Last night I pulled out a random CD and put it on. Buffalo Daughter, a Japanese band. After listening through "Earth Punk Rockers" (an all-encompassing title if there ever was one), I went on a Japanese band binge. Here's just a few. After these I feel into videos. I tend to forget to look for stuff by bands I like if I've already done exhaustive searches before. It hit me tonight that the last time I looked for stuff by any of these bands was years ago, up to fourteen in one instance. There's all sorts of stuff online now. Do a search for any any of the bands below and kiss your night goodbye.
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For whatever reason, last night was spent revisiting Japanese bands, starting with Takeshi Terauchi, then the Mops, Melt Banana, Cornielius, and so on. But with Buffalo Daughter, Guitar Wolf and the 5678s waiting in the wings, Cibo Matto derailed everything. It seemed like just a couple years ago that Cibo Matto were all the rage, but it was actually the late nineties (jeez, that went by fast), They were on the top of the college charts and in the front racks of independent record stores. After a couple LPs and a handful of singles they fizzled went their separate ways, going out if not on the top, close enough that they had built up a decent following. As someone that has developed skepticism towards new releases, I generally don't read up on much of anything current, figuring that if a band is good enough, word will trickle through soon enough. So, I had no idea that Cibo Matto reunited a few years ago, was playing live again, and had newer records out. Last night was catch up time.
Back when their first LP, Viva! La Women, was released in 1996, they got my attention right away for their music, a mix of keyboard driven synth heavy hip hop and pop (heavier than it sounds), and somewhat abstract lyrical content. How are you going to ignore a chorus that starts with "Shut up and eat"? Plus, dropping a few F-bombs here and there; that always wins bonus points in these parts. And all of the songs were food related, some more metaphorically than others. So, yeah, despite not really being the type of music that gets regular plays over here, I got sucked in like everybody else. Their followup LP, Stereo ★ Type A, was just as engaging as the first, if not more so. So when they went kaput, they left a lot of people hanging.
I still haven't heard much of the new stuff, but that way with words seems to be intact. To wit, "MFN" off their latest, Hotel Valentine: "MFN" is short for "mother fucking nature". Dang me, I love candy mouths. And lines like "Don't tell me "what the hell?" I'm a ghost. Don't throw the fucking oyster shell at me."? You could put that over Mantovani and I'd still eat it up.
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It shakes me to my bones to think of what the earthquake and tsunami victims must be going through. This sort of thing should be humbling to anyone and everyone. I really have nothing to add, so I'll just post a bunch of Japanese music. This is just a sprinkling, but hopefully enough that a few of you will look into the agencies helping the victims (a list of agencies at the Huffington Post can be found here.)
I left out a few bands that I was thinking about posting, because I couldn't find any mp3s (Buffalo Daughter, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Jackie & the Cedrics, etc) and I left out Guitar Wolf, because I posted a whole thing about him (here) a while back (and the links are still good!). Hands down, my favorites below are the older ones (the single song artists interspersed below). If I was you, I'd start with fuzz: the Dynamites, the Mops, and Bunny. They're just some wild shit. Really, if I'd have found them first, I'd have stopped right there. Then there's the surf bands: Terry & the Blue Jeans, and Jimmy Takeuchi and the Exciters. After that, you can just dabble around. There's something for everyone.
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