Oh god I’m in American again how the hell did this happen?
It took nearly a year and a half, but my family finally convinced me to go back home for a visit. I blame the nieces and nephews. Damn cute kids blackmailing me with their cuteness.
My trip is transcontinental, with stops in Oregon, Florida, Ohio and finally Pittsburgh before heading back to the land of the rising son and my lovely adorable boyfriend whom I’ve only been apart from for only 48 hours and already miss dearly.
Sadface.
Anyway, I’m going to make the most of this trip, enjoy the time with my family and hopefully buy some stupid and weird music that I can share here. I also plan on eating all the cheese an drinking all the root beer. So you best not stand downwind from me.
That’s right, I’m bringing out the class. Fart jokes.
Honestly, I’m hella jet lagged right now so don’t expect much insight into tonight’s selections. But it had been a while since my last post and wanted to put something up before even more of you forgot about me.
Friends of Earth
Sex Machine
Sex Machine (Instrumental)
One thing the Japanese are not known for is funk, so I was surprised to find that YMO’s Haruomi Hosono tackled James Brown’s classic “Sex Machine” on the sophomore album of his side project F.O.E. (Friends Of Earth). I was even more surprised to find that this version features new vocals by Brown himself, as well as sax work by his longtime collaborator Ray Maceo Jr.
As much as I love James Brown and Haruomi Hosono, I’m going to have to say that this is not an example of two great tastes that go great together. The raw, funky power of Brown’s original tune really doesn’t translate well into the cold, emotionless robotic sound of Hosono. Still, I’d be lying if hearing the two combined didn’t at least sound interesting.
But yeah, there’s a reason why you don’t hear much about Japanese funk.
The Waitresses
Slide
Another lost gem from Stiff Records’ Akron compilation, and from a band that some people probably have actually heard of!
The Waitresses were a one-hit wonder of the early-MTV era, scoring a minor hit single with “I Know What Boys Like” in 1982. That song is probably most notable for the Patty Donahue’s amazing dry vocals, but she’s nowhere to be found on this track. While the vocalist isn’t credited in the album’s liner notes, I assume the singer is Chris Butler, the guitarist/songwriter of the group. This track is a little more bluesy than other songs by The Waitresses that I’ve heard, but it’s just as strange and vaguely offputting while simultaneously being oddly charming and catchy.
The Waitresses were a really weird band. I recommend everything by them, especially their under-rated second album.
Madonna
4 Minutes (Tracy Young Mixshow)
4 Minutes (Peter Saves New York)
I plan on posting quite a bit while I’m here in the states, but most of the music I have set aside is by Madonna, so I’m going to have to try and space them out a bit. These extended dance mixes were taken from a bonus 12″ that came with the Hard Candy vinyl release. To my knowledge they’ve never been released digitally.
I will have to admit “4 minutes” is not exactly my favorite madge track. Oh well.
‘Japanese funk’ is a genre I have really never known existed…!? Thanks for the update :]
The Waitresses are famous here in Britain for Christmas Wrapping (nothing to do with Kurtis Blow’s Christmas Rappin’) which you can be guaranteed to hear at least half a dozen times every Christmas. It’s one of the greatest Christmas songs ever. Just thinking of it I had to play it again and even in May it sounds terrific.
In bubble-era Japan, the “get up” lyric from Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, misheard variously as “geroppa,” “gyarompa,” or “gerompa,” somehow took hold of the national psyche and triggered a social phenomenon. The song was played endlessly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsyXg48yl90) and parodied constantly (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRfZZooBHww). School children screamed it at each other. Brown himself was all over TV, either singing his song on variety shows or hawking products in a whole series of commercials (such as Nissin’s instant miso ramen, whose catch phrase was “misompa”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRwtjLjd8jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k9ob73nCfk ). There was even a late-night TV show with “galompa” in its title (https://archive.is/g6vhj).
Anyway, there pretty much HAD to be a goofy local reinterpretation of the song, and the man to do it might as well have been trendy Hosono with his YMO cachet and perception of appeal to all those strange people in Gaijinlandia.