Oh my poor little message treeComments copied out of that newsgroup posting we enjoyed lately.
I'm afraid you're going to need boots for this.
Part II: SKUSA dishes up dirt
So, I'm going to need you to go ahead and fill this dish with girl-blood for me, OK?First thing: when evidence-free assertions get made, remember who's making them.
Second thing: a reasonable, cogent and persuasive tone is the mark of someone who
knows what he's talking about… and equally the mark of a calculating liar.
Don't be unconsciously persuaded by tone alone, because that's how
smooth-talking con men sell you a bill of goods.
〜〜〜〜〜
Point by point rating boardA New Shonen Knife CD will appear on Confidential Recordings soon…
SUMMER 2004… followed by a new North American D.I.Y. tour… Rating: Untrue; wrong guesses with no authority;
no privy knowledge, no affiliation with ConRec. There were no plans for a product to be released by Confidential during summer
2004 in the US. SK recorded
Candy Rock that May, with no English version,
and it had no distribution outside Japan. Shonen Knife acted as if they had no
distribution partner in the US following the tour for
Heavy Songs. There was no NA tour in 2004. Citing the washout of Lollapalooza that summer,
Naoko said US rock clubs were overbooked in the fall. Since dates were too hard
to schedule, she decided to push a previously announced November tour to 2005.
[
www.shonenknife.net/blog/archives/date/2004/09/page/3 ]
Not quite coincidentally, 2005 would be the soonest SK could tour overseas
with new product to promote (
Genki Shock! released 2005; 2006 in the US).
〜〜〜〜〜
<<After feeling unhappy and frustrated for a long period of time, Michie
quit the band after the 1998 tour, amid acrimony & hard feelings.>>Rating: Half-true; no evidence beyond public statements.Zero points for calling it an unhappy split, which any fool can see.
Everything else is imaginative embroidery on public knowledge.
〜〜〜〜〜
1. Michie herself was open about it, and told us personally,
as well as many other friends. Rating: Maybe so… not too likely. There is no evidence that Michie ever heard of this writer.
Zero points for repeating what actual friends had long ago
admitted to the same newsgroup where this claim was made.
〜〜〜〜〜
Even that decrepit old phony George said so, right here in this newsgroup,
before selfish self-interest caused him to lie about it.Rating: Total bullshitGeorge is one of the actual friends mentioned just above, but the imputation of motive
is vicious and crazy. Ojisan told the US fans about what transpired on Puffy's TV show.
He admitted he'd been keeping back personal knowledge of the case out of concern
for privacy. He clearly explained his determination to handle an upsetting event with
tact and sensitivity toward the rights and feelings of the first parties.
SKUSA frequently resorts to calling anyone *else* a liar who contradicts his story.
〜〜〜〜〜
2. The stage was set for Michie's departure from the band in the fall of 1997.Rating: Baseless assertion, unsupported by what follows. But it feels weighty, doesn't it? Creative writing anyone could do.
〜〜〜〜〜
The sales of "Brand New Knife" were far less than the Page era CDs,
less revenue was generated, and it was decided that a musical change
was necessary.Rating: Unconfirmable, no reason to believe, plus more creative writing. Accurate sales figures are tough enough for the artist to get. Do you really suppose this guy
has any, or took the considerable trouble to research this in 2004?. Hearsay is possible,
and who would risk their job to discuss confidential business data with a random person?
Things get said over drinks, but there's no authority for this at all.
Furthermore, even without access to sales numbers from a service like Nielsen,
the claim does not seem likely.
Available chart history for Shonen Knife at
Billboard is
next to nothing:
Rock AnimalsPeak position #39 on 1994 FEB 12
One week on the chart
<=== assume they mean the "Hot 100" chartOne week. That is super-spiky, you'd expect something in the Top 40 to
have much more of a head and a tail. The buyers were watching from
the hilltops. They hit the stores like wolves, and then ran away.
Anyway, as for its reception, the
Billboard review of
Happy Hour was highly encouraging. And their assessments have a slant
toward commercial potential (1996 AUG 31):
"Shonen Knife, it seems, is back
and here to stay."For sure, Japan is not the US. However, here's Oricon's current cumulative
Top 6 sales ranking for 40 listed Japanese album releases by Shonen Knife.
Brand New Knife is at No.4.
www.oricon.co.jp/prof/219379/rank/album/
Ranked by total domestic sales. Inclusion of all releases
within a given time period is not guaranteed. Brand New Knife really is behind the Page-era titles — in Japan — not to mention
the later guest-artist compilation
Super Mix. That re-mix comp was only for Japan,
but I'm willing to bet the album ranking in the US is significantly same or similar.
Oricon puts
Brand New Knife *ahead* of
36 other album releases, including
each and every album of originals that followed it, up to the present day.
And that's what my common sense leads me to expect based on band history
plus trends in the entertainment industry and in consumer preference.
Does that sound like
Brand New Knife was something to wreck your band over?
The "musical change" SKUSA mentions, between
Brand New Knife and
Happy Hour, is real enough.
Until the current streak of two '70s-loving heavy rock albums, Naoko never
wanted to work in quite the same style twice in a row.
All that stuff above is public info. Details are not public, so I'm free to
make up anything I want, and no one's the wiser. How about this:
"Even without retail sales and promotional support from Virgin, Brand New Knife
did even better than hoped. So well in fact, that
a nervously independent Shonen Knife began to breathe easier
for the first time.
Naoko asked bandmates to support some pragmatic course
changes in search of wider popularity, and they agreed with
enthusiasm. Michie once confided that Naoko encouraged her
to think as if the next "Top of the World" might be one of
her own songs, instead of a cover version." That was easier than I thought. Anyone who's ever read a
pop music magazine can do it.
BTW, the only Shonen Knife single charting at Oricon is the June
1999 tea commercial for Japan Tobacco Ltd., "Yamucharou de…"
backed with "Hamigaki".
〜〜〜〜〜
Naoko decided to be less democratic and direct "Happy Hour" herself,
an approach that continues to this day.
Rating: Common knowledge, widely-held assumptions, plus negative spin. News flash: it's Naoko's band. She started it, and has always written the great majority
of the songs. She manages it with her husband. She's responsible for its continuation.
She is the driving wheel. The other two could not have done it without her. Moreover,
if it comes to a vote, Atsuko's still Naoko's sister since before 1981.
Looking at the production credits on
Happy Hour, you find Shonen Knife, plus
John Volatis (mix engineer). On its face, that sounds not so un-democratic.
What it doesn't show is that there's a label involved.
You can assume that Naoko has a good grip on the steering wheel, because...
someone has to, and it's her thing. She's doing enough work for two people
not even counting Atsushi.
There are ways in which Shonen Knife is a family business like a little noodle shop.
That might have an impact on non-family members, but as a general rule nobody
ever acts like there's any problem about it. The other people in the band become
Shonen Knife Family. Emi is adopted family, even now that she's quit the band.
〜〜〜〜〜
Michie's song writing was intently scrutinized. Her penchant for
writing romantic & personal songs like "Perfect World", "Merman"
& "Another Day" was no longer allowed, Rating: It's more bullshitting.
On
Happy Hour, Michie has 3 out of 13 of the original songs, not
counting one cover, compared to 3 of 13 plus one group credit
(for "Loop di Loop" — her lead vocal, and lyrics I suppose)
on
Brand New Knife. She wrote 3 of 15 on
Let's Knife and 4 of 11 on
Rock Animals. That is not quite what progressive exclusion looks like.
"Fish Eyes" is a dead-center Michie tune. "Jackalope" and "Catch Your Bus" are
themes Naoko could have done, although maybe not with the same touch.
The songs on this album aren't wistful or romantic, because this just isn't one of
those releases. SK's direction since going major-label was toward being a loud
power-pop guitar band. Big Deal Records was a haven for artists like that.
〜〜〜〜〜
and a key song "Huge Snail" was dropped completely. Rating: True…-ish… but the negative spin is misleading and uncalled-for. "Huge Snail" appears on advance copies of the album that Big Deal gave out to
reviewers and radio stations in white cardboard sleeves in June of 1998 (BGD-9055).
It's a wonderful tune. But back when there was such a thing as a unified album experience,
songs were included not only for individual merit, but also based on how well they sorted
together to make one long-playing program.
At a minute and thirty-seven of absolutely no rock, "Huge Snail" sounds like a perfect
hidden track, not a key song by any stretch of reality.
The rest of the album is loaded with guitar overdrive and dominated by a loud, bright,
hard, feeling. "Huge Snail" is an intimate little children's song.
Check it out (thank you Steve Doyle
naoko1960):
youtu.be/e-vSN-niQwM No matter how much I like "Huge Snail", it might be most accurate to say it was excluded
for lack of fit, but added to the promo release to create some bonus charm for insiders
who love getting anything exclusive.
That's the kind of decision an Executive Producer makes. There's no evidence for Naoko
having one attitude or another about "Huge Snail", her fingerprints just aren't on this
anywhere.
But if she didn't like it at all, they would not have spent time and money to record it.
〜〜〜〜〜
The situation was exacerbated by Naoko's heath problems during this time.
She suffered a miscarriage, and was replaced on some tour dates by Atsushi Shibata
(the group was renamed Panda Cub for these shows without Naoko).Rating: No evidence, plus evil-hearted. Is this worse if it's true, or worse if it's false?
Either way, your head should be telling you that an alleged private grief like that is not
something that drives band members away. It would call out their sympathy, instead.
Throwing in something like this is gratuitous cruelty from a person who will say
absolutely anything.
If a unit called Panda Cub played without Naoko — do you know of such a thing? —
it could have been for any of a thousand reasons. It's possible that this story is
lifted straight from the Japanese mailing list. I've never seen that.
But there's simply no warrant for accepting a word of this on the say-so of SKUSA.
His only purpose is to make himself sound like someone inside the band's personal
sphere. But George Ojisan reported that when he mentioned the Knights to Naoko,
she had never heard anything about the matter.
How likely is it that an apparent American AOL user, with a sketchy personality and
boasting familiarity with events local to New York City, is intimate friends with any
friends of Shonen Knife in Japan?
〜〜〜〜〜
3. Michie's time was restricted in the studio for "Happy Hour" (Atsuko's too,
for that matter). Michie did not play on all of the album, Naoko recorded some
bass parts & Jerry (Atsuko's lover) played bass on "Dolly".Rating: Maybe, maybe not. No evidence. There is a sound like hogwash. The bit about time in the studio being "restricted" sounds like con-man patter. Everyone's
studio time is restricted unless you have money to burn. If Michie wasn't in the studio for
every minute of production, that would be totally normal and desirable.
She doesn't need to be there for drum tracking or Naoko's vocals. If she doesn't want to
hang around for mixdown, she's welcome not to. Superfluous people can really be in
the way, in a small space where focus is required and time is money.
Locking Michie out of the studio to keep her from playing the parts that will be hers
on a record tour would be… implausibly insane. If you needed to do that with someone,
you'd simply fire that person.
If Michie wasn't always available by her own choice, that's a different matter.
Not a matter for our freewheeling imagination, though.
Now, it's true that Naoko has a bass credit, although I haven't learned what for.
You can fit that to any picture you want. Again, freewheeling imagination.
What about the times before, when the guitar leads were guested? Zero Records used to
bring in Ichiya Nakamura for arranging, and for guitar and bass parts that Shonen Knife
couldn't play. For some reason, the band didn't break up over that.
About the bass player "Jerry" (Genryou Shiio)… he was an Osaka club player that Seiichi
Yamamoto introduced to Atsushi, because "Dolly" has a swing feel, and someone may
have decided it needed a woody, acoustic bass sound to go with the acoustic guitar.
That would be a good call.
But Michie doesn't play in that style, so a studio guy was simply required to get the
album take. That's all. Jerry was working directly with Atsuko so that the unfamiliar
timing would turn out sounding natural. They got to know each other as acquaintances
and became friends, which is where the story ends unless Jerry took up tennis.
I made up all of that last part, did you buy any of it?
Except that "Dolly" really is done in a jazzy, semi-unplugged style. That didn't help
SKUSA build his case for domineering hard rocker Naoko, so I guess he decided
not to mention it.
〜〜〜〜〜
4. Redmond Washington, June 23rd 1998. Michie was very open with her friends
about the strife in the band, during the '98 tour. Microsoft invited SK to play
their campus in Redmond, to publicize the debut of Windows '98. The concert was
netcast on the Internet, and Shonen Knife intended to use this event to debut
Shonen Knife dot com, but the plan was foiled by George, who had bought the
domain name behind their back (George recently said in this group, that he
bought the name in 1999, a lie).
Knights Alan & Andy were there to see the show, and to comfort Michie who was
alone. Michie cried over the estrangement in the band, and asked Andy to hurry
with his plans to start the North American fan club. Michie had endorsed Joel &
Andy to run the club, and was intimidated by the elderly Old-san, and his
obvious sexual obsession with her. She referred to him as "creepy" and "a
pervert".
Michie was angry at Geoge's actions in favor of Naoko after she left the group.
Naoko, for her part, wrote "People Traps" about SK's #1 "get a life" fan.Rating: looks like an *incredible* pack of fantasized, deliberate falsehoods. I grayed out the stuff everyone knows, and put the invidious gossip-mongering in red.
The business about George registering shonenknife.com is correct, as many would know.
It was the new, improved Shonen Knife NeXuS. He had been hosting the old one on a
personal Earthlink homepage where the kind of functionality he was hoping to introduce
wasn't offered.
The timing is something I don't know, not that it matters. The NeXuS on Earthlink
started re-directing to shonenknife.com in 1999, which was dubbed the Shonen Knife
NeXuS 2000. You remember 2000.
On the other side of the Pacific Ocean, around February 1999, the older Japanese
Shonen Knife Planet website moved and became The Shonen Knife Homepage, with
Atsushi identified as the webmaster and business manager for Tomato Head.
Both of those website were hosted at large public internet service providers who
catered to small business and individuals primarily. Neither site had a customized
domain name of its own. That's how things stayed until shonenknife.net launched
in April 2003.
There's no problem about that. The development of the world wide web came later
to Japan than some other countries, and one reason often mentioned is that the
Japanese cellular phone network was so phenomenal that regular people
didn't feel the web was something they missed much.
The idea that George stole the internet domain is ludicrous, although it's true that years
later it was allowed to fall into the hands of an opportunistic vulture where it remains
to this day. That would indicate that no one on the Shonen Knife side valued it enough
to renew its registration on time.
Shonen Knife making plans to announce a new web domain — on Microsoft's airtime, during
a short webcast produced by Microsoft for a critical product launch — when Shonen Knife
had no website built at the URL in question… that's rather unrealistic. It sounds nothing like
the MSFT marketing machine as we knew it then and know it now.
Michie alone and crying on a show set full of staff and hangers-on, while two "Knights" patted
her shoulder and took instructions to form a fan club replacing the one George Handlon started…
it plays like the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin. Was Michie wearing angel wings when
she anointed the Knights all by herself on behalf of Shonen Knife?!
The charges that Ojisan is a creep, etc., that Michie blamed him
for taking Naoko's side
after Michie had disappeared completely?
That Naoko wrote "People Traps" about someone she greets with gladness,
respect and gratitude to this day? (Wasn't George her partisan a second ago?)
All of that is SKUSA's regular baseless invective, but written into someone else's
mouth. Whenever George Ojisan is at issue, SKUSA can't keep it together
enough even to lie believably.
〜〜〜〜〜
5. Michie's party girl lifestyle & increasingly frumpy appearance was a point
of criticism by the athletic Yamano sisters, who insisted Michie direct her
attention to hard work in the gym before the 98 tour. Naoko's portrait of
Michie in the book "Shonen Knife Land", can hardly be called flattering or
kind. It portrays Michie as downright ugly and haggard.Rating: Probably something to some of it, but the emphasis is evidence-freeParty-girl Michie… introverted, frumpy Michie… which is it? Pick one.
A certain Michie frump factor possibly was a bit at odds with another kind of rock image,
although 1998–99 is still the tail of the grunge era when we play shows in shorts, sandals,
and torn t-shirts.
I don't doubt there were conversations about image. These are three women from Japan
who are in show business. If you were supposing that any touring band doesn't have
conflicts about its image… in some other world maybe.
We have no idea who said what about what to anyone. In 2018, when Risa bemoans her
weight on Twitter and resolves to try eating ice instead of food, Naoko does not send a
simple thumbs-up, she tweets back "Health First."
The cartoon in
Shonen Knife Land... Naoko's caricature in the front of the book does
look a little like a dyspeptic pug with hives. But deliberately doing an ugly drawing
and printing it for spite is something SKUSA would think to do.
It's not something a book publisher or a band mindful of its future would want to
let happen, so I don't have a theory about it. Maybe it's an in-joke. Maybe ugly
is in the eye of the beholder, or is amusing and cool.
The better questions might be how and why〜〜〜〜〜
6. Michie's history of depression, anxiety & paranoia were openly described in
Shonen Knife songs. "Dali's Sunflower" in particular explored Michie's history
of hospitalization for mental anguish or illness. "Frogphobia" was a latter day
confession of paranoia and anxiety. Michie's favorite movies ("Diva", "Betty
Blue", "Taxi Driver" & "Blue Velvet") all feature heroines in an extreme state
of distress. Michie related to the story of these abused women.Rating: totally irresponsible projective accusations offered without evidence SKUSA got more and more uninhibited as he went along.
Michie's purported history of debilitating mental illness and hospitalization?
When since 1982 did she have time for all that?
"Frogphobia" is completely lighthearted. There are lots of people who think frogs are
slimy, squishy, jumpy, and gross. Acrophobia (heights), scotophobia (the dark)…
green-peas-phobia… it's exaggeration to make fun of pathologizing common aversions.
And it *is* funny.
I remember Michie saying she had a green stuffed frog doll.
"
Dali's Sunflower" and Michie's movie list are much tougher stuff. Although
Diva is a high-style, surreal crime thriller in a rather different class.
What the films all have in common is that they were acclaimed as outstanding
cinematic works by true film auteurs; and, they explore psychological extremes.
Michie's got a literary bent, and excellent taste besides.
Writers are a strange bunch, but if every one of them had the traits they are interested
in writing about, then a lot more murder-mystery novelists would be in jail for murder.
Naoko's really, really creeped out by live fish. Don't forget to visit her in the mental hospital.
Why did he leave out the banana fish song? Must've forgot.
〜〜〜〜〜
7. Michie left the band when the U.S. record contract expired and Shonen Knife
had no international commitment. Rating: True, I believe. It suggests mature consideration of consequences with thought
for the band's business interests.
〜〜〜〜〜
This coincided with Michie's 40th birthday,Rating: probably off a littleThen she would have been born in 1959, but I have October 10, 1961.
〜〜〜〜〜
and she chose to retire, with is consistent with many of her countrymen
in this era of economic downturn. Rating: Creative writing, ignorant balderdashThat's a bit stupid. Michie's not a downsized salaryman. Retiring at age 40,
with half your life ahead of you, presumes a generous, secure private income.
Not too many of "her countrymen" had a pension plan that good, hence all the
desperation when Japanese businesses began laying off longtime employees.
〜〜〜〜〜
Her twenty years in Shonen Knife left her feeling empty and unrewarded. Rating: Creative writing. Well, not really very creative. It's like a bad fanfic by someone who reads teen romance novels.
〜〜〜〜〜
It is the sincere hope of the Shonen Knights that she is able to cleanse
herself of the regret of choosing a life & career in rock & roll.Rating: you don't get to wash your hands as easily as that. "Sincere" and "Shonen Knights" have no business together in a single phrase.
It is the sincere hope of me that no one will listen to this person ever again.
