Author Archives: Gil Asakawa

Return of the girls

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The Pipettes. It had to happen – the cyclical nature of pop music demanded that eventually, the girl group sound of the early ’60s would become hip again.

That’s exactly what might happen with the release next week of the Pipettes’ first full album in the UK. The British group, fronted by a trio of women wearing polka-dots and singing shrill harmonies to bouncy punk-pop that’s rooted in the simple romance but shot through with new millennium irony and cheek, has released a handful of singles to date (well, three, at least). Continue reading →

Welcome to my playlist … on shuffle

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Here’s the best description I’ve read yet about the “Jack FM” format — a hodgepodge of album oriented and hit songs from the past two, maybe three decades played up in no particular order. The stations that feature the format (Denver’s Jack 105.5 FM was the first station in the U.S. to adopt the format, which was birthed in Canada) typically use taglines that state something like, “Music we like,” or “Playing what we want.” Continue reading →

It’s SOO DOH KOO, folks!

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Sudoku on the WebOK, I can’t stand it anymore. I’m not much of a puzzle person — crosswords can’t catch my attention, and jigsaws don’t call out to me. I’m not much of a numbers person either — hence, I work with words (journalism), not numbers (engineering). So, Sudoku hasn’t exactly lit me on fire even though it’s apparently the hottest thing in the puzzles and games world.

I see Sudoku everywhere, from supermarket magazine racks to fancy bookstores, and electronic games to lots and lots of sites on the Web. Continue reading →

How can radio continue to be so stupidly racist?

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Yellowface afootI know, I know, I’m painting all of the radio industry with an awful broad brush. But let’s face it, no one’s doing this kind of stuff on TV.

A year and a half ago, I wrote my (embarrassingly, most recent) Nikkei View column about Hot 97, a station in NYC, which broadcast a tasteless and racist satire making fun of dead Asians after the tsunami. But similar incidents continue, even up to this month. Continue reading →