Frank Kogan

Am more ambivalent about "Chick Chick" than the high ranking indicates, given the social inequity underlying the song: the vocals are utterly pedestrian during the cutesy "mǔ jī mǔ jī mǔ jī mǔ jī" stuff and during the rap; the track only starts to cook when the screaming and the chicken clucking and the cackling let loose. It's then that it goes to syncopated excitement, a great visceral speed chase — really penetrates the nervous system, sorta like Bob Quine's guitar lines back in the Voidoids. But my needing to reach so far back for an example, and to guitar sounds rather than singing, leads me to this disturbing conclusion: Chickens are now more credibly penetrating than human beings are. Oh yeah, and if this list and my own viscera are representative (big "if," since they're quite possibly not, and if I'd listened to more hip-hop and rock and banda* maybe I'd know this), women are more credibly penetrating than guys are, women are more credibly tough than guys are, women are more aggressively cute than guys are, women front for rock music better than guys do, women front for heartbreak better than guys do, etc. But I've been worrying about this for years, every time I post one of these lists. And since I'm a glass-is-half-empty kind of a guy, I don't attribute this to women being good but rather to guys being lousy. And it isn't that I believe males no longer have talent, but rather that they're not finding musical models that work for them — as singers and front men, that is; when the spotlight's not on, guys are there contributing to the adventure, as instrumentalists, songwriters, dancers, impresarios, owners. Actually, the boybands are great dancers. And as for "not finding models that work for them," what's really — or merely — evident in this list is that guys are not finding models to make music that works for me. Boybands are doing fine among the fans. I'd have ranked boybands Vixx and Infinite higher if the singers had pulled off the high emotion, but the songs are gripping nonetheless.

Oh yeah, and I'm also pissed off that it's mainly young women and young men on my list (even my token trot track is by a relative youngster), but I've harangued about that before too.

I'll note that celebrated chickenphobe HyunA kicked butt this year (as well as displaying, slapping, and embracing butt (of more than one species)), and was somewhat penetrating back in 2011 deploring chickens. And that A Pony Named Olga are male human beings, not ponies.

Bold for tracks I added since October 1.

1. Wa$$up "Jingle Bell"
2. The Chainsmokers "#Selfie"
3. HyunA "Red"
4. BiS "STUPiG"
5. Kate Nash "Sister"
6. Courtney Love "Wedding Day"
7. Orange Caramel "So Sorry"
8. Tinashe ft. Schoolboy Q "2 On"
9. Nicki Minaj "Lookin' Ass Nigga"
10. Crayon Pop "Uh-ee"
11. Orange Caramel "My Copycat"



12. After School "Shh"
13. Shakira ft. Rihanna "Can't Remember To Forget You"
14. A Pony Named Olga "Funny What You Pray"
15. Wang Rong "Chick Chick"
16. Vixx "Error"



17. Future ft. Pharrell, Pusha T & Casino "Move That Dope"
18. T-ara "First Love"
19. Puer Kim "Manyo Maash"
20. Danity Kane "Bye Baby"
21. Badkiz "Ear Attack"
22. PungDeng-E "잘탕 (잘 시간이 어딨어)"
23. GP Basic "Black Bounce"
24. Serebro "Ya Tebya Ne Otdam"
25. Dal★shabet "B.B.B (Big Baby Baby)"
26. Ca$h Out "She Twerkin"
27. Crayon Pop "C'mon C'mon"
28. Arcade Fire "We Exist"
29. The Hold Steady "I Hope This Whole Thing Didn't Frighten You"
30. Gabylonia "Tirano"



( 31 through 70 )

By the way, I'm only half-joking about the credibility of chickens — not that chicken sounds are inherently credible, but if it's Wang Rong herself doing the chicken vocals — and I think it is — the chicken voice unleashes something in her that she can't do otherwise in anything close to her own voice, at least not in the several tracks of hers I've listened to on YouTube. (But, given that Wikip says she's been putting out music since the early '00s, I've hardly got an overview of her work. This one's nice enough, this one's got some interesting voice maneuverings, and on this one she sings with authority.)



( A Pony Named Olga )

Pasting in the Facebook convo (through early in the day, May 13) that Chuck began in regard to my q about Richard Rodgers and Dave's about whether there's any statistical support for the common assertion that the majority audience for hip-hop is white. You'll see a link to a WSJ report of an actual study, which produces an actual number (audience 60% white), but methodology seems shaky and there's no further breakdown beyond either they own hip-hop or they don't (so no record of how much hip-hop someone got, or what sort of hip-hop).

But the thread does veer off into an interesting discussion of "When did you first hear hip-hop, and how did it strike you?"



There's no Richard Rodgers discussion, though thanks to Kevin John we verified that Dorothy Rodgers did indeed tell Billboard in '82 that husband Richard was a fan of the Marcels' version of "Blue Moon."

As for my attempt (so as not to have to visit a library or make phone calls or do actual research) to find out if Richard Rodgers did actually take out full-page newspaper ads urging people not to buy the Marcels' "Blue Moon," so far Twitter and Tumblr haven't helped me verify or refute the story or, if it's false — WHICH SEEMS LIKELY — determine where the story came from. Web, you fail. Story seems false not just because twenty years later Rodgers' wife said something opposite to it, but because none of the bios I sampled on Google books mentioned the story. If Rodgers had placed the ads, that's too effortful an event for a biographer to ignore. (Although Google Books doesn't post books in their entirety, so the story may be in the bios in unposted sections, that all such references to the story would fall through the cracks in Google Books seems unlikely. And whenever I made my way to an index, the Marcels were absent.)

Here we go:

( It's just like the military pulling a rank/We got a new dance and it's called the spank )

We've broken 500!

500 what?

Well, whenever someone posts a comment in koganbot, the comment is sent to my lj inbox. If I think the comment needs me to think about it further and/or a reply from me, I save it. Once I reply or think I'm more-or-less finished with it, I delete it. So, there are now 519 comments in my lj inbox that merit further consideration or a reply without having yet gotten the consideration or reply. (Actually, a few of the comments are in snsd_ffa, now that I've readjusted my settings to get those, too.)

So, for instance, I still would like to think further about what petronia and askbask and sub_divided and arbitrary_greay said regarding the Minami controversy, especially as to what is or isn't happening in Korea, whether and how much and why some K-pop idols might be under a no-dating or a don't ask/don't tell regime.

And if you listed a set of tracks and LPs in the comment thread to my mid-year list, 2011, I still hope to listen to what you listed.

And I want to respond to what AG has said about journalism regarding K-pop and what AG and greywing said during the discussion of white participation in K-pop.

And I've still got to go through that list of live Big Bang performances that sub_divided thoughtfully provided. (Also, though it's not on lj, askbask posted a very useful rundown of BoA's career over on ilX's K-pop 2013 thread that I hope will produce lots of future listening from me.)

Etc.

As you see, Crayon Pop have my top song. But for the long run I'd lay my bets on ChoColat. Crayon Pop have to rely on being insanely catchy every time out, while ChoColat only need reasonably good tunesmanship and dramatic timing and Melanie's passionate wail — all of which ChoColat can rely on.

[Video no longer available]

1. Crayon Pop "Bar Bar Bar"
2. Gaeko & Choiza & Simon D & Primary "난리good!!! (AIR)"
3. GLAM "I Like That"
4. Baauer "Harlem Shake"
5. MBLAQ "Smoky Girl."



6. will.i.am ft. Britney Spears "Scream & Shout"
7. Evol "Get Up"
8. Cassie ft. Rick Ross "Numb"
9. Tiny-G "Minimanimo"
10. ChoColat "Black Tinkerbell"
( 11 through 50 )

( Continuing the ChoColat/Crayon Pop theme )

( Baauer, Gaeko, GLAM, Lim Kim, T-ara )

Made a YouTube playlist of my favorite tracks from K-pop's lower commercial tiers.



In ascending order. As you can see, I like both it and that:

Leader'S "Hope" (2011). The song is called "Hope" but the sound is heartache 24/7. I left NYC several years before Hot 97 or whatever it was came in with a Latin freestyle format, but I can imagine this humid emotion emanating daily from car radios and bodegas on my block (I lived on the northern end of Mott Street, which was nominally still part of Little Italy, but the Italians had mostly moved to more well-to-do neighborhoods, being replaced by immigrants from the Dominican Republic).

D-Unit ft. Vasco "Stay Alive" (2013). Produced by Zico of Block B, this is a lot more natural than his own group ever was at creating a hip-hop idol sound, emphatic rapping with a backdrop that's half dreamy and half disorienting.

Chi Chi "Sexy Doll" (2012). A come-on that sounds at least as ominous as it is salacious.

Z.Hera "Peacock" (2013). Haven't yet discovered who wrote this, but it's someone with a far better understanding than I of Chopin or whomever, the track moving along towards inevitable bliss, while the singer uses the strain in her voice to suggest struggle and uneasiness. She just debuted, and I'm hoping for great things.

Clinah "So What If" (2011). Fractured power pop. It feels Japanese.

Tiny G "Minimanimo" (2013). I wonder if Bo Diddley had the least inkling in 1955 that he was setting the beat not just for buckets 'n' guts, but for sprites and nymphs.

Miss $ "Physical Or Emotional" (2012). Back to the dark Bodega wail. Miss $ had been a so-what r&b act for several years until they suddenly blossomed into passion.

Evol "Get Up" (2013). Get ur twisty little freak on, and take it to the disco.

GLAM "I Like That" (2013). Samples New York City sorrow, then pushes towards a joy most complicated.

Flashe "Drop It" (2012). A lot like "Bo Peep Bo Peep" in the way it teases and nags you.

New.F.O "Bounce" (2011). While the video apes 2NE1-style imperiousness, the band bubbles and bounces.

ChoColat "I Like It" (2011). Young Melanie wants it all, with a massive voice of promise and pain.

Crayon Pop "Bar Bar Bar" (2013). Perhaps they're lucky not to be stars. They get to spray everyone in their audience with water pistols.

E.via (now calling herself Tymee) "Pick Up! U!" (2010). The queen of the lower reaches, she can be anything from a severe art bitch to the cutest and quickest of the wild spirits. Here she gives us fractured power pop, fractured dance pop, fractured Poképop.

Fat Cat "My Love Bad Boy" (2011). Putatively cute and catchy, our heroine breaks her voice into scrapes, sparks, and splatters, and the sort of hooks that rip flesh.

Honorable mentions: Gangkiz "Honey Honey," A-Jax "Hot Game," MYNAME "Just That Little Thing," Blady "Spark Spark," Delight "Mega Yak," X-Cross "Crazy."

( Steerage )

I crossposted this on ILM's K-pop 2013.

Japanese freestyle — is there a lot of it? I wouldn't know. Just glad that the style, which is pretty much gone from U.S. airwaves, is still strong in Asia.

(h/t arbitrary_greay, of course)

Tomato n' Pine FAB ("Free As A Bird")

Watch on YouTube

The rhythm is simply a hopped-up electrobeat,* not freestyle's fast twists and breakneck turns, but the melody, at least in the verse, could have come out of NYC or Union City, 1987. Like this:

Maribell "Roses Are Red"

Watch on YouTube

Also, in the midst of this week's Brave Brothers discussion I discovered a freestyle riff right smack center in the debut days of After School, 2009:

After School "Play Girlz"

Watch on YouTube

*[UPDATE 2018: I didn't know it when I made this post, but the correct term for the rhythm is "Eurobeat" (a term a couple readers use in the comments); but FAB's melody resembles freestyle in a way that most — but not all — Eurobeat doesn't. (I say "not all" given that Italodisco itself was in interplay with freestyle and feeding this into Eurobeat.) The term "Eurobeat" has had several uses over the years, but the one relevant to this post is an Italodisco-derived sound in the early to mid '90s that sold almost exclusively in Japan, though some producers and performers were Italian. The beats move fast at '90s speed, though, unlike vintage Italodisco.]

Here's a slight rewrite of my Pazz & Jop comments. I'd whipped the comments out in three hours right at deadline, and I liked the result: power and emotion maybe because of the rush. But owing to the speed, some ambiguities were left in, and some useful details were left out. So I've tweaked the sentences a little, and expanded a few.

( Budokan )
( People decided to imagine where the rage comes from )

A young woman, a member of a K-pop group, writes a tweet that goes, "The differences in levels of determination ^ ^. Let us all have determination." And several members of the same group take to twitter to concur, or re-tweet, with Jiyeon's concurrence maybe taking on an edge, the phrase, "I applaud you, acting genius," seeming like sarcasm. Hwayoung, the group member whom these tweets are apparently directed at, tweets back, "Sometimes determination alone is not enough." And from here the Internet takes over, seeing this as a set of girls ganging up on another girl. And videos that were obviously faked or even more obviously taken out of context begin to appear, to support this narrative, of a gang of girls bullying another girl: At the K-pop track-and-field events Hwayoung's umbrella is blowing apart in the rain and none of the other girls are helping her. Next image, they're force-feeding her while on a Japanese game show, jamming a rice cake into her mouth. (Amazing that that's taken as bullying; I mean, it's a game show, it's done for laughs, it was broadcast on TV, when it aired thousands saw without seeing any bullying; a few minutes earlier in the very same episode, Jiyeon, supposedly Hwayoung's main antagonist, also had a rice cake shoved into her mouth. Of course, the antis who distributed this as evidence of bullying edited that part out.) And we've got a photo where Hwayoung was on one escalator and the other girls were on another, definitive proof that she was ostracized, shunned.

So, there's a story basically creating itself out of air, but a story that's already in so many people, waiting for an excuse to take to the air.

( Make the other members suffer as well )

( Singles )

( Albums )

--Frank Kogan, December 28, 2012; minor revisions in comments January 23, 2013.

Sad situation: E.via posted on Twitter that she's split with her agency, Dline Art Media, and that they're not letting her take her stage name E.via with her. The issue seems to be almost total nonpayment over the last two years. (Allkpop provides a translation.) Even if we take into account that we're only getting her side of the story, it nonetheless does seem as if she's acting as decently as possible and the agency is being vindictive and destructive. Yes, it's by her own account that she looks good, and of course the smart strategy is to appear generous and understanding when one is recounting the alleged bad behavior of others.* But her tone and generosity are entirely consistent with what else I know about her. The goodness seems credible. Not that I know much at all; I haven't had a lot of time to follow Korean performers in their role as personalities beyond the singing, dancing, and dressing. But E.via was one of the very very very few to speak up to the mob that was attacking T-ara, she didn't have to do it, it was a risk, and she did it in a kind rather than an accusatory manner. Art heroes aren't always wondrous human-being heroes, and they don't have to be, but here's one who most likely is.



Another thought, though. Yes, she's an indie rapper, not a product of the idol system. But nonetheless, she's recognized internationally, she's been in the top 30, she's appeared on Music Bank. She's something of a star. Yet in effect she's been working for not even peanuts, for practical purposes an artist in her garret, her art life as shoestring and/or part-time as that of any writer or poet or painter laboring in obscurity or hanging around little-known fringe scenes. Even doing okay in the fame business, she's getting thrown down the ladder in the business business. That's the way things shake out, money and power generally going to the people who already have it.

Here's my E.via tag, if she's new to you. My most substantial posts about her are these two:

E.via (artist of the year, 2010)
The Five Faces Of E.via

Anyway, love to you, 이옥주, Lee Ok Joo, Napper, E.via, Tymee.

h/t davidfrazer

*A strategy that I rarely manage myself, I must say. Not my temperament.

Writing has its own versions of Auto-tune and plastic surgery: they're called "rewriting" and "editing" (incl. in-the-head and unconscious editing, before your own or another person's hand even starts reworking the prose).

Okay, those aren't great analogies and I'm not going to push them. Just, I have a gut-level aversion to the idea of someone undergoing plastic surgery (not counting to repair injuries and to compensate for gross disfigurement), but "gut-level aversion" is not the same thing as an idea or an argument. And, you know, we do alter ourselves in the way we face the world — words and demeanor. So why especially recoil when the altering is done by knife? Anyway, I'm not of the age or gender or profession to suffer negative consequences from refusing plastic surgery. Whereas I've read (though what I read was unsourced) that some K-pop contracts give agencies the right to force female trainees to "alter [their] look or image if necessary," presumably with a scalpel.

Here're Brown Eyed Girls, pushing back at the antis:



I'm not dead sure how to interpret this. Plastic surgery is here, it's real, we've probably done it ourselves, deal with it. There's aggression in the skit, but not necessarily a clear target, or a clear reason for the laughter. The issue causes discomfort; you milk the discomfort for comedy. This YouTube comment probably comes close:

This is just awesome and right on the spot. I can't [get] with men (society in general) who hate 'ugly' girls but criticize those who do plastic surgery or even put on make up! Not everybody naturally fits beauty standards, so fuck you.

( Grimes' Vanessa )

( Brown Eyed Girls' Abracadabra )

h/t Mat

If you add in her sounds, her faces number way more than five. This is not strange, to be a variety; but art and commerce and branding often constrain acts to only a few concepts, as does a focus on what you're considered best at; e.g., "I am the underground speed rapper" or "I have switched to an elegant and sexy image." Whereas E.via's chosen to vary and multiply her constraints, rather than constraining herself to a few.*

She's promoted herself with five videos that I know of, each drastically different from the others. What they share is a tendency to go meta, to be about image making and the choices facing her ("image" in the broad sense of "public image," not just "what I look like" or "the way the video shot is framed").

( Hey! )

( Shake! )

"Pick Up! U!"



( A.k.a. Pikachu )

( Crazy Fate )

( I Know How To Play A Little )

[UPDATE: Turns out she has six video faces; see the comment thread.]