Neptune Research

I was in Hollywood’s Amoeba Records with Z last night. We were on our way back from an excellent birthday party, having declined the barwalk portion of the event, and we unexpectedly found ourselves driving past Amoeba. “Halt!” shouted I, and in we went. Who knew, record stores in Hollywood are open til 11, even on a thursday!

So I was all running around looking for SERIOUS music. Got the Akron / Family record, hope the promo doesn’t turn me off before I get to enjoy (or not) the music contained within, nevermind that the name of the label is in MUCH MUCH MUCH bigger type than the name of the band. Or the crap on the tag about it-doesn’t-matter-which-if-any-of-these-four-genres-this-music-is. Although I respect the efforts on the part of the label to shove this bunch of weirdness down the throats of at least those at the edges of mainstream culture, I don’t expect or want the music of Akron / Family to change my life in any major way. I don’t expect it to be any further out there than anything else I listen to (I’ll report back on that). I just want it to be GOOD. I am no neophyte or media-victim. When I need my perspective realigned I will take care of it without the help of advertising copy.

And, “Smart” is CERTAINLY NOT the new “Sexy.” Spbbbttttt.

Anyway…

Got a copy of John Cale & Terry Riley’s Church Of Anthrax. I felt the need to own some Terry Riley, Cale is at least familiar (and I like his approach to collaboration: wait til the other guy leaves then do exactly what you want, a born producer), it suits my current set of interests and it was on cheap vinyl. Sold.

Picked up for $5.99 a copy in decent shape of Kilimanjaro, the first record by The Teardrop Explodes. Yay!!!

All of these, I gotta add, are on records, not cds.

SERIOUS.

So Z comes up with three compact discs in large ugly plastic cases from the “Used” rack (but they aren’t actually “Used”) with white covers bearing each one a sole piece of some kind of fruit - one has a red pepper, one has a peach, one has something I can’t remember or pronounce but Z wants me to try eating one someday. “See,” she says, showing me the picture on the back of the disc. “You peel it!”

One disc says, “China.” Another says, “Japan,” the third, “West Africa.” Each also claims: “The greatest songs ever.” They are on Petrol Records. Each disc includes a recipe.

I think (SERIOUSly): Holy shit, these look ridiculous. I mean, a recipe?

But she bought ‘em, all three. Hey, they were only five or six bucks apiece.

On the way home we continued to listen to Streets Of Lhasa, a SERIOUS world-type-music compact disc recording from the Sublime Frequencies label, which is run out of Seattle, Earth, by one of the Sun City Girls. (Serious.)

The track we are listening to is of a 3-year-old boy singing, first by himself (Z wants to cop the voice) then with his dad to the music of an erhu.

SERIOUS.

We got home and chilled out with Manson The Cat for a little while. When he took off from Z’s lap, she opened up “Japan: the greatest songs ever.” The one with the peach on it. I had a moment of precognition when I saw that the discs are designed to look like little records. Then we stuck “Japan” in the ancient funky top-loading CDwalkman and hit play.

You know, it wasn’t bad.

The music is less frenetic than J-Pop, but shares some of the cooler features of early Japanese psychedelia: lush strings and horns with bits of spazzed-out fuzz guitar, choruses of harmonizing singers going “bop bop oooo,” ladies in echo chambers crooning saccharine melodies that don’t cloy in strange languages (well, Japanese). I don’t know how I could like music that sounds like this, but I do. All I can figure is it’s what happens when a society that knows how to make use of an aesthetic idea when it sees one (Japan) runs into a set of sounds that was never meant to be anything but commercial.

The vocal arrangements (tho not the tones) on track 1 remind me of an old disc of the music of Trinidad that I once heard, which included a traditional version of “Sloop John B” which was almost identical to the Beach Boys vocal arrangement, but swingier. The musical setting of track 1 is sorta big band country-funk-hop. None of these things is more or less than a subtle and seamless element of the whole production.

Twenty minutes into the disc and I haven’t freaked and shut it off yet. Not bad. So I opened up the booklet and read the following:

“The Japanese are at the forefront of technologies and breaking inventions.”

It hit me so odd… Every time you go and invent something, here come the goddam Japanese and break it!

I skimmed ahead through stuff about the quirky foresight of the Japanese (sure, I can see it); traditional music, kabuki, tea houses, Geishas (all this in half a paragraph); karaoke bars and pantie-vending machines, flashing billboards spitting electric disco-soul, a futuristic Petrol-Japan-CD-listening-party plan, and a list of some recent Japan-related pop culture items (“Lost In Translation,” manga, etc).

Weird.

Still diggin the music. The sound is really good, warm and clear.

I skimmed the song titles, but they didn’t tell me much. The first band is called “The Peanuts,” which is appealing. Otherwise not much to see. A string of unfamiliar Japanese names, two or three English titles or subtitles: “Flowers For Your Heart,” “One Rainy Night In Tokyo,” “Tokyo Kid.” One French subtitle as well. I don’t know what it means (Z does) despite several years of French in elementary and high school, because I am a stupid American. I am not proud.

I was hoping for some kinda historical or cultural background to some of the tunes - I like that shit - but, oh well, so what else is there to see? Oh yeah, the recipe! That ought to be a hoot…

The Japan disc includes actually three short recipes. They might go well together. They are: Japanese Kabuki Cocktail, Prawn Tempura, and Salmon Sushi. I like my fish cooked, so I am most likely to experiment with the tempura. The recipe even states that it can be generalized to include things other than prawns - “just use your imagination!”

Where’d the cat go? I want to dip him in tempura batter.

I’ll chill out now, but let me close by saying the African one is so good I didn’t want to go to bed so I could listen to it. (Only got to track 4 and gave it up). I’m up to track 11 now, first thing the next morning, and the only bummer for me is maybe track 10 which wasn’t so much to my taste but good for what it was. None of this is raw Africa-funk like I usually dig, not enough guitar for my taste, but there are elements of that, and there’s the complex rhythms and rising melodies you expect from African music without any of the shit pop.

I don’t know if any of these are “the greatest songs ever,” but I didn’t expect them to be. So, no let down.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 11:04 am and is filed under Strictly Mythical, Snoo, Music Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.