Japrocksampler

I heard Cope talking about it on BBC 6Music, and it sounded really interesting. He played some 60s Japanese records which he writes about in the book, which sounded like how Guitar Wolf might sound if they'd listened to Gerry & the Pacemakers rather than Bill Haley.

I'll be getting this soon. I've heard a fair bit of Rallizes Denudes, who are just amazing, but not much of the other bands covered, though I read the reviews that provided the seed of this at Headheritage. Vintage Cope!

Be interested to know what the consensus amongst serious collectors is.

hope this results in a legit reissue of Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 demo tape, Music Composed Mainly By Humans. best thing they ever did. deserves better than shitty cdrdom.

Sadistic Mika Band UBER-AWESOME, FTB awesome, I like Rallizes Denudes, still haven't got around to Speed, Glue & Shinki... not sure who else is in there, so can't comment any further at this point...

i'd assume Jacks, Golden Cups and the other Group Sounds bands, Far Out/Far East Family Band, Strawberry Path, Foodbrain (and all the other Mizutani projects)...

I know nothing about this music but figured somebody should start a thread about this book:

I do agree :-)

He Whose Very Name Is ILM Hate reviewed the book a few weeks ago and linked it from his (bliss) blog.

i will only read this book if there is a chapter on The Mops

HE IS JUST A MOPS

sorry, missed the prior thread. Just got a press release email about it.

I suspect Group Sounds coverage may be minimal. The stuff I've read covers a slightly later period, and is partly a reaction to that era.

Geinoh Yamashirogumi

hope this results in a legit reissue of Flower Travellin' Band's 1970 demo tape, Music Composed Mainly By Humans. best thing they ever did.

uhh... we must've heard very different versions of this.

gonna actually buy this book even though i don't really want to give cope any money.

interesting coince of new thread by Seltzer as I actually just got Speed Glue & Shinki 'EVE' in the mail yesterday. I'd owned the Shadoks reish of the second one ever since it came out (the one with the Bengal on the front -- such a great cover), but I'd never heard 'Eve'. So funny. A great album, immediately goes into my pile of fave 70s heavy, but just so funny; in the same way Flied Egg's 'Goodbye' is and so forth, just really wearing this aching to join the whole Brit/US post-psych movement. but yeah, totally great record.

Is the FTB "demo" the same thing as the 'Pussies' lp boot thing or whatever?

xpost - uhhh... we must've. i get more out of it than anything they've done, under any name, since Challenge!. though Satori did work well as the soundtrack for Takashi Miike's Deadly Agent Rekka (in which Uchida appears).

i'm pretty sure that the Pussies boot was cobbled together from different (earlier?) material. there may be some overlap. Humans was a full album recorded just before Everywhere and posthumously released as Kirikyogen, produced by Yuyu Uchida and credited to (keyboardist) Kuni Kawachi and Flower Travellin' Band.

frick. Deadly Outlaw Rekka. and i forgot that FTB co-founder Joe Yamanaka is also in the film.

i guess we heard the same thing, only kirikyogen rates way lower than satori, made in japan or really any other FTB stuff for me. i'll have to dig it out and see what about it bored me, specifically.

Ws getting re-acquainted w/this thing called RECORD SHOP yesterday and someone asked about Keiji Haino.

The rev in WIRE, to sum it up: the way Cope treats rock and the lack of exoticism, as positives, but not enough depth in history -- singing rock in Japanese ws controversial/thought of as impossible, but Cope never talks about it.

Takayanagi ws a jazz critic and I learned that his writings have been published. I'd be mildly curious to read a translation of those.

Just got my copy, courtesy of Soukesiana, and I'll be taking it to work tomorrow. It's that compulsive. Fine, fine looking volume too.

Actually quite a few pages on Group Sounds acts, including listings for the Spiders and the Tiger's 'Help' inspired beatsploitation epics. I'll be ebaying for these directly.

WE ARE NOT CRAZY! WE ARE SPIDERS!

I really want this.

Oh, Japanese rock.
I thought this thread was going to be about Jewish American Princess rock and was all ready with a list of stuff my bunkmates listened to at summer camp in 1987:
Jesse's Girl-Rick Springfield
Blinded by the Light-Bruce Springsteen
Faithfully-Journey
Uptown Girl-Billy Joel

Couldn't resist jumping straight to the Rallizes chapter: I now have a plausible explanation of the origins and meaning of the band name, which I won't spoil, and an impression of what the elusive Mizutani might actually be like. I'm working my way right through from the start now.

I find myself laughing aloud quite a lot while reading this, though I always have enjoyed Cope's writing.

isn't Les Rallizes Denudes supposed to mean "Fucked Up and Naked?" from whence the name of the bootleg LP series.

It seems that, apart from being the name of the band, Rallizes is a word which doesn't really mean anything in either Japanese or French. That's all I'm giving away.

I've gotta know the story behind Rallizes.
The first Flower Travellin Band album is ANYWHERE, not EVERYWHERE. A small but significant detail.
I haven't heard Speed, Glue and Shinki but Shinki Chen's solo album Shinki Chen and his Friends fuckin smokes.
http://sovserv.ru/dc/media/images/e/0/e/14127_t.jpg

I haven't heard Speed, Glue and Shinki

They're pretty good...

I'm sure, I read Cope's review on Head Heritage before it got taken down in preparation of this here book.

Flower Travellin' Band on Youtube - wait for the elephant!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rJv1OjPfteE "> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rJv1OjPfteE

Finished this last night, though I'll have to go through it again a couple of times. Great stuff, though some of the bands are probably a bit too proggy or 'eavy rock for my taste. Fascinating to read about anyway, and I'll try and give them all a listen, one way or another. Fair coverage of the 'Group Sounds' and 'Eleki' eras too, which makes me want to investigate further.

I'll have to read that Wire review. I can't believe they're really saying there's not enough depth in history. Cope is at great pains to provide historic context, and runs you through about 250 years of Japanese history. I suppose it's fun to say "ya missed a bit!" when someone's obviously gone to so much trouble.

Music book of the year? I'd say so.

Caught up with that review - perhaps the archetypical Wire magazine piece, from the man listed in the acknowledgements to the book as "Lifeline, sustainer-of-the-message and Nihonese Vibemeister No.1"

only 70 pages in and I'm already hooked, I was completely unprepared for something this thorough -- he really starts in 1853 with the American Navy arriving to forcibly initiate open trade with Japan by training their guns on the emperor's palace -- very well written overview on how Japan reacted when it was forced to wake up to the West, which he extends right through to their engagement with Rock. if Krautrocksampler was a bit of a breathless fanboy rant, he really did his homework this time

and it goes into much more depth than I was expecting, there's a whole section on the tape-music studios in Japan -- I was expecting a short mention of Group Ongaku somewhere in a rant on Taj Mahal Travellers, but we get sections on Toshiro Mayuzumi, Makoto Moroi, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joji Yuasa, lots of stuff newly dear to my heart due to the Edition Omega Point reissues and the Oto No Hajimari Wo Motomete series which have all been waking me up recently

so yeah, Krautrocksampler was like a xeroxed fanzine comp compared to this, if you see a copy don't hesitate

Japrocksampler Top 50 Records

= 1. Flower Travellin’ Band “Satori”
= 1. Speed, Glue & Shinki “Eve”
3. Les Rallizes Denudés “Heavier Than a Death in the Family”
4. Far East Family Band “Parallel World”
5. J.A. Caesar “Kokkyou Junreika”
6. Love Live Life + 1 “Love Will Make a Better You”
7. Masahiko Satoh & Soundbreakers “Amalgamation”
8. Geino Yamashirogumi “Osorezan”
9. Takehisa Kosugi “Catch-Wave”
10. J.A. Caesar “Jasumon”
11. Far Out “Nihonjin”
12. Les Rallizes Denudés “Blind Baby Has its Mothers Eyes”
13. Tokyo Kid Brothers “Thrown Away the Books, We’re Going Out in the Streets”
14. Far East Family Band “Nipponjin”
15. Speed, Glue & Shinki “Speed, Glue & Shinki”
16. People “Ceremony - Buddha Meets Rock”
17. Blues Creation “Demon & Eleven Children”
18. Flower Travellin’ Band “Made In Japan”
19. Karuna Khyal “Alomoni 1985”
20. Les Rallizes Denudés "Flightless Bird (Yodo-Go-A-Go)"
21. Masahiko Satoh & New Herd Orchestra “Yamatai-Fu”
22. Magical Power Mako “Magical Power Mako”
23. Taj Mahal Travellers “Live Stockholm July, 1971”
24. Magical Power Mako “Jump”
25. Kuni Kawachi & Friends “Kirikyogen”
26. Brast Burn “Debon"
27. Akira Ishikawa & Count Buffaloes “Uganda”
28. Flower Travellin’ Band “Anywhere”
29. J.A. Caesar & Shirubu “Shin Toku Maru”
30. Gedo “Gedo”
31. Les Rallizes Denudés “December’s Black Children”
32. Datetenryu “Unto 1971”
33. East Bionic Symphonia “East Bionic Symphonia”
34. Stomu Yamashita & Masahiko Satoh “Metempsychosis”
35. Taj Mahal Travellers “July 15, 1972”
36. Toshi Ichiyanagi “Opera Inspired By The Works Of Tadanori Yoko’o”
37. Taj Mahal Travellers “August 1974”
38. Seishokki “Organs of Blue Eclipse (1975-77)
39. Joji Yuasa “Music For Theatrical Drama”
40. Group Ongaku “Music of Group Ongaku”
41. Far East Family Band “The Cave Down to Earth”
42. The Jacks “Vacant World”
43. 3/3 “Sanbun No San”
44. Blues Creation “Live”
45. Various Artists “Genya Concert”
46. Toshi Ichiyanagi/ Michael Ranta/ Takehisa Kosugi “Improvisation Sep. 1975”
47. Itsutsu no Akai Fusen «Flight 1& 2”
48. (Maru Sankaku Shikaku) “Complete Works (1970-73)”
49. Yonin Bayashi “Ishoku-Sokuhatsu”
50. The Helpful Soul “First Album”

http://somewillookatmeandvomit.blogspot.com/2007/09/japrocksampler-top-50-records-1.html

ok yes there are some problems

no one would mistake this for academic writing & that is probably part of the appeal -- telling the stories of these people, the colloquial dinner conversations, scribing their career ambitions, all without footnotes... it's pretty clear there's a lot of storytelling & projection going on. I can imagine almost anyone who actually knows any of these people will walk away outraged / annoyed at least a dozen times by his style, all the more so because he's expanded the scope & ambition of his writing

he's also organized the top 50 strictly according to personal taste this time -- I think I like this much better than last time, you can decode his priorities faster when there's no pretense towards objectivity and figure out which of those records are most likely to interest you. if he thinks that Speed, Glue & Shinki record is at the top of the heap and that 'August 1974' the least of the 3 TMT records, I want to know that _up front_, before reading another word, so I can triangulate his opinion on the 38 records on that list I've yet to track down

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/headtohead/unsung/topic/43211/flat/0/

head heritage discussion thread

which led me to Chris McLean's very impressive looking overview page on Japrock here: http://www.recordheaven.net/japan.htm

another more insular perspective, rolling stone-japan's list of the 100 greatest japanese rock albums

http://neojaponisme.com/2007/11/09/100-greatest-japanese-rock-albums/

very interesting ordering. some real surprises (like seeing Jun Togawa place so high & Shiina Ringo place so low) but mainly good to have another perspective

from Cope's list, J.A. Caesar is the biggest surprise I hadn't yet checked out (google spelling hint: Caesar = Seazer)

the very first comment is someone complaining about Shiina's KZK not being in the list

jon, did you get this in SF or order online? where can one find?

Amoeba SF, International Rock section in the back right corner of the store

http://www.amazon.com/Japrocksampler-Julian-Cope/dp/0747589453/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194639772&sr=1-1

nice, i have amoeba credit

the very first comment is someone complaining about Shiina's KZK not being in the list

And justly so.

The Flower Travellin' Band stuff I heard is just hideous.

you're out of your mind

unless that's like bad meaning good

No, I'm out of my mind.

I'm kind of selective about amorphous freakout music, and that's what it sounded like to me.

I like FTB's Satori. Eastern melodies & lines + Sabbath. That album doesn't sound amorphous to me at all, very focused and heavy. Liking Sabbath definitely helps (I respect Sabbath but never really spent that much time listening)

I'm kind of coming at this stuff from the slightly more ascetic or focused Group Ongaku / Ichiyanagi / Yuasa / Taj Mahal Travellers / Geinoh Yamashirogumi angle, though I dig Les Rallizes Dénudés because they took the wasted rock thing to such extremes, way past the Velvets -- they sound more like where the Japanese noise rock underground went in the 80's than any of their contemporaries, they're really something

An interesting section in the book relates that since LSD just wasn't making it over to Japan as quickly as the Grateful Dead albums telling them to do LSD, they just got into speed, glue and paint thinners, which really goes a long way towards describing just how wasted a lot of this music sounds -- even if it's all modelled on a lot of 70's rock that I am not that into at all, the guitars & feedback tend to come on just a little bit more intensely than you'd expect

J.A. Caesar's 'SHINTOKUMARU' is a lot closer to how you'd expect a Japanese Magma to sound than Koenji Hyakkei's later straight up tribute. there's interesting stuff on Magical Power Mako's debut and "Super Record" that definitely justify the Faust comparisons (fragmented short jams occasionally punctuated by songs). Not sure how into Far East Travelling Band I am, a band featuring Kitaro produced by Schulze is only a risky proposition, I'm kind of there but a little wary

Check out J.A. Caesar's IMDB entry. Apparently there's a movie of "Throw away the books . ."

Fopp in Glasgow are currently selling this for £7, couldn't resist - tho' from the look of things someone (Alan Cummings?) def. needs to write a follow up volume that covers ppl like Takayanagi, Abe, Haino, Eye, Akita etc etc in lots more depth - and yeah, he's totally wrong abt August 1974 and picks the wrong Les Rallizes recs - but still and all it's a start

one thing I did notice is his tight focus on the emergence of Rock in Japan meant that he does skimp a bit on how it was all developing against the larger background of Jazz music's infiltration of Japanese pop in the decades after WWII -- it really took over in a very interesting way. he mentions jazz players who crossed over to psych, but it's over 200 pages in before he begins to mention Miles Davis arriving in the mid-60's and the conservatism of Japanese jazz listeners & how _that_ (and Enka) were the backgrounds rock was taking over from, instead of crooners and country

can anyone recommend any good books about the history of Jazz in Japan?

another great part is the importance of the Japanese production of 'Hair' and how the police shut it down after two months, splintering the musicians into many different bands with a single drug bust. you can really hear how seriously they took 'Hair'. J.A. Caesar's Heresy does sound like a cross between a freakout musical & ritual theatre with scattered random recitational screaming over the top. (Heresy is an amazing record, I know it's just a document of a stage show but maybe it's even better being forced to imagine what they're doing on that stage while making those noises)

also, exactly how many times did the Boredoms listen to Magical Power Mako's 'Cha Cha' growing up before making Soul Discharge

& definitely not feeling Far East Family Band, I like the basic sound but they don't actually take you there

if you download one J.A. Caesar record make sure it's 'Jasumon' (aka 'Heresy')

argh wrong thread, well perhaps more people have heard these records now

my favorites going in were Kosugi & the Taj Mahal Travellers, Geinoh Yamashirogumi, Joji Yuasa, Ichiyanagi, Group Ongaku & the Rallizes. Favorite things the book turned me onto were J.A. Caesar, Love Live Life + 1, Karuna Khyal & the 2nd Magical Power Mako 'Super Record' (which Cope is wrong to hate), and it was good to learn about FTB, Speed Glue & Shinki, Brast Burn, Masahiko Satoh & Soundbreakers

-- Milton Parker, Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:39 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

motherfuck this book is awesome. i'm pleased about Cope's writing style too

i need all these rekkerds though, and I wanna hang out with Mizutani

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/06/music-film-posters-by-tadanori-yokoo/

We need another man like Julian Cope again

Started to read this but got severely fucked off by all the references to the zeitgeist, national character etc. I could've done w/out his bullshit history lesson as well to be honest.

Conversely, I wish his Krautrock book was that kind of inclusive.

But, he's kinda been stapled to the KRock influence, and rather like his Scott Walker phase, is over it, it seems.

There wasn't ENOUGH "bullshit history" for the Wire. I don't know if the review is on line, but it's a classic of damning with faint praise.

thanks for insane Yokoo link, JW

http://c3.cduniverse.ws/MuzeAudioArt/Large/44/2482844.jpg

^ So is this thing legit or is it as bootleggy as it looks?

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=8928946

Don't think that Cope has anything to do with it btw, but I could be wrong.

Inclusion of Rallizes tracks makes me lean towards the bootleg theory.

Wouldn't be surprised if the "extensive sleeve notes" were just copied straight from the book or something. Anyone bought this thing yet?

(notorious bootleggers) Phoenix issued quite a lot of rare Japanese psych etc stuff on the back of the Cope bk, wldn't be surprised if they were the ultimate source for this one, too

Yeah I think Bamboo is a label started by the ex-Radioactive guy, who seems to be running 3 or 4 imprints these days. Kind of infuriating that it's easiest to get, say, Flower Travellin' Band albums through his companies and that probably destroys any incentive to do legal reissues outside of Japan.

Really? Damn! Rough Trade had Bamboo's Flied Egg CD labelled as official, so a few months back, as usual, I ignored all the Phoenix reissues in their Japanese section & bought that instead. Grrrr.