A Few Favorite Bands' Videos Found On Youtube

Surfing YouTube, I found videos by a few favorite artists...



This is from Spangle call Lilli line's Koto civic auditorium show a few years' back. If you are a Spangle fan and don't own 68scll, you should try to track down a copy, because it puts them in a different light, the live strings adding even more colors to their gorgeous palette of sound.




Here is enigmatic, sweet-voiced pop unit Cecil's new single, "Namida No Tsubomi ["The Teardrop's Bud"...hmmm, not quite as poetic as the Japanese...]. This year they are supposed to release a new CD, which I'm very much looking forward to.　




Capsule sometimes gets a bad rap as Pizzicato Five clones and so on, but I think they're one of the better Japanese units around now. One of their recent shows apparently got shut down by the Tokyo fire department because too many people showed up. Beautiful imagery in this video too.




Time-travel back to 1992, when Grunge was big, Supersnazz was the next big girl band from Japan (after Shonen Knife), and they went on a long Europe tour... I think that's where this video is from. They rocked back then, and they still do.

Yuyake Lamp's Kokoro No Ki

There are very few musical works I've waited for as eagerly as piano pop band Yuyake Lamp's debut single. Yuyake Lamp is, after all, the successor band to Orange Plankton, one of my favorite Japanese groups, and I know from seeing them live that they're unlike any other band; they create their own world on stage. Now, the single, Kokoro No Ki, is out, and it lives up to my expectations.

I think this three-song single is intended to be Yuyake Lamp's make-it-big work; in the past, their album production and marketing were very much do-it-yourself indie band style, but for this CD they got serious people to help them so that, for example, the single has been mentioned in Weekly Pia magazine and they are doing an in-store show at HMV music store. The title track itself sounds more hit chart-friendly than anything Orange Plankton did; very upbeat and filled with sound. But my favorite song is the second one, “Ao No Yukue”, which is just vocalist Yumi accompanied by a piano, highlighting her voice.

And what a voice it is... It's one of the most distinct Japanese high female voices I know, gentle but filled with emotion and personality. Yumi's voice is a big part of what has made me follow Orange Plankton/Yuyake Lamp all these years.

The third and final track, “Fuwari Fuwari”, is like Yuyake Lamp's “I Want You To Want Me”. Just as Cheap Trick didn't come up with a definitive version of the song from the start (and instead, found success with the Budokan live version), I don't think Yuyake Lamp has created the ultimate version of this tune, one of the best, most memorable and catchiest numbers they've written so far. The version on this single is very good, but it doesn't quite measure up to the renditions I've listened to at their shows. The band says “Fuwari Fuwari” is an important song for them—I think it's one worth revisiting in recorded form, maybe as a live recording.

***

Writing about the band Yuyake Lamp puts me in a tight spot of sorts. They are, after all, friends who I've known for years (back from their Orange Plankton days), and haven't you ever had a friends' band in your life that you thought was the greatest? In other words, maybe I'm not very objective about them.

But I like to think that isn't the case. I discovered their music before I met them in person—my being blown away by their music preceded my making their acquaintance. And I haven't necessarily fallen for bands of other friends. Also, I'd like to think I can separate friendship and my musical tastes.

What I know is that when I put my iPod on shuffle and swim through a long stretch of unfamiliar songs, the gentle piano pop of a Orange Plankton/Yuyake Lamp tune often feels like seeing land in the horizon.

The other day shuffle brought me to an Orange Plankton song I hadn't heard in a while: “Wakaranai no Uta [Song of I Don't Know]”, from their album Wishing For Rain Tonight, released in 2002. It still sounded fresh. 2002...already half a decade ago, and much has changed in the meantime (Orange Plankton no longer exists in that form, for one thing), but listening to the song brought me back to those early days, when I made my way to clubs all over the west side of Tokyo to see them, in my memory always the sweaty summer months, and I'm walking under a railroad bridge somewhere to my destination of beer and music.


***

Yuyake Lamp is on the road again on a national tour to promote their single, and I went to see the first show of the tour, at the Plug in Shibuya. It was an exhilarating evening as usual. At one point they had a children's hand bell ensemble from their neighborhood play one of their melodies, and they stole the show, as performing kids tend to do.

***

“Kokoro No Ki” can be translated to something like “The Tree of the Heart”, but that's not quite adequate, because “kokoro” is one of those Japanese words that's hard to render into a single English word. Roughly, it means a person's internal emotional core, but is used much more casually and in everyday conversation than that definition would suggest.

Ken M, A Magnificent Seven (In Italy)

I was asked again by the Italian music website rockit.it to listen to Italian pop music and tell them what I really think as a foreigner. The last time I and the other foreign reviewers were collectively called the Foreign Legion, but this time we've been upgraded to the Magnificent Seven. Also, last time, I was assigned to review a CD by a crazed, screaming electric music dominatrix, but this time I was given an album called Non Voglio Che Clara that was totally my cup of tea, beautiful pop with strings and acoustic guitar and a guy who can really sing, and which I'd probably buy if I sampled it at some cool Tokyo import CD shop like Apple Crumble Record. Here's my capsule review.

Why I Walked Out On YMCK

I walked out on my first YMCK show last week even though I’m a big fan of their 8-bit techno jazz-pop music, for a simple reason: they prohibited photography.

The MC of the event told the audience before the show started that taking pictures and video-taping would be forbidden. And they seemed to have staffers standing around making sure no one did whip out their cameras. That put me off. I don't know the YMCK people or what was behind this prohibition, but it seemed needlessly uptight, especially for an indie band.

Plus, I listened to a couple of their songs and would have stuck around anyway if they were great performers, but, as far as I could tell, they were simply recreating their recorded sound on stage. They weren't adding that special thing that can only be created in a live show. It didn’t seem worth my time to stay until the end.

If people like to take pictures of bands, I don't see why they shouldn't.

Musicians may object that photo-taking by audience members disrupts the show. I could maybe see this if fans were taking pictures with a flash, but I never do.

Or, they might say they don't want their pictures appearing in blogs or other random places without their knowing about it. But to this, I ask: what’s the big deal? It isn’t as if the paparazzi are stalking them in their private lives—they’re on stage! Don’t they want the free publicity?

I don’t even see why major label artists are averse to getting their pictures taken. What would it matter if every other person in some arena show was taking photos? But there’s probably no hope of that ever happening.

What I wish for is more freedom. Music should be a free thing, and people should be free to enjoy it the way they like. Too often at Japanese shows, you are expected to enjoy the illusion of being free and eager music lovers when, in reality, authority figures are regulating everything you do, from the moment you line up to when you leave the hall. I dislike this this, and I avoid shows at the big venues if I can help it.

Smaller, independent shows shouldn’t be like this, but there will always be bands that want to take away the audience’s freedom. That’s their choice, but it’s my choice not to go to their shows or write about them (unless I want to—like today).

Asakusa Jinta, Back From The U.S.

Japanese “hard march” rockers Asakusa Jinta returned from their U.S. tour, and I went to see their first show back in Tokyo. Fans at the Yoyogi Zher The Zoo shouted 'okaeri!'—welcome home.

Sometimes I get overexcited when I see a good band for the first time, only to have my enthusiasm come back down from the stratosphere at the second gig, when the novelty wears off.

This wasn't the case with Asakusa Jinta.

If anything, I became an even bigger fan. Listening to their hard-driving set, my tiredness disappeared like a cannonball over the clouds. Swinging to their retro musical gems, my apathy melted away like an ice cube in boiling water.

Vocalist/bassist Oshow said the band stopped by Austin while South by Southwest was going on, and they played at an alternative festival called 'FXFU'.

“It was at a farm, and on the stage with us was a goat,” Oshow said. “While I was singing, the goat was in one corner, munching on grass. The farm owner said the goat became dumb listening to all the loud music. Our cables went through the grass with animal crap.”

Next to me in the audience were two little girls, and their dad showed them dance moves. They had fun. I like challenging, sophisticated music, but a part of me thinks that the best music is music that kids can enjoy too because it's so appealing and straightforward. Asakusa Jinta draws their inspiration from old Japanese music styles that are fairly obscure, and sound like no other band I know, but even children love their stuff.



***

Also performing was a band called babamania, who, I just found out reading about them in wikipedia, are 'best-known for their 2003 hit "Wanna Rock", which is known internationally due to its inclusion on the multi-platform video game FIFA 2004'. With a female singer, a male rapper/vocalist (wearing a white tuxedo jacket over sweatpants) and lots of dancing, they seemed to me like an Avex Trax group gone indie.

Before babamania's set, a band from Osaka I wanted to see performed: A.S.P., short for Associate Social Piano ('associate'? So does that mean they will change their name if they get a promotion?). Their female vocalist wore a red beret, a pink dress, golden spandex leggings, and red shoes (or some such combination, I don't remember exactly). They played an upbeat combo of rock, jazz and techno, and the red-pink-gold-clad vocalist was a good singer, though her way of singing, meant to highlight with her vocal skills what a free-spirited and sensitive individual she is, is pretty common these days.

Odds & Ends

* Rightround.com, where I’ve been doing monthly columns about Japanese music, is shutting down. It’s a shame—I enjoyed writing for them and also liked reading the other columns from Montreal, Sydney, Austin and San Francisco. The guides to music scenes were great too. Posts from the past will stay online.

* Live365, which hosts my radio station, has been asked by the Copyright Royalty Board to pay drastically higher royalties. They are appealing this, but if it goes through, that could make it impossible for small-time broadcasters like me to afford it. It seems like a witless move on the music industry’s part—Live 365 actually encourages people to try out new music and buy it (I know I have, listening to other stations—lots!). More on this here and here.

* On to happier news: one of my favorite Japanese groups, Yuyake Lamp, the piano pop band started by former members of Orange Plankton, released its first single yesterday, called ‘Kokoro no Ki [‘The Tree of the Heart’]’. They are doing a solo show at the Shibuya Plug on Friday to celebrate its release, and will hit the road for a multi-city tour from April 4. I haven’t bought the single yet, and will probably pick it up at the Plug show. It’s available here.


* Multi-instrumental art pop group 4 Bonjour’s Parties is also due to release their first album, both in Japan (on May 16) and in the U.S. (on July 23). I’m looking forward to that one too—4BP's tunes are beautiful, mellow and flowing, and it will be a pleasure to listen to a whole album’s worth of their music. Also gorgeous is the album cover (below), which is designed by a Japanese illustrator named Colobockle.

* Some live show photos of mine are used as the dots in this ad for Onitsuka Tiger shoes. This one came out of the blue—maybe I should charge them a fee!

* JapanFiles.com is now selling advantage Lucy tracks. Available are the album Echo Park and the maxi-singles Hello again and Sunday Pasta. Advantage Lucy is one of Japan’s best bands, and this is a good way to be introduced to their always-brilliant guitar pop.

* By the way, advantage Lucy disappeared from view for the first few months of this year, not updating their internet page and not doing any shows. It was a bit worrying, but they’re back now—their first show of the year is an acoustic set at a Buddhist temple (!) in Hiroshima (it sounds great, but is a bit of a hike from Tokyo…), and vocalist Aiko has restarted her online diary. It looks like they’re working intensively on a new album, removing themselves from the world like hermits in some coastal cave, to devote themselves to music… Aiko writes that they feel now like first line intro of the Soseki Natsume novel Kusamakura (the internet being the incredible resource that is, I’ve found a translation of the passage):

Use your intellect to guide you, and you will end up putting people off. Rely on your emotions, and you will forever be pushed around. Force your will on others, and you will live in constant tension. There is no getting around it—people are hard to live with.

Perfectionism comes with a price, is what I think she means. I love advantage Lucy for many reasons, and definitely one of those reasons is that they’re the sort of band that quotes Soseki Natsume in their online diary!

Gyoko, Michiro Endo, Midori

I was looking forward to Saturday's show at the Yoyogi Zher The Zoo because it was to feature a musician and a band I've wanted to see for a while: Michiro Endo, the former front-man of the legendary 80's punk band The Stalin, and Gyoko, Japan's one and only fisherman rock band. It turned out to be a great evening.

Endo, the second on the bill, played solo. His face was jagged and all sharp angles, like a stone spearhead. Whipping the strings of his acoustic guitar, he shouted sung poems about sex and destruction (at one point he compared the womb to the atomic ruins of Hiroshima), and then let out shrieks at the ends of songs like a bat's scream. A couple of decades after the Stalin days (when he picked fights with audience members and threw animal innards into the crowd, getting banned from most venues in the process), he was still a rule-breaker but with words rather than action. The audience seemed at once moved and uncomfortable; several yelled out his name between songs.

Up next was Midori, an explosive punk-jazz-rock unit from Osaka, with a girl in a sailor uniform on vocals. Now that Limited Express (has gone?) has, sadly, disbanded, Midori will likely be one challenger to their throne as Osaka's wildest zany live band: bands that crowd-surf are a dime a dozen, but this was the first time I saw someone crowd-walk—the sailor uniform girl grabbed the ceiling pipes and stepped over the shoulders of fans during one number.

Gyoko is a trio of fishermen rockers—according to the tale they've spun they decided to start a band when heard Run D.M.C. on the radio waves while on a tuna-fishing boat near Australia. They have a great single out called “Maguro [tuna]” featuring taiko drums and a triton conch, and are due to release their first album in May.

Right away it was clear this was going to be something different: the stage was covered with banners with old Chinese characters on them saying things like “Big Catch”, and there were two giant paper lanterns on either side. The three members made their way to the stage through the audience, and the singer, Captain Morita, raised a long sashimi knife into the air as he climbed onto the stage. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and a tightly-twisted headband, and spent about as much time talking as doing a few songs. But it was first-rate entertainment—you never knew what they were going to do next, and at the end of their set Captain Morita left the stage and came back wearing an actual big tuna head on his face, proceeding to cut it up to give as gifts to the audience, while explaining what each fish part was.

For too many bands a live show is all about themselves: it's an egotistical thing, an opportunity to reveal themselves and their feelings through music, and the audience is expected to understand and be supportive. Not so with Gyoko. Their aim is to surprise and delight the audience, and they succeeded fully at that—I had so much fun I decided to leave before seeing the last band, because I was already sated. We need more bands like Gyoko.

My Charm #11 Girlie Life

My Charm is a magazine for Japanese girls who are connoisseurs of things like afternoon tea, knitting, candle-making, bead jewelry and European movies. It's not a zine I'd usually have any interest in, but the latest issue was different—it came with a bonus, a compilation CD that included tracks by favorite musicians of mine including Hazel Nuts Chocolate, Three Berry Icecream and Contrary Parade. So I sped over to the Libro bookstore in Shibuya, found it in the girl's magazine section (where I was the only guy looking around), bought it and listened to the CD at home as I flipped through articles about cute shoes, umbrellas, bags, buttons, sweets, soup, Paris and stamps.



For the most part the CD features Japanese city pop with easy-to-swallow melodies and well-behaved instrumental arrangements. The one big exception is Hazel Nuts Chocolate's “Jenny's Discothequa”, a hyperactive tune that sticks out in the compilation like a Disco Queen would on a stage full of ballet dancers. (Hazel Nuts' singer Yuppa also contributed to the magazine a manga about her losing her favorite favorite eraser.) Another good track is “Love Prologue” by a duo called Sucrette, a lounge pop number with pizzicato violins, vibes (?) and a French-influenced whisper-voiced female singer.

If you are in Japan you should be able to get your hands on My Charm #11 Girlie Life with its great, mellow-out compilation album in a big bookstore near you. If you aren't, I'm not sure where you can find it, but I'll be playing many of the tunes on my radio in coming weeks.

Japan Live Radio Updated - With New Logo!

In case you didn't know, I have an Internet radio station called Japan Live Radio, where I play Japanese songs I like and write about in these pages. I've been trying to update it a few times a month, putting in old personal favorites and new tunes I've discovered. The latest installment includes new songs by piano pop units waffles and Quinka with a Yawn, new material from arty rockers Good Dog Happy Men, a single by Shiina Ringo, and the usual liberal servings of perennial favorite artists like advantage Lucy, Spangle call Lilli line, Macdonald Duck Eclair and Luminous Orange.

I've also updated the station with an exceedingly cool logo, designed by Akira Muramatsu, the gentleman behind the album artwork of the latest advantage Lucy and Vasallo Crab 75 releases. Profuse thanks to Mr. Muramatsu for the logo, which I love! I marvel at how some people can create such snazzy art with just shapes and colors.

P.S. If you like the music on the radio station, could you, maybe, just keep it on all day once in a while...? Not that it makes any difference, but it would be sorta neat if the total listening hours for the station reaches 1000 hours for one month, and it's close to that. Muchas gracias!

Asakusa Jinta At Shibuya Quattro

In these cold months in Tokyo I've discovered a great band that warms my soul. Their name is Asakusa Jinta.

This septet takes old Japanese popular music, mixes in rock, rockabilly and a teaspoon of punk, and cooks up a sound that is both nostalgic and brand new. The 'jinta' in their name refers to brass bands that were active in the Meiji and Taisho eras (that is, 1868 to 1926), and horns and saxes, in addition to an accordion and a pumped-up double bass, are key ingredients in their songs. Their music sounds like modernized versions of old Japanese movie music (you can sample some of their tunes here).

Most Japanese bands borrow from western music styles like rock, blues and hip hop, but very few tap into Japan's own home-grown musical traditions. Asakusa Jinta does, and succeeds brilliantly. My next rightround column, due out on Monday, is about Asakusa Jinta--take a look if they interest you.

I went to see them at the Shibuya Quattro last week, and had such a good time I forgot what a cramped, smoke-filled hell-hole the Quattro is when it's packed (which it was). I was surprised to see that despite Asakusa Jinta's retro sound, the audience was young, mostly people in their twenties--was this a sign that Old Japan is becoming trendy? There were a few guys in rockabilly outfits, and one girl in a kimono with skin as white and smooth as ivory.

Asakusa Jinta is led by vocalist Oshow, who plays a golden double bass that's souped up to explode notes with maximum impact. Martial metaphors come to mind when trying to describe his bass sound--distant bombs, machine gun rounds... He's surrounded by a girl on sax, another girl on accordion, a trumpet guy, a guy that plays brass (including a sousaphone), and electric guitar and drums.

They play music that if it doesn't make you dance you should go and see a doctor. The crowd did what looked like Okinawa-style dancing, with both arms in the air, palms facing the ceiling and wrists twisting to the rhythm. For the encore, the horn section marched into the audience like some sort of ultra-hip chindonya ensemble, while Oshow did a solo on-stage. The front-center of the audience section dissolved into a mass mosh pit, and in spite of the incongruity of people slam-dancing to neo-Japanese popular music, I shared their sentiment.

***

Asakusa Jinta is touring in the U.S. in March, so don't miss them if you are in one of the big Americas cities they will be playing in, which are:

Cambridge, MA on March 10 at T.T. The Bear’s
New York on March 11 at Knitting Factory
Philadelphia on March 13 at Khyber
Chicago on March 14 at Empty Bottle
Austin, TX on March 16 at Elysium
Los Angeles on March 18 at Knitting Factory
San Francisco on March 19 at Independent
Seattle on March 20 at Neumos Crystal Ball Reading Room

More information here.

Salt Water Taffy & Vasallo Crab 75 At Zher The Zoo

Sometimes after a long day at work I debate with myself about whether I really want to go to a rock show somewhere in Tokyo. Is it worth spending the whole evening in some smoke-filled basement where the music might not even be that good? Often the 'go home' arguments wins out, and I slither back to the comfortable cocoon of my apartment. But other times I decide to go to the club in spite of being tired, and become glad I did because I feel regenerated at the end of evening. That was the case on Thursday night.

The chief draws of the show at the Yoyogi Zher The Zhoo were the bands Vasallo Crab 75 and Salt Water Taffy. The drummer of the latter moved to the former, but the two remain friendly with each other, and funnily enough, I found out later I wrote about a show featuring the two at almost the very beginning of this journal.

Salt Water Taffy is a quartet that consists of a female vocalist/guitarist and drummer, and a guy guitarist and bassist, and play shoegazer-influenced indie rock. The girl singer, dressed in a puffy red skirt with black dots that made her look like a ladybug or a strawberry, sang softly as if her voice was just another instrument in the ensemble rather than the focus of the performance, and it created a good contrast to the heavy sounds of the lead guitar and bass. Many Japanese kids seem to have a gift for coming up with attractive melodies and hooks (the same way they are often master cartoon illustrators), and this was certainly the case with Salt Water Taffy.

Of Vasallo Crab 75 I've written a lot over the years, but to repeat, they are one of the best live bands I've seen in Tokyo. It had been several months since I last saw them and they seemed to have gotten even better.

They combine rock with disco and funk, and the violinist Kawabe even breaks out Bach solos once in a while. Vasallo Crab 75 is a gathering of amazing musicians who seem to genuinely get along, and that comes through to the audience during their gigs. They are due to release a new album around May.

***

At the start of the evening my body felt stiff, like I was fossilized, but as the night progressed I felt the hardness melt, so that by the end I was light and exuberant, ready to dive into the limitless possibilities of music and art. That feeling is what makes me keep going to shows.


Vasallo Crab 75

Rightround Column: Moga The Y5

J-punk has been my thing recently: I've been listening to a lot of Ging Nang Boyz, Gauze (after reading this in Tokyo Damage Report), a J-Psychobilly compilation album called Far East Evils, punker-turned-novelist Machida Machizou's old work, etc. Another album whose play count has been shooting up in my iTunes library is So no Gunjyou, the new work by poetic, Japanese-language-only, quasi-emo quartet Moga The Y5, a longtime favorite group of mine. My latest rightround column is about Moga The Y5, their label Pizza of Death Records, and about the fact that punkers get older too.

Yuyake Lamp At Heaven's Door

The Heaven's Door in Sangenjyaya is known as a hardcore club, its bathroom walls coated with layers of graffiti, and its employees covered with tattoos. So it was a surprise that it was where mellow piano pop group Yuyake Lamp did their first gig of the year.

Yuyake Lamp, which is Orange Plankton minus pianist Yuki, is due to release their first single in March, and several video cameras filmed their show, maybe for a promotion video. Neither Orange Plankton nor Yuyake Lamp ever exploded in popularity, but things may be looking up for them in 2007: several of their songs have been used in TV commercials, and one tune is being played as background music at ski slopes across Japan. A movie director is producing Yuyake Lamp's single--no doubt he's one of those of us who became smitten by the group's sublime melodies and vocalist Yumi's singing, which is soft, but as intensely emotional as any hardcore singer that headlines the Heaven's Door.

Foreign Legion Of Italian Music Reviewers

For reasons I'm not sure of, I've been asked to review independent Italian music, a genre I know nothing about. But when I admitted my total ignorance to my contact person, a guy named Renzo, he replied, it doesn't matter, we want your feelings as a non-Italian listener, it's fine if you give us slashing criticism or enthusiastic praise, just "say the truth, ever and ever".

OK. I could handle that. I told Renzo I'll try it.

A few days later I received the album Odi Profanum Vulgus Et Arceo by the female artist Miss Violetta Beauregarde. The description that came with the album said Miss Violetta got into electronic punk because she was tired of all the pretentious techno-music maestros and wanted to show the world she could make equally good stuff by twisting knobs and punching buttons, without any training. It also said she throws lamb heads at her live show audiences. Interesting...

My 100-word review is here. To sum it up, this wasn't an album I would pay for, but it did grow on me and I came to like many parts of it. My attitude is, you might as well try listening to all sorts of music, dive into any sea of sound. What could go wrong? It's music, not a mined harbor.

Renzo kindly translated the review into elegant-sounding Italian on the website Rockit: "Ma poi ho capito che la signorina Urlatrice crea un interessante mondo sonoro – tetro, arido, inumano, grigio ..." etc. (You can read the original review in English if you scroll downa bit.) And the name of the series of reviews by me and the other foreign writers will be Legionestraniera, meaning we're the Foreign Legion of Music Reviewers. Bravo!

Pizzicato Five Rediscovered--Visually

I've long been a lukewarm fan of Pizzicato Five, in that I like a lot of their songs but not with a boiling passion. But then the other day while surfing YouTube I found several P5 music videos, and after watching them I suddenly understood why the group appeals to so many people. While their neo-60's hipster pop music is lovely in itself, what sets P5 apart is the whole package: fashion, visuals & art, attitude, in addition to the invariably catchy melodies. This became clear the instant I clicked play on the first YouTube P5 video I found.

It shouldn't have surprised me that Pizzicato Five's videos are sparkling gems, since one of the joys I've gotten out of buying their CDs is looking at the quality artwork and photos that came with discs, portraying Maki Nomiya and Yasuharu Konishi as stylish 1960's jet-setters, and if their CD pictures are so artsy and imaginative then you'd expect good music videos too. But I've never been a big music video fan, so never thought to check out P5's videos.

What happy results a few minutes of aimless wandering on YouTube can bring! I first found a video of the upbeat song "Twiggy Twiggy", and loved it. Such cute dance moves! They're a mix of vogue and the Twist. What lovely art, with the faded black and white picture and the random appearance of slogans on the screen saying things like "pizzicato five; in action"... And what's the deal with the blank-faced guy in the back taking it all in?

I also liked this video of "Playboy Playgirl" with a bleached blond Nomiya and a boyfriend drinking champagne and dancing at some super-ritzy party in what looks like the inside of a castle...

But my favorite was the video of "Such A Beautiful Girl Like You". The song is one of the P5 tunes I like the most to start with--it has a great melody, and the lyrics with its main line, "Why is such a beautiful girl like you crying?/There isn't a girl as beautiful as you anywhere", are simple but evoke something like a scene out of a movie. The video doesn't take anything away from the song, and adds delightful art.

The total impact of the art exceeds the sum of its parts: for example, Nomiya's blond hair, red sweater, white mini-skirt, and the white room with a white bed and white chair are each fairly ordinary, but all together they are striking.

And then there's that random street corner and curving road that Nomiya walks across. The whole feel of the scene fits perfectly with the image of the video: the bright white building in the corner, the overcast sky, the European feel of the street... It's brimming with classiness.

If you watched P5 videos in real-time when they came on TV none of what I've been writing about above might seem like anything new, but for me, who saw these videos for the first time, they're a grand discovery. For the benefit of people who've never seen the videos, here's "Such A Beautiful Girl Like You" (at least, until YouTube takes it down):

More Fliers, More Flyers...

Nothing extraordinary, no Toulouse-Lautrec posters, but here are a few event fliers that caught my eye at a recent show, beginning with this rather un-P.C. illustration above (do those stairs lead to the Basement Bar? Hmm, don't remember that entrance, maybe it's a side door...).



Fuzzy, pastel Tokyo Tower...

Flying oreo cookies, dancing licorice twists, and a path leading up to a gingerbread house...



Weird tree against a blue-gray sky...

And is that the Chinese animal that eats your dreams?

Texas Pandaa, Contrary Parade At Basement Bar

Are there pandas in Texas?

If so, do they wear ten-gallon hats and prospect for oil?

Or, is a 'pandaa' something different from a panda?

Those are some of the questions that might come up when pondering the name of a brilliant Tokyo band named texas pandaa, who I saw Friday night at the Shimokitazawa Basement Bar.

Sometimes it's good to have a weird band name, which many many bands in Japan do, because it stays in your mind. That was the case when I last saw texas panda three years ago: their name was imprinted in my brain, though that was also because these performing pandas were wonderful live.

I seemed to remember them being hyper and sorta punk, but Friday night they were clearly more in the shoegazer camp, a bit like My Bloody Valentine, except instead of Kevin and Bilinda there were two Japanese girls on vocals. The guitar girl is the main singer while the bass gal mostly does harmonies, and between on stage is the lead guitar guy (they're a two-girl, two-guy band). Most of the songs started quiet, and built up in intensity to final feedback-packed explosions. They were understated between songs, in the classic tradition of the shoe-gazing movement, but their music was in-my-face in a dazzling way: this was one of the better shows I've seen in a while.

What I need to do next is listen to a CD by these Lone Star State b&w bears. I see a trip to Tower Records Shibuya in the near future...


Contrary Parade

I found out about this event because I got an e-mail from Satoshi Iwai, drummer for Contrary Parade of Osaka, saying they are coming to Tokyo to do a show, do I want to go? Yes!, I replied immediately--I loved this piano pop quartet's last gig in Tokyo (my report here).

They were great again at this show; they did a couple of new songs that I hope they will release on CD soon. They also said they are on a compilation album with a bunch of other Osaka bands, with all the other groups besides Contrary Parade being hard-core, and a book-CD featuring their music is coming out in March. As a compilation nut, both of these sounded like things I should check out. You can sample Contrary Parade's songs on JapanFiles.com.

One thing, though, I need to at some point ask Contrary Parade's Iwai-san: how did he end up in a band with three female members?

Hazel Nuts Chocolate At The Que

Hazel Nuts Chocolate wasn't quite what I expected.

The same way that, say, a historical site looks different in real life from what you'd imagined, favorite musicians I see for the first time often bely my expectations. This was the case with Hazel Nuts Chocolate, the electronic pop unit of a girl nick-named Yuppa. I've been a fan of hers for a while but had never seen her play live, and Friday night's show at the Que was her first in a year.

From the photos I'd seen of her and the often kid-TV-show-like sound of her music, I expected Yuppa to be some sort of bubbly, petite nymph. But the actual Yuppa, coming on the stage wearing a silky, orange-gold gown and jeans, was fairly tall and slender. Her two albums , stuffed full of bright, picture book illustrations (her bio says she studied children's literature in school) and songs about topics like witches, her hat collection and cooking vegetable soup for a boyfriend, give her the persona of a visitor from a parallel, Peter Rabbit universe. In reality, she talks like an ordinary Japanese girl, using the currently popular expressions, about things like the Nintendo Wii.

She played the Wii with her family over New Year's, and exclaimed that anyone, including her parents, can have fun playing it, and showed the audience how her family moved their arms wildly playing the bowling game. Swinging her own arm, she then went into one of her best songs, "Swing Life".

Rightround Column: Anime Visual Unit Fice

My first rightround column of the year is on Fice, the "Anime Visual Performance Unit" comprising Fire and Ice, a charming duo of perfectly human-like androids. Fice's otaku fans do dances with names like O.A.D. (short for 'over-action dolphin') for five to six hours a night.

Compilation Albums (LOVE Them) 2

A while back I wrote about my big love for indie compilation albums--one of the joys of being a music fan is finding a great song by a band I've never heard of in a compilation CD, tracking them down on the Web, and, a few weeks or months later, seeing them play live. This is how I discovered a lot of favorite groups (off the top of my head: The Kitchen Gorilla, Jimmy Pops, Contrary Parade, Mix Market, etc. etc.).

Here are a few other multi-artist albums I've enjoyed recently:



Galaxie 500 #Sugar; #Plum; #Fairy

This three-part compilation CD series is extraordinary: in a market where full-length albums usually sell for more than 2000 yen (US$20+), each of these CDs only cost 500 yen (that is, under five bucks). But, in spite of that low price tag, the music featured in this series uniformly sound brilliant and innovative. 'You Get What You Pay For' doesn't apply in this case.

Included are several indie artists I know, including Shugo Tokumaru, Apartment and 4 Bonjour's Parties, but lots of shoegazer, indie pop, psychedelia, electronica and other genre groups that are new to me; of those, I especially liked the bands Hot Fudge Sundae, Muffin (the Japanese food infatuation continues...) and Early Bird.

The compilation series is released by Finderpop Label, who also produce CDs by Apartment. I don't know how they can afford to make the CDs only 500 yen each--are they trying to subvert capitalism in the music industry? They've only released 500 copies of each installation, so if you are interested, get them at Amazon Japan before they run out.

* One of the CDs available here (maybe).


Easy Living vol. 1

This compilation, released by a label called Philia Records, features mellow-out guitar pop, neo-acoustic, soft rock-type songs. It's probably not for everyone: there's nothing even remotely heavy or hardcore about this collection. If you are the sort of person who spends days off sipping tea at home and glancing through coffee table art books, this CD might be for you--it will make good background music. I like the contributions by margarets hope, roly poly rag bear, Kobayashi Shino and frenesi. Easy Living also contains the only recorded track I know of by the now-defunct duo Harum (formerly Snow Ball), a nice tune called "Answer Song" I listened to so much for a time that it became sort of a personal soundtrack of the 2006 autumn season.

* CD available here.

GOOD GIRLS DON'T! XXXTRA

K.O.G.A. Records, which is behind this compilation, might be my favorite indie label in the world. It's known most of all for its fab girl-rock/punk groups, though it also has great guy bands (including label owner Mr. Koga's own band Rocket K), and its extensive catalogue contains many treasures, including the debut albums of Luminous Orange and Macdonald Duck Eclair.

This collection, a follow-up to the also excellent GOOD GIRLS DON'T, contains new songs by polyABC, Mix Market, Macdonald Duck Eclair, a cute new tune by Jimmy Pops called "C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E" that I play all the time on Japan Live Radio ('Let's go to the supermarket/to buy a pound of chocolate/your favorite one/do you like bitter or sweet/less or more cacao/as you like it...C,H,O,C,O, Chocolate'), and many more gems, including the last The Clicks song I know of before they quit, called "Cast A Spell".

* CD available here.