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, which combined acapellas from Jay-Z's The Black Album with instrumentals from the album The Beatles (also known as The White Album). He formed Gnarls Barkley with Cee-Lo Green and produced their albums St. Elsewhere and The Odd Couple. He produced the second Gorillaz album, 2005's Demon Days, as well as Beck's 2008 record, Modern Guilt. He has been nominated for a Grammy Award in the Producer of the Year category 3 Times (2005,2006,2008)

Modest Mouse is an American Indie rock band formed in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington by singer/lyricist/guitarist Isaac Brock, drummer Jeremiah Green, and bassist Eric Judy. They are based in Portland, Oregon. On April 6, 2004, Modest Mouse released their fourth album, the platinum-selling Good News for People Who Love Bad News, which scored two hits with "Float On" and "Ocean Breathes Salty" (both of which they performed on Saturday Night Live on November 13, 2004). The album was nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Rock Album that year.

Mouse on Mars is a duo from Germany. Jan St. Werner, from Köln, and Andi Toma, from Düsseldorf who have been making electronic music since 1993. Their music is a sometimes quirky blend of techno, trance, disco, and ambient with a heavy dollop of analog synth sounds. Their music also utilizes live conventional rock instruments such as drums, bass and guitar. Mouse on Mars collaborated in the studio and toured with Stereolab in the mid 1990s - the results can be heard on Stereolab's Dots and Loops album.

Arguably the least famous of all these mice, Mouse on Mars will be performing live tonight in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) so that makes my daily task, to score a ticket. Live music, and certainly name bands are few and far between around here. Rats in the street are plentiful, but a mouse in the house? Well, that's gotta be something to see.

WWED Radio is Back!

WWED Radio 1 by Wildwildeastdailies on Mixcloud

And we're back. After a week down and the unfortunate closing of our beloved GarageBand site of yesteryear, WWED Radio is back and as much as I'd like to say, "New and Improved" let's just say different as there have been a few changes in operation. The first is that now to activate the music, you'll need to click on the play button and it will fire right up. The second change is that, unfortunately, podcasts will only be able to be downloaded using third-party Freeware. I recommend Orbit Downloader and have tested it here and it works just fine.

This second change is due to copyright law being more strictly enforced and while the previous cast was fun and free, it was essentially illegal. This new format allows copyright holders to benefit from residuals by counting the number of plays on Mixcloud but does not yet allow downloads. So please, suffer through the extra step of the Orbit download option. Yes, there was a day the music died, but it's back again, and we'll do our best to make sure it gets better and better. Enjoy.

WILL WORK FOR TODD! Help Me See AWATS in Amsterdam!

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Here's the deal: Trains booked, time reserved, money coming in and money doesn't come in. I'm screwed - or my much loved concert is screwed, so I'm asking for work. $400 worth in three days. Because that's how long I've got before my train leaves from Munich to Amsterdam.

For those who want to help, here's how to do it: This is not a charity. Read more below.


Is there such a thing as a Rock & Roll emergency? Well, I believe there is. Is this immature, selfish and should I feel bad? Hell no! Explanation: Many of you will know what AWATS means, but for those who don't, here's the short version: "Todd Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star is simply the greatest album ever made" - Bob Hoskyns, Mojo Magazine - and it's being performed live for the last time ever in Amsterdam this Monday, Feb. 8th. I decided months ago that I needed to be there.

People didn't pay their bills on time and I can't do anything about that - but I can get more work can't I?

Todd, for me, has been an adult-lifelong inspiration having listened to him first in high school and then finally, in 1977, seeing him with Utopia live in Davenport, Iowa on the "Ra" tour. Fast forward through Dallas, Baltimore, Chicago, Michigan, California and ending up in Tokyo in 2004, I've seen him more than 20 times and now hopefully, with a little help, again on Monday, in Amsterdam.

And of course, I want to work for this help. This is not a charity. For anyone who contributes, I'm happy to write copy for your business, website or whatever. If you've been a reader around here, you'll know I can write or know my history in the advertising business. Also, this spring I'll be starting a subscription only newsletter - and the first installment of course, will be a full review of this show along with photos and hopefully a few interviews and person to person perspective from people in the show - and none of that will hit the blog at all. After that I'll be putting out the newsletter on a monthly basis and it will all be inside, backstory and candid work that also will not be on the blog - ever. A number of you have already contributed to the WWED so don't worry, you're on that list already. For new supporters, just let me know how I can help you. I want to work for the money.

Method: ...Western Union.com
Name: ......David E. Carlson
Address: ..Munich Germany

(PayPal is not an option unfortunately as banks will be closed by Saturday)

And so thank you all. Thank you for reading. Thank you for helping if you can. But thank you most for just being there. Sometimes the people close to you are more far away than you'd like them to be, and in those cases I'm always amazed at how some other people far away can come in more closer to fill that gap.

Email me at David.E.Carlson@gmail.com for more info.

Do notice the picture on the computer screen behind me. That's in honor of "Dave" the Australian banker who was busted looking at lingerie models on his computer while a TV station was filming a report in his bank. Save Dave!

Tally of Todd Partners as of 6:34am - Sunday, 02.07.10: CRUNCH TIME!
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1) $25 (Cheryl)
2) $50 (Katie)
3) $100 (Rich)
4) $50 (Freya)
5) $75 (Joan)
------------------
$300

$100 to go! ($400 is the total of trains: $200, ticket: $50, hotel 1 night: $75, food, misc.: $75

TWEET THIS!


23:43 Sunday: I'm hitchen' it. On the road in minutes. Scared pissless. Please leave comments and bon mots below! I'll be okay once I'm on the road...See you in AWATSTERDAM!

Todd Rundgren's AWATS: While I was travelling

As I have been away on extended holiday, tons of things have been going on and I have been remiss in attending to them from a reporting perspective. My bad. So to make up for past sins, here's a musical update:

One of those things has been Todd Rundgren's restaging of his classic album from 1973, A Wizard A True Star, AWATS, which premiered in Akron, Ohio on 6, September this year. Make sure to click on the previous link and see a selection of highlights from the show. The following clip is just one example of how a "concept album" translates to the live stage:



In March, 2003, Barney Hoskyns wrote the following in Mojo Magazine (UK) regarding the album AWATS:

"Sometimes," Todd Rundgren sang, "I don't know what to feel." But sometimes you do know what to feel. And right now I feel like saying what I've contended for many years, which is that Rundgren's A Wizard, A True Star is simply The Greatest Album Ever Made.

You heard me right, pardner. Better than Pet Sounds. Better than OK Computer. Certainly better than Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Farts Dub Band. An album of vaulting ambition - of wizardry and true stardom - released into an unsuspecting world by a contrary, super-precocious wonderboy who should have been the biggest thing to happen in the '70s but who was just too complex and polymorphous for lasting pop success.

A Wizard, A True Star came out 35 years ago but still sounds more bravely futuristic than any ostensibly cutting-edge electro-pop being made in the 21st Century. A dizzying, intoxicating rollercoaster ride of emotions and genre mutations, the album was substantially the work of Rundgren himself, pieced together in late 1972 at his own Secret Sound studio on NYC's West 24th Street."

Coming in February of 2010, this show will visit the UK & The Netherlands. I hope to catch it there with my partner and will make sure to post a full review. Thanks to Doug at RundgrenRadio.com for the Barney Hoskyns snippet and a big hey to all those stateside who have been lucky enough to have seen the show. I hope to join you in 2010!

The Hair Job III: How Deep Is Your Mix?

Oh dear. Another post about my frigging hair. The Hair Job III. Well let me tell you about it - if you had my hair, you could write about it too. From the 70's through the 80s and 90s, if you had a picture of my hair, you could tell the history of the time by it's styling because if it wasn't an exact replication of the fashions of the day, it was a folicular forcast of what was to become. My hair, in historical retrospect, has been nothing short of hilarious. Consider the photo attached. Ha! Thank the 80s, thank Wham, thank all the gay hairdressers on the planet because if I wasn't gay I was doing a damn good job looking like I was. This particular hair was courtesy of MIA Salon in Dallas Texas and imported to Washington DC for my work with the Earle Palmer Brown Agency on the Marriott Family Restaurant account. I do believe I am wearing a black bandana as well, giving the whole affair that boy-band poofed up look. Makes Lisa look like a man comparatively.

The woman on the right is Lisa Hagen, my creative partner at the time and the man in the middle is Brad Colerick, then a young music producer with Music Animals of LA and now, Owner and Partner at DeepMix, a commercial music production house in Hollywood. Those who know this blog will be familiar with my association with DeepMix from my previous post, "Introducing WWED Radio" and know that there is also a commercial interest in this partnership as well.

Look at this blog. Do you see any cheesy advertisements for travel services or Vietnamese hotels or any of the other gawd awfull dreck that Google AdSense can come up with? Of course you don't. Because I simply won't have it. Oh, sure, there are a few little links you can click on that come at the end of this post, but they are as unobtrusive as possible and made me a whopping total of $4.82 cents last year because I just don't want a bunch of mass transit garbage mucking things up around here. I only want to work with people I can know and recommend and that includes advertisers and clients.

You and I all create the environment in this space and if anybody is going to muck it up, then we've got first refusal rights on that claim - so let's get on with the story and see how I might effectively monitize the site without inflicting pain on the residents here.

Brad and I met in the summer of 1988 while I was involved in producing a series of commercials for the Marriott Family Restaurant concept Allie's. Allie was the nickname of Bill Marriott's mom, Alice, and after a long and expensive brand reinvention investigation was chosen over the recommended name of Barnie's. It lacked the "bilabial fricative" (linguistic terminology for what happens when the two lips come together to form the B sound - and highly memorable according to the naming consultant) complained the branding agency, but was cetainly do-able as it was the client's mother's name and he was paying the bill. Funny how decisions in corporate America are made no matter what the budget.



Make sure to turn off the music in the podcast before playing.

Our campaign didn't have a big budget but it did have a common self effacing, tongue-in-cheek touch that attracted Gary Johns and Mark Gorman (the rage in hip directors at the time) to shoot it and the Music Animals, one of Hollywood's hottest commercial sound houses, to write music for it. In the end, the entire campaign of over 10 commercials and a whole bunch of print and design projects garnered a One Show Award in New York, Four CLIO finalists and a boatload of local and other creative awards. It was by far, the most awarded work the agency had produced to date and probably remains so to this day.

And Brad helped make that happen. In the advertising business it's common for the writers to take charge of the music production side of the business and there's absolutely no fucking reason that I am aware of for that, but I was technically raised as an art director and that brought some confusion to Lisa and my respective responsibilities on this project. My love and talent in music go way back, and although you would choose not to have me playing the piano at your next Bar Mitzvah, you'd be hard pressed to match my knowledge and appreciation for almost any style of the art. Brad & the boys at Music Animals including Joe Lubinski and Howard Pfiffer, engaged me and added conceptual flourishes that not only improved the scripts and film we had brought to them but raised a few of the spots to nearly high art and comedy with everything from toy pianos to opera singers and Tarzan swinging in the jungle as background support. Working with them was a joy seldom seen in most types of work. It was an absolute blast.

So Brad and I have remained friends and colleagues to this day. In 1996, for my 40th birthday, my wife asked me what I wanted. My request was to be able to invite all off my good friends to visit our lake house in Michigan over the course of a month. Brad and his wife Celeste were two of the caravan from all over the US who took us up on the invitation and came in all the way from LA. Man, that was cool.

Earlier this year the subject came up of how to make Brad's firm, DeepMix more present here in Asia and one answer has come as a presence here on the Wild Wild East Dailies. DeepMix has worked with agencies from Tokyo to Singapore but not yet Vietnam and Thailand should certainly be on the list. Brad has asked me to help develop and work as an agent on the firm's behalf in Southeast Asia and I have agreed. And yes, there's money in the deal. I don't get to sit around and just blog for free. The music you are listening to right now on the podcast is all from DeepMix as producers, and as you hear now, is not for commercial purpose but from Independent artists. Make sure to download an MP3 of it from the podcast control if you like it. And for commercials purposes, be it TVC work, radio, film and TV soundtracks and the like, please do talk to me about your needs and ideas. You'll be surprised at how reasonably a top LA shop can be when it comes to working in this market - as well as how a conceptual and currently hip score or remix can increase the value of almost any project.

Take a listen to DeepMix and an over 20 year old friendship that still works as good as new - except Brad doesn't look nearly that cute today and neither do I. No news on Lisa.

Post Script: And do note the shirt I'm wearing. It's says Chả Giò and was from the café of the same name in Atlanta. A Vietnamese café. How's that for predicting the future with fashion?

Introducing WWED Radio: Wild Wild East Dailies Radio!

Here's a note (ha ha) I received the other day from a reader, uh, listener, of the WWED. It really reinforces why I continue to decide to keep the music up. It's part of the experience, really I believe - all part of the "cornucopia" aspect of the blog in not ever sticking to strictly one kind of story and using videos and whatever I can to keep it fresh and unexpected - stuff that just sort of hits the wall and sticks...

David,

Hi. I really enjoy your blog, especially your attitude. And the music is an extra hook! I try to play good music in our shops in HCMC (Saigon) to entertain the customers. And people keep asking what we play so it clearly has some effect.

Cheers,

Lisa
Big Dragon@Blue Dragon Craft

222 De Tham, D1, HCMC
81 Pasteur, D1, HCMC

I also receive mails from people who don't care for the "autoplay" feature and I let everyone know that the music is controllable in the Gcast podcast control in the sidebar. To turn on and off, just hit the pause button. Today's music begins with commercial samples from DeepMix.com in Hollywood - and since Lisa is using our music in her shops to spur retail sales, or smooth shopper's spirits, we might as well do a little selling! (Don't we need an A.S.C.A.P. license to do this?)

For an update on WWED Radio in 2010, click here.

June 22nd: Happy Birthday Todd Rundgren!

Yup. It's confirmed. By the end of this post I will have proved for all time that I am a complete and unadulterated geek. And if that's not enough, I'm an old geek as well! When my dog got to this point my parents explained to me that they had to put her down – dear Mickey. It seemed way too early for a dog who was still learning new tricks.

But the Baby-Boom generation wants to live forever and if the Stones aren't proof enough – that old heroin addicts can fall out of coconut trees and be right back up on stage the next night, then look at the legions of old rockers who still refuse to give up the ghost: Ringo Starr (67) – new album this year. Ian Hunter (68) – new album last year. Iggy Pop – should have been dead years ago, but still on tour. McCartney – sung "When I'm Sixty-Four" in divorce court. And my personal favorite, Todd Rundgren who will release his latest album Arena on June 22nd, the occasion of his 60th birthday, with a private "invitation only" concert on his family property in Kauai, Hawaii before he hits the road with the show. Click on the colored "60th birthday tent" and see his personal invite.

And you ask, "Todd who?"

Todd Rundgren.

Below is a story that probably gets to the heart of my admiration for this artist and I do hope you take the time to read it, but in short, along with the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, the Beatles, Andy Warhol and precious few other visionaries, I believe Todd Rundgren has embodied and constantly made example and practice (for over 40 years) of the theory of making art one's business and business one's art. He's steadfastly stuck to his principles and made a buck at the same time – and in this increasingly difficult artistic landscape that may be tougher than getting a starting slot on an NBA team.

Additionally, Todd has been lauded recently in the tabloids as the stepfather of Liv Tyler and raised two boys, Rex and Randy, who currently play with MLB franchises. His third boy may turn out to be a rocker but aside from penning the hits "Hello It's Me" and "Bang On The Drum" may only be famous for never having OD'd, gone into rehab or been thrown in jail as a celebrity social example.

But this year he may make headlines for another reason. His 60th birthday party. The one – did I say, "Invitation Only?" – is an open invitation to all of his fans and anybody who can afford a plane ticket to Hawaii. He has thrown open the grounds of his compound on Kauai and invited any and all who care for his music to come for a week, camp, go on hikes, go snorkeling, do yoga, get massages, eat Hawaiian BBQ and generally have a blast while he prepares for the launch of his 36th or 37th album with a live concert on the grounds on June 22nd – and if I forgot to mention it – that happens to be my birthday as well. And to make it even more surreal, this just happens to be my 60th WWE post on Todd's 60th birthday. And no, I could not have planned that in a million years

This has got to be a first. Can you imagine Eminem or P-Diddy, Britney or anyone pulling this off? I can't. But once you begin to understand the depth and devotion of his fan base, it becomes a lot more clear – and Todd's reciprocation of that emotion to his fans, makes the whole idea come around full-circle. I just find it incredibly cool.

But alas. I won't be able to make this one.

Four years ago, a similar opportunity presented itself and I was able to wrangle a trip from Seoul to Tokyo to see Todd in his, then, latest incarnation. That's the story here, below. But this week I'll be pleased to be living vicariously through all the fans who will actually be on the property in Kauai. Doug Ford, who hosts RundgrenRadio every week, will be broadcasting nightly from the event. The TRConnection will webcast it and Todd and his team of merry pranksters will be gathering videos, photos, soundbites and the like to post on the web as things move along throughout the week. I will be in Geek Heaven for the next 7 days!

On the same day that Todd turns 60, I will be 52, and while I can't say the 50s have been as easy as all the decades previous – I can say I'm learning how to make it work more for me. One thing I've seen, and it hasn't impressed me, is a lot of people selling out – or maybe more correctly, making "selling out" their product. What I mean by this is that too many people, and I mean way-too-fucking-many, have been telling me to chill out – to stop swinging for the fences – to stop trying to do more – to be more of a soldier – to agree even when I don't – to not rock the boat – to just plain fucking grow up – to sit the-fuck-down and shut-the-fuck-up – and, maybe, as I arguably see it – to give the fuck up - incorrectly, as I arguably see it.

And they take this attitude and walk it into employers all over town, and make a whole lot more money than I do. They take crappy jobs, work crappy hours, do anything their clients ask of them and basically do it with their only plan being to bank as much cash as possible and then throw it in my face as a badge of honor against my currently humble finances. And I've seen this a lot more here in Vietnam than I ever recall having seen it in the US or even Korea. Or maybe it's always been there but I am now (quote) "adult" enough to see it more clearly. I dunno. I'm not impressed – so what I ask myself, more and more of these days, when these people confront me, is, "Do you like this person?" – "Do you respect this person?" – and, "Do you want to be like this person?"

And the answer just comes screaming back to be an unequivocal, no. No fucking way. Not in a million fucking ways do I want to get to that point in my life where I decide it's better to pull the trousers up over the belly than to loose the fucking belly! (and I mean that figuratively) Not in a million fucking ways to I want to become what I have spent a life marketing myself against. Not in a million, billion, zillion, quadrillion, arkbillybobchamillion different ways.

I'll stick with Mr. Rundgren".

To choose a line from one of his songs,

"You better choose your heroes, and choose them well, they could be leading you straight into hell!".

Happy Birthday Todd! I'm along for the ride in spirit!

...and if you've been listening to the podcast here, I've populated it generously with Rundgren tunes this week and suggest you settle in, strap those headphones down and give the following story a read.

Excerpt from Wild Wild East: Shibuya Awakening, 2004

As I rode the bus from Norita International to downtown, Tokyo revealed itself to be one of the world’s most blindingly ubiquitous urban landscapes. Swathed in grey sky and populated with grey mid-rise buildings, nothing penetrates the atmosphere more than 40 storeys and nothing stands guard to tell you that you are entering one of the most culturally vibrant cities in the world, at least not from my bus.

Having lived in Asia for the last nine years I’ve been a frequent visitor to Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing and a resident of Seoul. Save for Seoul, all of the aforementioned cities boast a skyline and urban impression designed to impress. For shear Buck Rogers futurism, pick Shanghai. For international architectural sophistication it’s Hong Kong, and in Beijing, Kentucky fried capitalism lives hand in hand with old-school communism. Yes, you can actually see a KFC sign and that huge picture of Mao at the same time in Tiananmen Square.

So what does Tokyo have that these other Asian spectacles do not? Well, let’s start with a performer named Todd Rundgren and work our way from there.

Who’s Todd Rundgren you ask? Those of you who know music well will know but as successful as he has been as a writer, producer and singer, he has never been a big star. Yet, over the past 30 years he has released more than twenty five albums as a solo artist and with a band called Utopia. His songs ‘Hello It’s Me”, “I Saw The Light” and “Bang The Drum” routinely appear in movie soundtracks and his work as a producer for Meatloaf (Bat Out Of Hell), The New York Dolls, Psychedelic Furs, XTC, Grand Funk Railroad and Cheap Trick have guaranteed him a place in 70s & 80s & 90s rock royalty. His 1974 album “Something/Anything?” is on Rolling Stone’s “100 Best Albums” list and it’s been rumoured that his contract with Warner Brothers specifically stated that he had to do “one normal album” for every “weird one” he recorded.

In short Todd Rundgren has always been a musical visionary and pioneer and in a constant and almost dizzying series of re-inventions continues to record and perform new and inventive music to this day. This year he toured Holland, Scotland, England, the US and Japan with a tour called “Liars” supporting an album of the same name.

My first opportunity to see Todd came late in 1974. I had just graduated high school and had bought the album Something/Anything. To say that record was an epiphany for me would be an understatement.

That fall Todd had scheduled a show in the Quad Cities, a little collection of towns on the Illinois/Iowa border where the Mississippi river actually runs East to West. Having already seen Eric Clapton strung out on heroin and having also made it through Cheech and Chong there seemed little that this Rundgren fellow could do to surprise me. I was wrong, but wouldn’t know that for yet another three years.

In the fall of 1974 God sent me a little present in the form of a hospital stay and operation for an injury incurred while waterskiing that summer. My Todd tickets would go to my friends and I would, luckily, live to wait another day for my first Utopia concert.

Fast forward to 1977 and the RA tour. The RA tour was an art rock or some would say prog-rock extravaganza based on eastern mysticism and using full costumes and an onstage metal pyamid that he would climb and play his guitar solos on top of. Yes, now it does seem a bit like Spinal Tap but I can assure you that as college students in the Midwest it was all we wanted to see that year. The tour played Davenport Iowa and my friend, a chap named Dale Mayne, and I must have been the two luckiest guys in the hall, a beautiful fading orchestra venue in a quiet Midwestern city of 100,000. Dale had not been so lucky at birth, having come into this world with cerebral palsy, but on this particular evening his affliction would come to his, and by association, my advantage. Having called in advance to inquire about wheelchair access we were informed that all wheelchairs would occupy a reserved spot on the rail directly in front of the band. Dale, a DJ, and myself, son of an electrical engineer, wasted no time in figuring out how to conceal a cassette tape recorder under his wheelchair and run it off the chair battery. Security rolled our Trojan recording studio right up front and we lived in our own little Utopia for the next few hours.

Ah, the serendipity and freedom of youth. Would I ever get the chance to feel as if I had outsmarted the establishment in the pursuit of pure happiness again?

Well many Todd gigs have now happily come and gone for me. I’ve see him over 20 times since 1977. I have always looked longingly at the Japanese shows listed on his schedule but never found a way to mesh them into my Korean life. From here it’s virtually impossible to traverse both countries using only the English language and the flights are as expensive as flying to Hong Kong or in some cases the states. This year Todd & the Liars were scheduled to play four shows in Japan, two at a club in Tokyo called Shibuya AX.

Reading the name “Shibuya AX” on the schedule listed here and negotiating Shibuya for real are two totally different things. A visit to the AX website provides no ticket information and in fact no English, save for some of the performers names. I printed out the map for safekeeping and decided to see what I could figure out once in Japan.

Just wait until you see Shibuya. Shibuya is a district in Tokyo and the only way I could describe it would be like this: Imagine you are standing at the apex of Times Square except all the people there are from LA and no one is allowed to be over thirty!

For the record Shibuya is the youth cultural capital of Japan and Shibuya Crossing, a five way tsunami of humantide, holds the title of “Busiest intersection in the world”. And that ain’t the half of it.

There’s the Seibu, Tokyu and Parco department stores, meccas to conspicuous consumption so grand that the world’s largest Gap had to take cheaper real estate on a side street around the corner - Parco even has Parco Too because one was apparently not enough. There’s the absolute total domination of implausibly perfect plastic food glaring out from the windows of thousands of eateries as a van painted with the image of a star named “Rupee” drives around playing his song and telling you that it’s the #1 salsa record in the country and if you’re Japanese at all, you’ll do like all good Japanese and buy that record. A trip to the HMV or Tower records could well relieve any music lover of more than a few paychecks and make Debeers’ suggestion of how much to spend on a diamond look positively childish. And speaking of records stores have I mentioned used vinyl? Yes, everywhere, from the latest hip-hop DJ shops to a place called Peet Moss Records where a copy of “Kellogg’s” (yes, the cereal) Greatest Hit’s Of The 5,6,7,8s (not a typo) sits comfortably in a window next to Nazz Nazz.

And then there’s the Marvhan Pachinko Tower, a six storey gaming extravaganza that produces a din matched only by a sonic a twin sister in Vegas. And for those who really want to know, yes, the sound of tokens coming out of hundreds of Pachinko machines is markedly different than that of the same tokens being dispensed from slot machines. To hear the difference, simply ride the escalator through the complex and read the signs as they announce the type of game on each floor. There were however, some people over thirty in this place.

So back down to street level and off to Shibuya AX, but first a stop at the convenience store. A convenience store in Korea will baffle you with it’s selection of drinkable yogurts and canned coffees whilst a CV in Tokyo will baffle you with stuff that you just have no frigging idea what it is. My favorite was a product called “Coffee Jelly with Cream” which was, surprisingly, exactly what it was – a little plastic tub of coffee infused gelatin with a 1/4” of heavy cream on top to be mixed in before eating.

For all the blandness of Tokyo’s initial approach, putting your togs to the pavement is where the city really starts to shine. The streets surrounding Shibuya Crossing are a treasure trove of quaint European cafes, second hand stores, antique shops and modern furniture outlets. From old to new, from hippy to hip-hoppy, Shibuya holds all of it brilliantly and it’s a testament to Todd Rundgren that he still commands a place of honor in this unbelievably divergent cultural pietrie dish.

For what it is Shibuya AX is actually the perfect hall to see a top-notch act. An unimpressive steel building from the outside, Shibuya AX is a bi-level affair inside with SRO on the main floor and a balcony with seating on the second. A total of 800 people can fill the place and this night would see the hall full.

Down with the houselights and open to the strains of a new song “Truth”. No one is on stage. One by one the band members take their places in their respective temples and pick up their musical parts. LED lighting proves to be novel yet effective and all members are dressed in different religious attire. And then finally Todd, shrouded in a floor-length cape and hood and wearing sunglasses. Under the cape he sports a studded viking-style calf-length kilt and a tank top. (see photo attached)

The album and tour “Liars” is a concept that illustrates the idea that everyone from the church to the government to your lover lies to you just enough to get you believe the illusion they are selling. It sounds like a cynical concept but with humor, compassion, inventive staging and killer sound the concept comes off superbly in a world that hasn’t seen a “concept album” or show in a long, long time.

For their part the Japanese seemed to know all the words and pumped to all the songs. Populated with plenty of salary-man and secretarial types the crowd was much more twenty/thirty something, all in attendance for a 56 year old obscure pop star. Brilliant!

What I love most about my over 30 year journey with the music of Todd is that’s it’s always been about the journey and never the destination. No matter what incarnation I have seen him in, it has always made me happy. And I await the next page to turn as it may.

My enjoyment here is the experience that Todd has once again given me and maybe the motivation to do something more creative again with my own life. For the love of Todd’s music I was able finally to go to Japan and to do that I had to use some of that mischievous spirit that caused my friend and I to rig the Trojan wheelchair with a stereo tape recorder in 1977.

Originally my ticket had been booked by my employer for a visa trip to Osaka on Wednesday, not a day that Todd would play in Osaka. I had carefully researched the possibility of doing my business in Osaka and taking the two hour and fifty minute train to Tokyo after my meetings to see the show, and then taking the train again back to Osaka to make my plane the following morning. This would have cost nearly $300. But as luck would have it God delivered yet another small gift to me on the night prior to flying in the form of a nasty cold and flu. I overslept Wednesday and despite racing an expensive taxi to the airport was unable to make the Osaka flight. Undaunted and knowing I could do my embassy business in Tokyo as well, I inquired about changing my missed Osaka ticket for one leaving in another hour to Tokyo. Bingo. And the cost of changing that ticket? About the same as my original plan to take the train back and forth from Osaka.

Before I left Korea I had mentioned to some of my musician friends in about the possibility of seeing Todd in Tokyo and they were all a little bit jealous. When I returned on the weekend, the first thing they asked me was “Did you see Todd, did you pull it off?”

High fives filled the air and a barrage of questions was levied to be answered. All of the stories I’ve related here, were my answers. When asked why I went through such an ordeal to see Todd Rundgren in Japan, having seen him already seen him more than twenty times, I ask those who inquire quite simply:

“Do you have any idea why dogs lick themselves?”

The Stevie Wonder Post - Nothing much happened in Vietnam today II

This one's being written as the Stevie Wonder post – because it's being written "blind", quite possibly without me being able to see the final result. I'll include a picture of Mr. Wonder in his honor, and if you're reading this live, you'll hear a few of his songs, later in the podcast. r It's cool and breezy in Saigon today and that is very, very unusual in this hot and rainy season. Last night I actually felt the need for a long-sleeved shirt, almost unheard of in this country. r And so why am I writing blind you ask? Well, that's an awfully damned good question. A few days ago, Saturday precisely, I noticed that I was unable to see my blog on the net. Now mind you, this is pretty strange in that I am still able to post and publish – but when it comes to seeing it live, I'm in the dark. A little trouble-shootizing with the master, EC, in the States and it seems to be down to a server issue. EC is a techno-geek who works in the business of Search Engine Optimization (SOE) and knows his way around a computer extremely well. I'm no slouch myself, but I'm not a pro like EC. I'm just a guy with too much to say and too much time to say it. But on to WTF is going on... r And that's hard to say, so I've hit the skids in an effort to narrow down the options. I've had plenty of trouble with Google based applications here and know well the long delays I can sometimes endure as Google maybe has not kissed as much government butt as can be necessary. r The following quote from Wayne Greene on Mark Robinson's blog may or may not be true on different days at different locations: "Blogger is blocked by some of the postal authorities where ISP’s originate in Vietnam. At many locations, it is not possible to access Joe’s blog or “Vietnamese God”. Yahoo 360 on the other hand is free from those restrictions." r And this plays into the whole MicroHoo saga in Yahoo's dominance in Asia. Yahoo has just been here longer and has endeared itself to the region, in Joint Venture Partnerships, government compliance and customer relations. Google is still a newcomer and "B" player, generally. If Microsoft wants to be a Google-killer, Yahoo is their best shot in Asia. And so the not so difficult question becomes raised, "To what extent does government censorship become an issue in terms of Vietnamese blogs?" And my answer to that particular question is yet unresolved. r I've gone for days with certain parts of the web not working at all; to suddenly have them pop-up and be just fine. Sometimes a re-boot or a cookie-cleaning will resolve an issue. After the tsunami out in the Pacific off Taiwan last year, where a number of undersea cables were broken, things were shit for a month...and then just fine. Vietnam has a particular problem in that "salvage" fisherman routinely troll the waters for expensive undersea cables, drag em up, cut em' and then sell miles of fiber-optic for scrap. Why do I think that the people who buy it as scrap just sell it right back to the ISPs and then they lay it right back down in the same place. Personally, I thinks Aliens do it. Discovery Channel could make a show out of it - like they do about the lobster boats off the coast of Maine! r"See, we're pretty smart", says Captain Nguyen Van Hook, "We know how to pirate more than just DVDs!" r And the story moves on. I have a few notes out to others with blogs here in Vietnam and hope to hear back just some techno-mumbo-jumbo reasons - but I can't see their blogs either. So far, it seems that Blogger and WordPress are the issues. Yahoo360 works ok and WindowsLive seems to work – that's EC's blog you'll see – but my buddy on Blogger here cannot be raised and my own stuff remains dead – at least to me. r And for the designer in me, it's just a darn shame – not being able to see all the little tricks and quirks I try to program in just makes me feel...well...unfulfilled. Stay tuned. r A few little things popped up for me this week – While watching the National Geographic channel, in a story of Dinka Tribesman in Africa who heard cattle for a living, was the following quote - "You can't cook money and eat it. You could starve to death with money in your pocket." I just love that, mostly because it's so fucking true. r And now, here's a note about my Dad – because I know he'll never read it. r A few months ago I received a note from my father's wife saying that they didn't like to read things on a blog, but preferred I just email them things. I responded with a note that included a link to receive automatic email copies of the blog each week. "Just click it and say, OK", I added. And the link just sits. They don't want to do that. ––– In a way it's just a microcosm of my relationship with my dad, which I must say...is minimal. Dad's just not a writer, or a talker, or much of a communicator with me at all. And I find that sad – or I should say, it makes me sad. Somewhere in early adoption it does seem that my mother earmarked me for herself, and knowing the kind of person she was, can see how she could so closely dominate the situation to have left little or no room for my father. Oh, we tried baseball, I asked him to teach me to ski (something he could do) and he was present at my Boy Scout camp-outs, but to say that we ever enjoyed much of a father/son relationship would be a stretch. I'm an artist, writer, theatre, actor, speaker, musician kind of guy and he's an engineer, an electrical one – but I suspect things go much deeper than that. So deep that I may never really communicate with him at all. r Back in 2002, when Mom had passed away, I was able to stay with Dad for a few months. I mowed his lawn, trimmed his trees - so much so that he asked me to stop cutting trees - and cooked for him everyday. I made myself as useful as possible and tried to do things that would make his life a bit easier. And I tried, somewhat in vain, to talk with him. In my mind, I thought this would have been a good time in both of our lives to at least begin a conversation. But alas, that was not to be. Within a few months he had found a woman with whom he shared interests and they would be married a year later. Her husband had passed away in the same month as my mom. And with that, Dad's void was filled. He had found a woman who would take the same position as my mother had had and be a partition between the two of us. And that partition remains to this day. Most of the mail I get is written by her and he maintains his enigma status in the Father & Son Department – by some strange design, that I will probably never understand. r Now I've got technology in the way, or the Vietnamese government. I just checked again and nothing on Blogger will come up. If anybody in Vietnam reads this or gets an email or feed subscription, please contact me, and let me know from where you got connected. I'll continue my research and see if we can get to the bottom of the Stevie Wonder in Vietnam story. r Cheers. r Okay, usually the way this works is that I say "Cheers" when I'm signing off, but late breaking news keeps coming in on this Blogger deal. Here's a note from a guy here in town who's a web wizard and a true local guru. r "Ya, I can see blogger.com and blogspot.com. Yours has a Stevie Wonder post up top. Remember that the admin and actual blog are at different domains. I'm using the FPT ISP. If your ISP is blocking blogspot.com (possibly in preparation for the Buddha's birthday celebrations here), you can try going to blogspot.com via VPNTunnel, http://www.vpntunnel.net/, or another "anonymous proxy server" (in case your ISP is blocking that, too, just Google that phrase in quotes). If you can get to blogspot.com via proxy, then your ISP is blocking blogspot.com." r And so you can probably see how things can get a little confusing around here – as if the language barrier were not enough. And so I asked my friend, who will be regarded here as "Deep Throat", what anybody would have against Buddha and this was his response: r Buddhist groups here are basically divided in two, those authorized and those banned. The banned ones, the United Buddhist Church of Vietnam, are complaining abroad that they're being blocked from the UN's 2008 Vesak (Buddha's Birthday) events and having some of their temples hijacked by gov't for staged events. If you can't see shite via VPNTunnel, try other proxies. Also ask your hotel's sys-admin if they're been required to block some sights. Sometimes the cops impose blocks at the retail Internet level. r Just another Monday in Vietnam. Who says nothing ever happens around here? r Cheers, for real this time!

For more in the "Nothing much happened" series, check below:

VIII People Are Just Dieing To Get Out of Here
VII The Hair Job
VI Happy New Year! Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!
V The Vietnam sNews
IV At The Center of Miss Universe
III My Walk in the Park Today
II The Stevie Wonder Post
I Ear Cleaning