I skipped mentioning the last Fashion Crisis due to not having a computer, but it was a pretty spectacular double feature with James taking charge of the Tokyo party at our regular venue of Koenji One and me hooking up with CAR stalwarts Miha and Zana in Ljubljana for our first European edition of the party. Disco madness ensued.
Anyway, we're back to normal this month with James and I both playing at One, backed up by friend of the event and minimal wave disco infiltrator Komlaski, as well as Soh from 80s-influenced psychedelic punk noise terrorists Hysteric Picnic. Appearing live will be Loser & Ribbons, the latest project of Her/Yamaco mastermind Noriko Yamada.
Place: Koenji One
Date: March 2nd (Fri)
Time: 8:00pm-last train
Cost: FREE
LIVE:
- Loser & Ribbons
DJs:
- Komlaski
- Soh (Hysteric Picnic)
- James Hadfield
- Ian Martin
The timetable for the 2010 Koenji Pop Festival on September 18th (Sat) is sorted now, and if things go according to plan, should run like this (note: things almost never go according to plan).
Fashion Crisis is in indiepop mode this weekend, with a trip through our magic time travelling mirror to a dirty, fuzz-drenched 1986 populated by whisper-voiced post-punk musical scientists and their unwitting experimental subjects.
Place: Koenji Bar One Date: 7/3 (Sat) Time: 7:00 P.M. - 11:00 P.M. Price: FREE
LIVE: - She Talks Silence Stripped-down musical heartache in the mould of Josef K or The Vaselines; like getting stood up for a date with the class sweetheart, only to stumble, drunken, into the bar that all the cool kids hang out at, where you meet the girl of your dreams.
- Yamaco Fashion Crisis' melodic indie princess Yamaco returns for the second successive month, with her increasingly fearsome arsenal of leftfield pop harmonics set to grow only more insidious the more access to your brain your ears allow her.
DJs: - Sumire (Twee Grrrls Club/Violet & Claire) A deceptively small package, within which beats a giant brain full of every lost classic 7-inch ever made by humans, plus many made by the Scottish.
-James Hadfield (Metropolis, Ecchi Shoushin) Taking a break from last month's saxophone-bothering live excesses, Mr. James returns to his lair behind the decks -- the place he does the most damage.
To get us in the mood for the summer, Fashion Crisis takes a dark electronic twist this month, with the dystopian industrial factory sounds of Koenji's own Darklaw, and regular DJ James Hadfield's newly spawned Ecchi Shoushin battling it out against the sweetness and light of Yamaco and DJ Noriko.
Place: Koenji Bar One Date: Saturday June 5th Time: 7:00 p.m. Cost: FREE
Still resolutely refusing to settle on any one particular day, Fashion Crisis is back to Saturday again, with the usual aggregation of pop scientists and amateur indie miscreants. Special live guest Yamaco, a.k.a. Yamada Noriko, formerly of indiepop duo and longtime Call And Response friends Her will be playing for the second time, and post-punk heart-throb Urano from Creepy Pop will DJ. Also spinning discs will be Slovenia's sexiest Bret-from-Flight-of-the-Conchords lookalike N'toko and his lovely wife Caroline from Paradise Kiss, as well as regular Koenji ne'r-do-wells James Hadfield and myself.
Date: March 6th (Sat) Place: Koenji Bar One Time: 7:30 P.M. till late Price: FREE
Looking at the Japanese pop charts nowadays, with the ugly, airbrushed tedium of Avex Trax and the waxy creepiness of Johnny's Jimusho, it might seem hard to believe, but for a brief period in the 1970s Japan was home to some of the greatest pop music ever made. With its roots in the 60s Showa Pop scene, the 1970s was dominated by a succession of brilliant female idols, from the ambiguous charm of the glorious Yamaguchi Momoe to the spicy, saucy, and outright sexy Yamamoto Linda.
It wasn't just solo stars though. Before the embarrassment of their early 80s U.S. TV series, Pink Lady were laying waste to the Japanese pop charts of the late 70s using a combination of eye-mounted laser beams and goofy yet insanely catchy pop music, and for a period of five short years the Candies were releasing a string of the most extraordinary pop singles Japan has ever seen.
Back in those days the ideal size for an all-girl pop group was two or three members rather than the absurd idol inflation that came to characterise the industry from the late 80s when Onyanko Club went through more than 50 members in the space of about two years, and now leaves us in the dizzying position of seeing behemoth clone armies like the slick, horrifying AKB48 with their cold, dead, fishlike eyes battle it out with the forthcoming, and frankly terrifying sounding, HRJK96. Where nowadays you need a degree in advanced life-avoidance to memorise the names of every member of an idol group, back in the 70s everybody in Japan could name Ran (the romantic one), Miki (a little bit boyish) and Sue (slightly sentimental). Not only that, but every member of your family, from baby sister who's just learned to speak to grandma who's rapidly going deaf, could sing along to songs like Haru Ichiban and Shochū Omimai Mōshiagemasu.
The 1970s was a strange time in Japanese postwar cultural history. The excesses of left wing radical group the United Red Army culminating in the 1972 Asama-Sansō Incident marked the end of ideological student radicalism in Japan, and the initial airing of Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979 helped kick off the explosion of otaku culture that in many ways replaced the unifying narrative and lifestyle offered by radical politics with a safer, fictional narrative and associated lifestyle among awkward, alienated youth. Into the hole dividing these two social movements came the explosion of 1970s pop culture, filling the ideological void with superficialities, confections, and, most importantly, Candies.
With a career lasting from 1973 to 1978 the Candies could almost have been designed to ford this particular Rubicon on Japan's journey into postmodernity, and their combination of innocent charm, simple yet affecting lyrics, and sweet, sweet melodies was the perfect antidote to the turmoil of the dying days of the student movement. They were also the product of an era before pop culture became the Balkanised mishmash of subcultures that we have today, all hiding in their niches, eyeing each other suspiciously, communicating only to shout over the Web at the aliens in the cave next door. This was an age where pop music was a uniting cultural force, not a divisive one.
The group released 18 singles including the posthumous Tsubasa, although only the farewell hit Hohoemi Gaeshi reached number one in the charts. Nevertheless, every one of them is a stark naked, face-melting classic. A few highlights of the highlights (and I can't express strongly enough, every song is a highlight):
Debut single Anata ni Muchū (above).
Sono Ki ni Sasenaide (above)
Heart no Ace ga Detekonai complete with extended intro (above).
Through my label, Call And Response Records, I've been gradually over the last couple of months collecting a number of cover versions of Candies songs by Japanese underground musicians for release on a limited edition compilation CD/R. The results have been fascinating, with fourteen songs now in, from technopop to garage rock to avant-garde electronic music to guitar pop to noise, reflecting the fractured musical times we live in, but also joined in a fierce appreciation of the frivolous-yet-unifying power of pure pop.
V/A 「Valentine's Candies」 Call And Response Records (CAR-91)
Valentine's Candies is Fashion Crisis' first ever event at a "proper" live house (one with a PA, a stage and all the gear), as well as functioning as a release party for Call And Response's first new release of the year: an album of Japanese indie and underground bands covering the legendary 1970s idol trio The Candies.
A number of Fashion crisis favourites have contributed songs to the CD, including Yamaco (formerly of Her), Umbrella-X, and Candies' near-namesakes Candles. Fashion Crisis/Switched On's regular Slovenian collaborator N'toko and Call And Response's Ian Martin both feature as members of the band Trinitron.
Other bands contributing songs to the CD include eccentric pop duo cottonioo, Fukuoka's ruruxu/sinn, noise trio Jahiliyyah, experimental something or other snip n` zener, post-punk band Uruseeyo, up and coming girly garage punk duo Puffy Shoes, electronic genius Yamanoi Yuzuru, electro rock band Killer Condors, and more super musical things.
The release event will be this coming Friday, featuring some of the musicians who contributed to the CD and all the regular Fashion Crisis people in a broad celebration of the ordinary girls of The Candies.
After all the amazing fun of last night's Bar One event, there's more. Switched On! has one of its occasional "Side B" events, this time at Shimo-Kitazawa Three, featuring a more rock and electro orientated sound than the usual new wave and technopop experience.
1/17 (Sun) Shimo-Kitazawa Three 5:30 P.M. - 11:30 P.M.
Call And Response is a Tokyo-based independent record label and event organiser, specialising in post-punk, new wave and assorted experimental pop trash.
