Japan finds its signature sound on Gentlemen Take Polaroids

Japan : Gentlemen Take Polaroids

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On October 19, 1980 Japan's new single, the title cut from the forthcoming Gentlemen Take Polaroids, had peaked at #60 in the UK charts. The band's sophisticated euro-pop sound was a perfect distillation of Roxy Music and David Bowie, augmented by the fretless bass of Mick Karn. For many this album, with its cover featuring a heavily pancaked David Sylvian, was an entry point into the Japan catalogue but critics familiar with their earlier glam rock work called them out for being phony. 

Said Patrick Humphries of Melody Maker :

"There's something infinitely unsatisfying about this album. From the false image of the band to the hollow songs they perform. "

As the decades have obscured the question of Japan's credibility, more music lovers have discovered one of the era's most irresistible signature sounds. There is substance behind all that pancake makeup after all. 

 

A Beatle gets busted in Japan

Paul McCartney : Frozen Jap

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On January 16, 1980 Paul McCartney was arrested at Tokyo's Narita Airport when authorities discovered half a pound of marijuana in his luggage. McCartney claimed it was all for personal use but, in Japan, that's enough to warrant a smuggling charge and a seven year prison sentence. Instead of celebrating the Beatle's first tour of Japan since the Fab Four did it in 1965, McCartney spent nine days in the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center. Those nine days were the longest he ever spent away from his wife Linda.

That McCartney would bring in so much weed after years of Japan refusing his visa due to other marijuana arrests isn't easy to understand. But in 2004, McCartney offered up this explanation:

“We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there, This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I’d take it with me.”

Later that year, after disbanding Wings, McCartney released a solo album, McCartney II, featuring a 1979 Kraftwerk-inspired instrumental with the unfortunate title "Frozen Jap". Again, this one isn't easy to understand. Here's Paul's reasoning:

Now, I’m sure people will think it was recorded after that incident in Japan. We decided to change the title to Frozen Japanese for the album release in Japan, since we didn’t want to offend anyone over there. But when the Japanese were told of the album’s track listing, they went spare. They thought it was connected with the fact that I had been busted there. They regard it as an incredible slur.

Here We Are Stranded

Japan : Quiet Life

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On December 20, 1979 Japan released their third album Quiet Life, produced by John Punter of Roxy Music fame. Quiet Life is like listening to Duran Duran without the guilt or Roxy Music without the wrinkles. In liner notes for a reissue, David Sylvain says "I still feel very attached to it – unusual for me. We reached a peak with this album – we knew what we were doing." 

The album wouldn't get released in the U.K. until January and it has all the sounds of 80's style New Romantic classic.  Gone for the most part are the Glam rock stylings of the first two albums. This is the future. Sylvain may get the spotlight but Mick Karn's fretless bass steals the show, especially on the B side. I wonder how many wild haired boys and girls first heard of the Velvet Underground thanks to this album's cover of "All Tomorrow's Parties".

Sez Sounds Magazine in early January of 1980":

You never know quite what to expect from Japan. In a seeming ceaseless quest for success, their short career had to date spanned at least four markedly different musical styles. And yet,  despite the often calculated, contrived nature of these moves, the band has never become victims of the changes...Quiet Life is already an album of the year. And this with the current twelve months barely 4 days old. Believe it.

Let's hear it for the pale boys!

A Sound of Distant Living

Japan : Life in Tokyo

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In 1979 Japan released "Life In Tokyo", written and recorded with disco producer Giorgio Moroder. It would be reissued over and over again until it finally made the U.K. charts, peaking at #28 in 1982. It certainly sounds like a song from a year Duran Duran, ABC and Soft Cell scored  top 10 hits than 1979, when Gary Numan's Tubeway Army and Squeeze were competing with Anita Ward and McFadden and Whitehead.

This was a new turn for Japan, a band that had sounded more like Glam Rockers up to this point. They now have the arty synth pop sound that would carry Japan into the charts, and Sylvian's lyrics reveal his infatuation with all things Asian. Japan, the country, was so far the only place in the world embracing Japan, the band. Not for much longer.

The single also marks the beginning of David Sylvian's dominance of the band which would break up in late '82.

Adrenalin Ejecting

Japan : Automatic Gun

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On October 27, 1978 Japan released their second album, Obscure Alternatives, just six months following the debut. It's almost like the band knew they would only be together for four years. Japan, apparently fully recovered from their tour with Blue Oyster Cult and the barrage of tomatoes hurled in their direction, are ready to go for broke. They play glam. They play new wave. They play reggae and on the instrumental "The Tenant", they even play Low era Bowie. Though members of the band shrug off their first two albums, listeners can hear the beginning of the New Romantic sound. And it's actually pretty exciting.

“We were a very self-contained group of people,” songwriter and guitarist David Sylvian told The Quietus. “So we always felt on the outside… of anything, to an extent. We genuinely did not feel part of any movement or genre. Yes, image and presentation had been important to us from the beginning, but it became something I was less and less interested in sustaining. It had been convenient, given me a persona to hide behind. Initially I don’t think I could have walked onto a stage without that. I was just too shy. A mask got me through it. Once I decided as a writer I wanted to express myself clearly, it had to be done away with. Elegance isn’t something that should be contrived.”

With Juvenile Intentions

Japan : Adolescent Sex

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On April 8, 1978 Japan released its debut album, Adolescent Sex.  The band may have looked like an 80's hair band but, like Ultravox, they drew their inspiration from harder rocking David Bowie and Roxy Music.  If you're a fan of the bands's sophisticated, Eastern-influenced later works, Tin Drum and Gentlemen Take Polaroids, this may come as quite the surprise.  Here is the birth of the New Romantic sound. that would be dominated by Duran Duran, Visage and Spandau Ballet.

Ripe for rediscovery, Adolescent Sex has received rave reviews from some of the band's biggest fans and was recently discussed in a Quietus article in which Chris Roberts tried to get singer/songwriter  David Sylvain to discuss an album the band would eventually dismiss.

I was interviewing David Sylvian for a career overview in 2004 and suggested we work though album by album, beginning with Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives. “You can,” he shrugged politely. “I mean, I haven’t heard them since 1982 or whatever. I have no interest.” He wasn’t being rude or affected. He genuinely doesn’t see what he perceives as juvenilia being relevant to his body of work. On another occasion I asked him if he hated them as much as is generally made out. Can he not even hear them as youthful, buoyant “fun”? “I don’t cringe as much as I laugh,” he said, smiling. “I don’t take it so seriously as to worry about it. I understand the train of thought. It doesn’t bother me.”

Check out "Television" and "Suburban Love" for some of the more oustanding moments on the album.

The follow-up, Obscure Alternatives, is just six months away. The band's recording career would only last four short years.

40 Year Itch: Heroes of the Ginza

Queen: Now I'm Here

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   After a ten day vacation in Hawaii, following the US leg of their Sheer Heart Attack Tour, Queen arrived in Japan where they were met by 3,000 fans at the airport.

  "Now we were the Beatles" guitarist Brian May would later say. "We literally had to be carried over the heads of these kids...this wasn't a rock band thing, this was being a teen idol".

  Sumo wrestlers were hired as bodyguards during the concerts but they could do nothing to prevent the teenage girls from sweeping over them to the front of the stage. Hysteria followed Queen wherever they ventured so each member was assigned his own bodyguard.

    In August they'd be back in the studio to begin recording A Night at the Opera where the band and producer Roy Thomas Baker would face a phenomenal challenge, recording a long tune with many twists and turns and even some operatic "Gallileo"s tossed in for good measure. It was known to the rest of Queen as  "Fred's Thing". But it would be known to the world as "Bohemian Rhapsody".

40 Year Itch: Prog Rock in Korea and Japan

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The high artistic concepts of progressive rock infected the entire world by 1973. This month I'll take us around the world to check out what some of the most interesting bands were doing. Let's begin in South Korea where Psychedelic Rock genius Shin Joong Hyun and his band The Men released It's A Lie featuring the hypnotic 11:30 track "Beautiful Country"  which sounds like a Far Out Eastern take on what Can was doing in Germany. 

As breath-taking as It's A Lie sounds, Shin Joong Hyun's masterpiece is Now, recorded with chanteuse Kim Jung Mi. Again, be prepared. You will be blown away!

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In Japan The Far East Family Band, featuring future New Age star Kitaro, released Far Out. Each side of the album has an epic prog/space rock track with "Nihonjin" being the highlight.Think Tangerine Dream meets Black Sabbath meets Pink Floyd. Meeting the Dream's synth master Klaus Schulze sent Kitaro on that solo career that included collaborations with The Grateful Dead's Micky Hart and Yes's Jon Anderson and a Grammy win for Best New Age album in 1999.

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Kokkyou Junreika is a 1973 rock opera by J.A. Caesar (born Terahara Taka'aki) who also contributed to a lot of film soundtracks. There's something epic and creepy about this album which combines traditional Japanese folk music with trippy psychedelic guitar.

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Imagine what might have happened if Japan hadn't denied Mick Jagger a visa. Already signed to Atlantic Records,  Flower Travellin' Band had been scheduled to open for the Stones entire 1973 Japanese tour. Instead, the band, who started out covering British and US psychedelic songs, put out the part live/part studio double album Make Up and then promptly broke up. The late singer Joe Yamanaka had one of the 70's great 'fros.

From a Pagoda The World is So Tidy: Songs for China

The Chinese will decline a gift three times before finally accepting, so as not to appear greedy. You will have to continue to insist. Once the gift is accepted, express gratitude. You will be expected to go through the same routine if you are offered a gift.