Everybody knows the legendary song "Sheena is a Punk Rocker" by The Ramones, the hyper energetic punk anthem! A punk rock homage to the Beach Boys you might easily say. Everybody loves the Ramones, even a lot of people who profess a hatred for the Punk Rock. These guys were Teflon...
But what of our brave Sheena?
That iconic young woman who broke with conventions and rebranded herself as a Punk. She didn't care what anyone thought. With that sort of Ramones exposure, she became sort of a global phenomenon. Celebrated by fans of the new sound, she became the toast of the world like a New Wave Josephine Baker, first traveling from Forest Hills Queens.....
To Deutschland:
And on to Brazil:
Even reaching the shores of Japan!
But like Icarus, who flew to close to the sun and plummeted back to Earth, there is always the inevitable critical backlash.....
And new fashions and movements appear to replace the old.........
And eventually, most of us have to grow up and move on with our lives, leaving our ideals behind....self actualization through commerce maybe.......
But there is always hope for new adulation from a new generation. There used to be 15 minutes of fame, but in these days of juiced globalization and technological innovation it's probably closer to 5.
But just keep your eyes and ears peeled--you never know where Sheena may just turn up again......?
Just poking around and came across this nifty little Japanese import by The Cokes, who play some pretty cool old school punk, sounding a bit like The Buzzcocks, NY Dolls, The Ramones, Undertones. And they do it with the requisite enthusiasm, albeit with fractured English.
The Cokes have a Facebook account, but aside from that I don't know too much. I found an old historic blurb from the now defunct Not Lame Records site; apparently they were selling their second album Heatwave. I have to assume I picked up this, their eponymous first record, from Not Lame also. Unfortunately between items about the Georgia soda giant and some Japanese Irish Punk band called The Cherry Cokes who have piqued the interest of the English typing sector of the blogosphere (did not find any other soft drink bands like The Diet Mountain Dews), I have had trouble locating more info. It looks like they have a third album entitled New World, so it seems they are still in operation.
You have to love what they are doing. When you hear them play, you know they are absolutely having a great time. It's simply a fun record, infectious. These guys bash it out pretty good here, ragged and raw like it's supposed to be, but with plenty of hooks and harmonies.
They apparently are doing a Ramones thing with their names, only with License.
Ogawa G License--Guitar, Vocals
Matsui B License-- Bass
Takumi G License--Vocals, Guitar
Takashi D License--Drums
And check out the New Wavy cover art--you would think they were a Dirtnap Records punk revival band. Which is not a bad thing at all. Aside from the song Don't Ring Me Up, which I find kind of annoying, it's one high energy pop-punk song after another. Songs like Johnny Will Come to Rock 'N' Roll City, My Vision Love Elevation, Traveling Romance and Don't Knock On My Door make this a recommended record.
As far as obtaining this music I think you would have to order directly from a Japanese vendor. I saw a company called CDJapan which is selling their first two albums. I have never used them, but that is one option.
For some reason I always smile when I think that people around the world can connect through music, whether it be Japan or Belguim, or Argentina. Going to see Stiff Little Fingers and looking at the diverse crowd in the audience was always satisfying, that the basic empowering message of their punk rock went beyond superficialities. Of course things aren't always this way in the real world. But when you listen to The Cokes, you feel them channelling that same excitement they must have felt listening to the Ramones, or the Damned, or The Pointed Sticks for the first time. I know I can feel it.
Boris' Pink is simply a disgustingly noisy album. They are a power trio from Tokyo. Takeshi sings and plays Bass and Guitar. Wata is on Guitar and Echo. Atsuo is on drums and percussion. If you love blissfully pummelling loud noise, you probably should not continue another second without this album. If you don't share those sympathies, this album would be a great example to persuade the sceptical how beautiful noise can be. The album is a crazy mix of musical genres, metal, shoegaze, garage rock, hardcore, grunge, drone rock experimentalism. Whatever they may be doing at any given time, this album makes my eardrums tingle. That is, before the blood begins to trickle out. I have three of their albums but this one is my personal favorite.
Even though this is mighty room saturating blast of sound, the music is nuanced, with tempo changes, and artful manipulation of volume, going from softer to louder in an eyeblink. Beneath the noise cloud there seems to be a fair amount of melodious music.While the first song Farewell is an almost ambient My Bloody Valentine excursion, the second song Pink is a hard riffing highly kinetic blast of Black Sabbath meets the Stooges. Woman On The Screen is MC5 on steroids. Wata is simply amazing--a poster of her should be hanging on the wall of every teenage Metalhead from Tokyo to Tacoma. This is simply an example of taking extreme forms of music from rock history and bumping the stakes up a few more notches. This music bowls the competition over with an almost religious fervor, as though they recorded this album from inside a moving tank.
The Perfect Woman?
This album just stuns me completely. The music is so beautiful, like a more traditional riff ready version of Bailter Space. In other places Boris even remind me of the stoned controlled feedback Kiwis Dead C. The final song on Pink is the 18 minute just Abondoned Myself which is an over the top epic blast of distortion.
Like a damned death star blowing up. A perfect Christmas for the noise aficionado, or you can give the gift of tinnitus to someone you hate. An extremely cool band who appear to be musicologists with a sense of humor. If you've seen the ironic Nick Drake inspired cover of their album Akuma No Uta you know what I mean. They have also collaborated with the likes of Ghost's Michio Kurihara and The Cult's Ian Astbury.
I used to play this in my old office when I was by myself and it just seemed to get louder and louder as the cd progressed. I always had to keep turning it down. If you like bands like Sonic Youth, the Detroit bands I previously mentioned, Jesus and Mary Chain, Xterminator era Primal Scream, Foetus, Wire, Ministry, Gordons, you will be quite pleased by this big slab of molten distortion.
Hypnotic Underworld is a very interesting recording issued on the Drag City label in North America.
They are a Japanese improvisational group under the leadership of Masaki Batoh (6 & 12 string acoustic guitar,vocals). Takuyuki Moriya performs on electric bass, contra bass and cello. Junzo Tateiwa plays drums tabla and percussion and Kazuo Ogino is on piano, mellotron, korg ms-20 synth, organ, lute, recorder and Celtic harp. Michio Kurihara is on electric guitar and Taishi Takizawa plays theremin, saxophone, tin whistle, bouzouki, and etc). With such a great variety of instrumentation on this album, the number of musical possibilities could make your head spin. And on Hypnotic Underworld this Tokyo sextet's possibilities are fulfilled by virtuoistic musicianship.You could say that they are a psychedelic band, but their music zig zags through numerous genres. Folk, Japanese Traditional, Acid Rock, Devotional Music, German Electronic--Ghost make it all seem simple. With some of these instruments I wouldn't be surprised if these guys could break into a set of Pogues song if they wanted to.
But it is not all an easy listen. But with some patience you will appreciate this album in all its diversity. The first track, the eponymous Hypnotic Underworld, is a four part suite. God Took A Picture Of His Illness On This Ground is 13 minutes plus of quiet reflective feedback tinged wind chime drone. But there is a sort of jazz bass underpinning it all. I honestly couldn't tell you what anyone is playing on this. Almost Moroccan Joujouka sounding. If I was directing a movie I would love to use these guys for my soundtrack. Escaped And Lost Down In Medina is a middle eastern drone over a jazz accompaniment. Pretty brilliant. Aramaic Barbarous Dawn? Electronic musik, acid rock, demon choirs. You know, same old, same old. It's cool to listen to an album when you have know idea what is about to happen. The suite ends with the hyper kinetic percussion of the brief snippet Leave The World! There is definitely a crazy kind of sanity at work here, but it all works.
Then Ghost does a cover of Hazy Paradise, which was originally by a Dutch psych band Earth and Fire, which I know little about. Kind of mellow west coast psychedelia with Michio Kurihura's guitar pyrotechnics reminiscent of Nels Cline's leads in Wilco. Kiseichukan Nite is an ambient spoken sung piece with Japanese instrumentation, including reflecting pool drip percussion. In our modern world of short attention spans these songs take a while to get a payoff. I don't know if this is for everyone, but I find this music fascinating, a visit to new and different musical philosophies.
Piper begins bucolically with tin whistle and cello and transforms into a blazing acid prog mutation. Blue Cheer meets Yes? I'm grasping at straws here. The hypnotic Ganagmanag is one of my favorite tracks, which starts with a flute playing atop a measured German electronic beat. The best part is after being mesmerized by the beat, at about halfway through you are jarred out of the trance by a shift into lute ostinatos. At the conclusion the tempo speeds up into a rhythmic piano pounding conclusion. Feed is pastoral dreamy psychedelia that morphs into a proggish synth and mellotron driven Yes workout. Holy High despite the heavy renaissance style piping passages, reminds me a little bit of an Ennio Morricone soundtrack or even Calexico.
The last song is a combo number, first a soft introspective version of Syd Barrett's Dominoes. Then it changes into Celebration For The Gray Days, an minor key organ number with heavy majestic guitar chords.
A strong finish to an always interesting, ambitious, and creatively arranged album. Some people who listen to this album might be dismissive--if music does not fit into the framework of one's preconceptions, there is an innate impulse to shut it out or turn it off. The best thing is to take off your ideological shutters for a few minutes and judge the music on its own terms, and exercise a little patience. The rewards will be revealed before you realize what happened. I have to say that I haven't heard anything quite like this before. Hypnotic Underworld is a extremely well crafted sonic journey that is a perfect reflective tonic for your musical complacency.
I picked up some music by this Devo-lovin' synth group from Japan. Got to love the anarchic yet poppy dynamism of this band. And they have a nice sense of style with their orange jumpsuited cover. Even though I don't understand a lick of Japanese, you can feel the surrealistic spirit in their songs. I guess Polysics or Die!!!! Vista is a comp album of songs originally released in their native country. The music is noisy and fun and rocks out pretty hard. The titles of their songs are sometimes familiar pop references, but do not have anything to do with the originals, like Kaja Kaja Goo, but technology, computers, robots, I think are a common theme. They do a mutant vocodered version of "My Sharona" which is pretty interesting. "Each life each end" is a cool song with female vocals, and I really liked the drive of "Shizuka is a Machine Doctor". "NewWave Hotline" is pretty much a homage to the B-52s. They have a great satirical sense of humor in their music.To me the disc has the vibe of a good raucous party record. Musically the band is accomplished and inventive and though they play in a certain retro style, they manage to mix up the instrumentation to keep the music from becoming too samey. Definitely not music you hear every day and quite entertaining.
