June 1, 2011

Japan has unfortunately been in the news for so many of the wrong reasons recently. You know all about the devestating earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit the north of the country in March.

Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining. Hopefully, there will be one for Japan soon. What's happened there means that effectively the Japanese can start all over again when it comes to their energy policies. Who knows, maybe there will be some semblance of a happy end in Japan?

Which takes me on to my first musical choice of Sunday's Strombo Show. As you'll know I'm assigned a country from around the world and I have to pick 3 tracks from that country. I was a happy man when I heard Japan, as I knew I'd be able to play some Cornelius. We'll get to that later.

Back in the 60s, when the Beatles were taking over the world, a lot of Japanese musicians tried their hand at making ridiculously good pop. You had the Tigers, the Spiders (see what they did there?), the Wild Ones, the Tempters and the (wonderfully named) Mops amongst others. Happy End hit the scene in the late 60s, early 70s. They were huge, and to be honest it was never going to be an easy choice for the 'Tragically Hip of Japan' because so many of their bands never made it out of the country due to singing in Japanese.

So, I went for Happy End. Their song 'Kaze Wo Atsumete' (which I've only just mastered the pronuncation of) was featured on the soundtrack to the Bill Murry/Sofia Coppola film 'Lost in Translation'. If you didn't hear it on the show, you can listen below. I can just picture myself on a patio somewhere listening to it...

On to the up and comer! Well, I may have cheated a little bit this week. When trawling through Japanese bands I came across one with the most ridiculous name I've ever seen. They'd originally planned to be called The Cowards Fight Back, or The Cowards Attack, apparently. But you know how things can get, well, lost in translation... for example:

The bottom of the sign above is in Welsh, and translates as: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."

Back to the band, the words 'chicken' and 'bump' in their name were supposed to translate as 'attack' and 'coward' respectively. Instead, I give you... Bump of Chicken. That's right. Bump. Of. Chicken. I can just see the drummer now with his Bump of Chicken drumst...yeah, okay, I won't even go there.

They're from the Chiba region of Japan, as are one of the bands George mentioned on the show, Nicotine:

You'll also have heard George mention Guitar Wolf - from Nagasaki:

Now, another option for my wildcard was a lady by the name of Maia Hirasawa. She's brilliant, and you can watch the video for 'Boom!' below. The thing is, she was born and raised in Sweden to Japanese parents... I thought that might have been a bit too much cheating for one week.

And the wildcard came in the form of a musician called Cornelius. Real name, Keigo Oyamada. I bought his record 'Point' way back in 2002, listened to it a couple of times and kind of forgot about it. It was one of those records when you see the artwork and think, 'ooh, this looks cool.' Anyway, a few years pass by and I happen to stumble upon Cornelius playing in the King Tut's Wah Wah Tent at Scotland's T in the Park festival. I was blown away. This dude is good. I went home and I pulled the dusty record off the shelf and had forgotten how good it was. I played 'Another View Point' on the show, and below you can hear 'Smoke':

And of course, we all know the 5,6,7,8s, as featured on the 'Kill Bill' soundtrack, with 'Woo Hoo'.

That's it from me for another week, let me know what you think on Twitter, @calumshanlin

Previously: France // Scotland