In 1986, Halley’s Comet made its regularly scheduled flight around the sun. I was six years old at the time and way into anything outer space, so I was pretty stoked. However, I, like most people on the planet Earth, could not see the comet that year. Read the wiki if you’re curious why. Long story short: conditions were shit for seeing Halley’s Comet in 1986. So a lot of people’s “once in a lifetime” chance to see the famous interstellar object shrank to “never in a lifetime.” Unless you were Emperor Hirohito. He apparently lived long enough to see it twice.
The closest I got to seeing the comet was watching Arnold and family on Diff’rent Strokes see it.
Anyways, I do remember the hype. The hype was real. It was all over the news, and we talked about it in school. So the fact that a record like this exists does not surprise me in the least. Halley’s Comet: The Complete Adventure is a 1985 Canadian release that was no doubt quickly cobbled together to cash-in on comet hype.
Side one of the record features some pretty threadbare narration about the comet, the history of its sightings on earth, and some overly flowery and optimistic ideas about what our planet might be like when the comet makes its next flyby in 2061, all while some wonderfully 80s synth music plays in the background
Side two of the record features the same music as the first side, but with the narration removed, so you can rock out with your comet out to the latest hi-tech electronic bleeps and blops that mid-range 80s keyboards had to offer. Some would probably write this music off as cheesy or corny, but I enjoy it quite a bit. It’s one part Yanni, one part Tomita, and one part Tangerine Dream (albeit nowhere near as good as any of them, obviously). This could easily be slowed down and distorted into vaporwave, I’m sure.
The narration on side one was by Don Francks, who was a Canadian actor, musician and voice actor. Most notably for anyone around my age, he was the voice of Boba Fett on the Star Wars Droids cartoon (and possibly on the Star Wars Holiday Special). He was also Sabertooth on X-Men. His daughter, Cree Summer, continued in his footsteps and has become an incredibly successful voice actress. She’s Elmyra on Tiny Toons, and also voiced Penny on Inspector Gadget.
His narration here is fine, as I said before, there’s not much to it. It reads like a NASA brochure about the comet, hitting all the basic points as quickly and plainly as possible.
I find the music a lot more interesting. It was composed and performed by Don Horsburgh. He has no credits to his name on Discogs, but he works as a stage music director and composer in Canada, mostly Alberta. According to this page, he’s worked on some pretty big shows too, including Canadian productions of Billy Elliot, Mamma Mia!, Sweeney Todd, and Mary Poppins. I wonder how often he takes out the keys and lets loose some newage jams.
The record was produced by a man named Jim MCKenna, a name that is far too common and plain for Google to be of any help whatsoever. There is a politician with that name in Canada, but I doubt he’s the same person.
And that’s about all I can find out about the record! Another blog shared this same record a few years back, and their copy came with a star chart that they helpfully scanned, so check that out if you’re interested (I think I enjoy the record itself more than that writer). The album has no barcode or spine number. The only identifying marks on it at all, is the stock number “PAM-080.921899” on the record label. Because of that, Discogs credits the album’s label as “PAM.” I would take that with a grain of salt, however, because Discogs also credits the album artist as “Halley’s Comet” and I’m fairly certain the comet itself had nothing to do with this release. Unless Halley’s Comet provided Don with the keyboards. God only knows how this thing was distributed. Was it solely for educational institutions? Mail order only? Who knows!
Enjoy! Maybe I’ll have another post up this year? Regardless, that’s four posts with music this year, which is the most I’ve managed to put on this site since COVID, I think. So I’m gonna take that as a victory.
As I said before, comments on this site are broken as fuck, so if you have something you’d like to share about this record, reach out to me on Bluesky!
Hey, this blogging thing is fun, maybe I’ll try and do it more often again!
I just finished my most ambitious YouTube video to date, a massive 70+ minute look at Tower Records in Shibuya. I was really happy with the video I made about Tower Records a few years ago, but the store has changed so much since then that I thought it was worth re-doing with something a bit more expansive. I didn’t plan for it to be feature-length, it just kind of turned out that way. Give it a watch, leave a comment, click those like and subscribe buttons, you know the drill.
Also, and I’m going to keep saying this until someone responds, I want to work with someone to revamp this website, drastically. It’s a paid gig. If you’re interested, reach out on Blue Sky. Don’t bother leaving a comment here, as they are broken – like most things on this website.
How many times have I featured out-of-print and hard-to-find music featuring Hideki Matsutake (aka Logic System) on this blog? I’ve lost count and my tags are broken as shit (like everything else on this website) so who knows?
For those who may not know, Hideki Matsutake is a very influential Japanese electronic musician who is best-known for his work with Yellow Magic Orchestra and various YMO associates. He got his start in the industry at a young age, working with Tomita when he was still a teenager.
In addition to working on YMO’s first two releases, he also contributed to early albums by many other greats of the Japanese techno-pop and new wave scenes, including Sheena & The Rokkets, Akiko Yano, Rajie, Susan, Mioko Yamaguchi, and many more (as well as solo releases by all the members of YMO). If you have any notable Japanese pop music release from the late 70s or early 80s with prominent synthesizers or sequences on it, odds are he had his hand in it.
I also met him once. I tried not to be that big of a geek about it.
But before his work with YMO and other big-name artists in Japan, he released a few albums under other assorted names, a few of which I know I’ve shared in the past. One of my favorites is The Charm of Synthesizer: Japanese Melody (which you can find here), an album composed entirely of covers of Japanese enka tracks. He release that under the name Beautiful Shateau & Synthesizer. At the time I wrote that, I didn’t know what year that album came out, since then I’ve discovered that it most likely was released in 1976, meaning that it was one of his earliest releases.
This album, released under the name Oriental Mechanic Band, came out just one year later, but it’s a bit different. While that previous record was nothing but Japanese folk songs given the plugged-in/synth treatment, this album features more contemporaneous music, mostly on the disco side of things, hence the name.
The album opens with two Bee Gees covers, “Night Fever” and “Stayin’ Alive.” I’m an established Bee Gees hater, but I dig these takes on their tunes. Maybe it’s because there’s no high-pitched squealing distracting from the solid melodies or basslines. Or maybe it’s the totally radical shakuhachi playing?
These aren’t purely electronic arrangements. This is not a Wendy Carlos album. In addition to Matsutake’s synths, we also have Junichi Tagiri on drums, Eiko Koizumi on koto, and, most notably, John Kaizan Neptune on shakuhachi (Japanese flute). Most of those people haven’t done a ton, but Neptune has been around. He’s American-born, but lives in Japan and has apparently made the shakuhachi his life. Not only does he play the thing, he makes them. He’s released a ton of albums since the 1970s. I can highly recommend his 1981 album, Shogun, it’s some good jazz-funk with a Japanese edge. If the city pop people ever stumble upon that record, my vinyl copy is going to skyrocket in value, I know it.
Anyways, after the Bee Gees covers we get a take on “You’re The One That I Want” from Grease. Much like the Bee Gees, I’m assuredly not a fan of Grease. But I’m also not deaf and I realize that “You’re The One That I Want” slaps pretty goddamn hard. Matsutake infuses his version of the song with a synth sound that I can only describe as “bouncy as hell” and Neptune delivers a fantastic wavering flute melody over it all.
After that brief lapse into musical theater we go back into full disco mode with a cover of “Macho Man” that has vocoder and tons of random robotic bleeps and bloops. What was an anthem for hyper-masculine presenting gay men in the late-70s club scene now sounds like a declaration of independence by a queer robot. It rules. Disco-mode continues with equally entertaining covers of “Last Dance” and “Thank God It’s Friday.”
Things take a bit of a turn moving onto side B. First, there’s a cover of “Diamond Head,” a Ventures song. I had never heard of it before. I’ve lived in Japan a long time, but not long enough to get into The Ventures. I assume I’ll get there at some point. In case you didn’t know, The Ventures were INSANELY popular in Japan, second only to The Beatles. If the wiki for this song is to be believed, it was the first song to sell one million copies in the country. When people think of the phrase “big in Japan,” the first band that comes to mind shouldn’t be Cheap Trick, it shouldn’t be Mr. Big, it should be The Ventures.
Anyways, I’ve only listened to the original a handful of times after listening to this version. They’re quite different to the point that I didn’t think that they were the same song at first. Matsutake uses the synth like a bass here to good effect, giving it some great percussive energy.
Then there’s a cover of The Beatles “Something.” I have so many covers of “Something.” I have a version played on bamboo flute that I like quite a bit. I have a baroque arrangement by a group called Tokyo Solisten. I have two versions by Shirley Bassey. “Something.” It’s a good song. It’s really hard to fuck up “Something”. Good news, Matsutake and company don’t fuck up “Something.” But there’s only so much you can do with it. It’s fine.
I really like what comes next, however, a cover of “El Condor Pasa,” a Peruvian orchestral song made famous by Simon & Garfunkel. Apparently it was really popular in Japan, because this is the fourth cover I have that’s performed by a Japanese artist. I have a cover by funk musician Akira Ishikawa, one by Tomita, and another by koto (Japanese harp) performer Tadao Sawai. Much like “Something,” it’s a very hard song to screw up. The melody is so powerful and haunting. A basic cover of the tune is going to earn you an easy B+ at the least.
This cover is fantastic. While the main melody is playing on the synthesizer, the koto and flute do a lot of work, and it really transforms the song. This song has always made me think of Morricone, listening to other versions I always imagine a cowboy wandering the desert or something similar. This one evokes the image of a lone samurai wandering the Japanese countryside, sword in one hand…and possibly a keytar in the other.
We go back even further in time after that, with a medley of “Rhythm of the Rain” and “Johnny Angel,” the former by The Cascades and the latter made famous by Shelley Fabares. This is some real golden oldies stuff, pre-Beatles pop tracks from the early 60s. Honestly, not my thing and this doesn’t do much to change that. However, the medley still piqued my interest due to the opening that Matsutake plays on the synth. It’s there for just a second, but you listen to that and tell me that you don’t hear at least the glint of the opening to Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Behind The Mask.”
Am I crazy? I totally hear it. The earliest version of “Behind The Mask” is from 1978, used for a Seiko watch commercial, and Matsutake worked on that version as well. It would not surprise me if he took the sounds he created for this album and applied them there.
And finally we close with a cover of “Love Me Tender,” another song that I’ve never been a big fan of, but I enjoy what they do with it. Who knew that an Elvis Presley song could be improved with concurrent synth and koto melodies playing along a synth drumbeat and a funky-ass bassline? Makes me want to hear more synth covers of songs Elvis made famous. And honestly, given the shocking number of Beatles-themed synthesizer albums, I’m surprised that isn’t more of a thing.
My copy of this also includes some liner notes. While my boyfriend can speak English and does translate things for me from time to time, the notes here are pretty massive. I went ahead and used Google Translate on them, which is better than nothing. My boyfriend says the translation gets the point across. You can read the translated notes here and here. If you want to read the untranslated original notes, you can see those here and here. I know that machine translation is no substitute for a real human doing it, but I wanted to get this post up relatively quickly.
Give this one a listen and let me know what you think of it. I’ll probably be sharing some albums similar to it later this year. I actually got really lucky since I started writing this post and stumbled upon two other super-early Japanese electronic albums, including what I think is Matsutake’s first ever credited release!
Matsutake released one more album under the Oriental Mechanic Band moniker, Sonic Syncopation, which came out the year after this release. I’m going to try and track that one down and if I find it I’ll be sure to share it here as well.
As I write this, it’s been a little over a week since Ozzy Osbourne left us, and it still doesn’t seem real. Ozzy just felt like someone who would always be here. And it’s not just because he was a seemingly invincible madman powered by liquor and cocaine. He was just an overpowering presence in the world, as both a musician and a media personality. I was born in 1979, so I have only known a world where Ozzy was a goddamn motherfucking superstar; the biggest name in metal for over 40 years. No one name will forever be more synonymous with “fucking metal” than “Ozzy.” Even if you removed the entirety of his work with Black Sabbath, the band that literally invented the genre, Ozzy would still be one of the most important people in heavy metal music who ever lived thanks to some of the best popular heavy metal tracks of the 80s and 90s, and even in to the 21st century; and his last two albums were fantastic.
I’ll be mourning the Prince of Darkness for a long time. Thankfully I have a lot of his music to remember him by. So far I’ve been listening to a lot of Sabbath as well as his last two albums, as well as Ozzmosis. However, I haven’t really touched most of his 80s output after his second album. Shockingly, I didn’t own any of it. I owned it at one point, but I must have sold all of it for some reason, and before I was ripping all my CDs to my computer.
Well, thankfully I fixed that problem today. I went out and bought Speak of the Devil, The Ultimate Sin, and No Rest for the Wicked. I can’t wait to dive back into them. It’s been literal decades since I gave any of them a proper listen, so it will be like discovering them all over again.
I know that Ozzy’s mid-80s output isn’t considered a highlight by most people. Metal went pop/glam in the 1980s and Ozzy went along with it for a while, that’s for sure. His hair sure as shit got big for a few videos, and the man wasn’t afraid to don the sequins when on tour with the likes of Motley Crue.But I dig this shit. In the past few years I’ve gotten really into metal, to the point where I started buying 80s glam metal albums I previously scoffed at. And it’s just so fun. So upbeat. It’s hard to hate on it too much now. Besides, it just fucking sounds great. If you’re a fan of well-produced rock music, you can’t get much sleeker than this shit. And for some that might be a negative, but I ain’t too good for pop in my heavy metal, and you shouldn’t be either.
Just Say Ozzy is a live EP that came out in 1990. I read some (all negative) contemporaneous reviews of the release, and many of them juxtapose that the album was quickly hobbled together as a way to keep Ozzy’s name in the spotlight as he took a break for rehab. I don’t think Ozzy’s ever said much about the release, so it’s hard to say what the real motivations behind the EP were. In the album liner notes, he just says that it was the label’s decision to release the mini-album and that he was initially against it; but he changed his mind because he was happy with the performance and his band.
But there’s a bit of mystery behind this one, a lot of speculation online about when this album was recorded and just how “live” it actually is. In the original US and UK releases, the back cover claims that the album was recorded at Brixton Academy in 1989, but Ozzy didn’t play Brixton Academy in 1989, so…what gives? I’ve read some discussions online that suggest it was recorded almost entirely in the studio with the audience added in post. To be honest, it does kind of sound like that’s the case. I own a lot of live albums from this era, very few sound as crisp and clean as this one.
However, in my late-90s Japanese CD re-issue there are liner notes by legendary Japanese rock journalist Masa-Itoh, and he claims that the songs were taken from a concert at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia (which is really in Upper Darby). He also says that this concert was “streamed to home TV screens using the groundbreaking pay-per-view system.” (according to Google translate, but my Japanese boyfriend confirms this translation), and that’s just crazy. Late-80s/early-90s PPV was nuts, man.
Well, that concert has been preserved in its entirety on YouTube, so it’s easy to compare and contrast the versions here with that footage. They definitely sound different, at the very least, it’s a different mix of the same recording. Crowd noise has been damped drastically during the tracks, and fake crowd noise has been added between songs, most likely to ease the transitions between the songs. Ozzy’s banter has also been removed or changed too. In the video, you can hear Ozzy saying things like “c’mon clap you hands!” during the intro, those interjections have been removed for the CD, with the intros to many songs being shortened as well.
But it roughly sounds like the same performance to me. Zakk’s first solo on “A Shot In The Dark” sounds nearly identical on both versions. I bet there were substantial overdubs done, especially to Ozzy’s vocals, but this is probably more live than not. Also, I’ve read some reviews of this online that criticize Zakk Wylde’s playing, citing various mistakes he makes during solos. My ear is not good enough to pick those up, but if those mistakes do exist, I doubt Zakk would’ve made mistakes like them during a tight studio recording.
Regardless of the album’s authenticity, it still captures Ozzy’s live energy, and I feel it’s worth a listen if for no other reason than the line-up that’s supporting Ozzy on it. Just Say Ozzy is the first live Ozzy release to feature Zakk Wylde on lead guitar, who of course would stay as Ozzy’s guitarist for most of his career from this point on. The EP is also the live debut of Randy Castillo, who played on most of Ozzy’s 80s output and on 1991’s No More Tears (he’s also on the 1993 live album, LIve & Loud, alongside Wylde).
Most notably, however, is that this is the only official live Ozzy solo release that features Geezer Butler from Black Sabbath on bass (save for one track on Live & Loud as part of a Black Sabbath reunion set). Butler would later play again with Ozzy on Ozzzmosis, but didn’t join him for the tour.
Just Say Ozzy has been out-of-print for the majority of this century. The same goes for The Ultimate Sin and Live & Loud. There’s been no official reason as to why this is, but a lot of people contribute it to a songwriting dispute over “A Shot in the Dark.” Gonna guess it involves Sharon being Sharon.
However, while The Ultimate Sin and Live & Loud are available on most streaming services; Just Say Ozzy has completely vanished from the digital realm. I’m sure there are bootleg streams on YouTube and such, but if you’re like most people who aren’t me in the year 2025 and consuming your music entirely via streaming services, you aren’t going to find this one on any of them – which is why I feel fairly safe in sharing it here.
Again, this isn’t essential Ozzy by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a solid little release. Wylde’s solo for War Pigs slaps pretty hard. The drumming is super-aggressive and gives the show a lot of energy, and I think that the live versions of “Miracle Man” and “A Shot in the Dark” surpass their studio rivals. I hope that more live releases from this era (and others, I’d love a Retirement Sucks live album) get released.
It’s been a minute since my last post, but I think this might be the shortest time between posts since 2022! So that’s something!
How’s everyone doing these days?
Sorry to hear that, yeah, me too.
Anyways, this site is still broken. If you leave a comment I’ll be able to read it but it won’t show up on the site. Sorry about that. I’m hoping to get that fixed very soon. I found someone online who said they’re willing to help. In the meantime, if you really want to reach out to me, give me a shout on Blue Sky.
I did manage to resurrect my YouTube channel with semi-regular updates! You should check it out! I’ve done some videos about records I recently bought, did deep dives on Mario and Zelda soundtracks, and even did some angry YouTube bullshit whining about AI. (Guess which video was the most popular.)
Right now, I’m doing a series where I rank literally every movie I’ve ever seen. Of all the projects I’ve done on YouTube, it’s by far the one I’m most happy about. I really enjoy making the videos. They give me a chance to talk about a lot of movies that no one has ever heard of, which is one of my favorite things to do, and I feel that it’s a unique concept that not many people have attempted before. No one is watching the videos, but I’m going to keep doing them!
Shit, no one reads this blog either but that’s rarely fucking stopped me. Remember that I also have a podcast. Some people do actually seem to listen to that, so that’s nice.
Tonight, a complete album by a band you have, without a doubt in my mind, ever heard of. Gee, for some reason I can really identify with bands that are completely forgotten and no one care about. Go figure.
One of my favorite record stores in Tokyo is the Disk Union in Shinjuku. It is seven stories tall, and each floor has a different theme. In my 10+ years in this country, the first floor has changed layouts multiple times. It used to be the new release floor. Then it became an ill-fated cafe that I think I never once set foot in. That was a waste of floor space, let me tell you. A couple years ago, it was renovated again into an all anime and game music store.
Have you ever seen Hostel? You know that scene where the dipshit protagonist stumbles upon the snuff house and he bumps into the Japanese guy (Takeshi Miike)?
Yeah, it’s kind of like that for me. It’s a problem, is what I’m saying. They know me by name. I’m the Norm of that store.
Last week they had a sale. I bought a lot of CDs. I bought TWO soundtracks to TWO different Space Invader games that I didn’t even know existed. I bought the soundtrack to the Nintendo DS Araknoid game. I bought the soundtrack to the original Tekken (it has dub remixes). I bought the soundtrack to something called 1997 Nostalgia. I don’t even know what the fuck that is, but I liked the cover and it was ¥500 so I was like, “fuck it who cares.” Turns out it’s the soundtrack to some MSX game and it has a real dope mid-90s MIDI vibe.
Bad band name. Bad album name. Really good music though!
The music is a bit hard to describe. Although maybe that’s just because I haven’t written about music in a few years now and I’m out of practice, who knows. It’s very much electronic music, that much I can say. There are no guitars here. It’s all synths, keyboards, drum machines, and samples. Some of the tracks have vocals, but nearly all of them are processed through vocoders and other electronic effects. I can’t even tell if they’re singing in Japanese or English.
Tracks like “Datum” and “The Link” have big Kraftwerk vibes, with bouncy beats and robot vocals, while songs like “Zeitgeist” give me YMO energy, with an emphasis on traditional Japanese-sounding melodies. What makes the album really stand out, however, is the heavy chiptune sound. I’m sure that most of this was composed and performed on synths both modular and electric, but the whole album feels like it was arranged using sound libraries from Super Nintendo games.
And that’s really something because this album came out in 1996, and according to the one page I can find on the band, they formed in 1990! I have no idea what their earlier stuff sounds like, but if it’s anything like this I feel safe in saying that these guys were light years ahead of their time. What’s the earliest chiptune artist you can think of? Bit Shifter? Anamanaguchi? YMCK? These guys predate all of them by at least a decade. They even precede Polysics, whose chiptune meets Devo sound didn’t start to make waves until the second half of the 90s.
I was so stoked to discover this! You know how hard it is to find genuinely obscure music these days? It feels like everything’s not only been discovered at this point, it’s all on Spotify with YouTube essays about it and vinyl re-issues from Light In the Attic getting pressed. And not only is this genuinely obscure, it’s really good! It’s one of my favorite albums that I found this year! I can’t believe this has just fallen through the cracks like this. It’s probably because the album was self-released. And with the band kaput, there’s no one around to re-publish it or get it online in any way.
From what I can gather on that page, the group went through several lineup changes both before and after this album. On Compact Dorf, they were a trio; the members being Okuno Terushige, Komaba Mikiya, and Yamazaki Yasunori.
I did a bit of digging on those names. Yamazaki Yasunori is on Discogs. Apparently after he left Dorf he went on to form an electronic duo called Uni. This was in the early 2000s. It appears he hasn’t released much music since then. He has a Soundcloud but there’s nothing on it.
I also found Komaba Mikiya on Discogs. He’s released several albums online under the name Komaba. It sounds a lot like Dorf, albeit with a bit less of the video game influence and more of a general “electronica” sound. I dig what I’ve heard.
As for Okuno Terushige, I got nothing.
Again, going back to that sole page with information on the group, I see that they have a few other releases, but a lot of them are tape only. I have no idea how to even begin a search to track those down. There are stores in Japan that sell old cassette tapes, but they don’t carry stuff like this: they’re more down to charge you $50 for a Billy Ocean tape or some bullshit. I guess I’m going to have to start scouring Japanese auction websites. I just know I need more of this band in my life. I hope you give this a listen and feel the same way.
Pop music is transient and fleeting. For every timeless supersmash that stands the test of time forever, there are dozens or even hundreds of other songs that completely vanish from the face of the earth.
But the pop music of 1991 seemed to be exceptionally fleeting. While the number one song of 1991, Bryan Adams’ “Everything I Do, I Do It For You” has stuck around, and it will stick around for as long as adult contemporary playlists and radio stations exist (and sadly they still do exist), many others fell into the abyss.
Just look at the number two song of 1991: Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up.’ Color Me Badd were nominated for two Grammys that year! And that album sold 3 million copies, which is half as much as Taylor Swift’s latest album! But five years later they were forgotten. Their lasting contribution to society is serving as a major inspiration for “Dick In A Box” and I’m sure they’re all really proud of that.
Sadly, that’s a success story compared to a lot of other artists from 1991. Does anyone out there remember Timmy T? He had the fifth most popular song of the year. How about the hilariously similarly named Stevie B? His hit clocked it at number 12. Karyn White. Natural Selection. Tara Kemp. Tracie Spencer. Who the hell are these people? Where the hell did they go?
One particular oddity to me is Voices That Care, the charity single that was released to boost morale during Operation Desert Storm and raise money for the Red Cross. It wasn’t a major hit, it didn’t make the year end Top 100, but it did crack the Top 40 charts for a bit. There were some huge names on that one too; Michael Bolton. Will Smith. Celine Dion, Little Richard, and Garth Brooks are all there. But Voices That Care did not become the 90s version of “We Are The World.” Nobody cares about Voices That Care anymore.
But even that charity single fared better than the song I’m sharing tonight: “Yakety Yak (Take It Back).” A rework of “Yakety Yak” that focuses on recycling. It didn’t chart, and from what I can tell it aired a handful of times on TV before it (ironically) was thrown in the trash bin.
The song was sponsored by the Take It Back Foundation (which was the brainchild of Quincy Jones’ daughter Julie Jones) and although it was created to raise awareness, and not money, I assume any modicum of money made from sales of the single went to the charity or other non-profit organizations.
The celebrity line-up on the track is impressive to an extent, but also screams “this is the best we could do in 1991.” Ozzy is here, and I suppose that’s a “get” as he was still a big name at the time (and maybe this song helped him fulfill some legally mandated community service requirements). Another pretty big name for the time is Bette Midler. This was released around the same time as “From A Distance,” so she was never bigger. Although Midler was a prominent environmentalist at the time, so I assume it was easy to finagle her into this. This was also the same year that she played Mother Earth in the Earth Day TV Special.
MC Skat Kat is here as well, because it’s 1991 and the world was still thinking “we need hip-hop’s answer to Roger Rabbit!”
As for the rest of the line-up, it’s a lot of legends past their prime (B. B. King, Stevie Wonder, Barry White), and former pop stars who are just on the cusp of irrelevance (Pat Benatar, Lita Ford, Kenny Loggins).
The song is terrible, by the way. Did I mention that? Like a lot of all-star charity singles, there are too many cooks in the kitchen. No one has any room to breathe. It’s flat and lifeless. To use some parlance of the time, the song has the personality and energy of Al Gore on quaaludes. It also doesn’t help that the original “Yakety Yak” is a terrible song. And it’s a terrible song about a shithead kid not wanting to do his chores. It’s an ode to apathy. Rewriting it to be a song about pro-active environmentalism is a stretch.
So why the hell am I sharing the entire CD single if the song is so bad?
Well firstly, it’s out-of-print and not even on Spotify. It’s truly rare. It’s getting really hard to find obscure songs these days! Finding something that fell through the cracks in the digital streaming era kind of felt special, even if it is really stupid.
Secondly, I think the single is an interesting object. This was a commercial product. It was sold in stores for regular people to buy and listen to. But it feels more like a promotional item for radio stations. It starts like a normal CD single. Track one is the radio version, while track two is a seven-minute(!!!) extended remix. But then there are four different versions that are just 30 second snippets, almost like commercial bumper music. And those are followed by literal commercials, 19 audio PSAs featuring the celebrities from the song, telling you to do things like write to your local city hall to help start a city recycling program, or to take your old newspapers to recycling centers. And each one ends with B.B. King saying “buy stuff that’s recycled, recycle the stuff that you buy, take it back!” And that little audio snippet sounds familiar, maybe it was used for TV PSAs too?
So there’s that. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Ozzy Osbourne talk about how much energy you save by recycling newspapers, I got you covered.
But I also wanted to write about this because it’s oddly connected to how I’ve been feeling lately. Which is bad, by the way. I’ve been feeling bad. Do you have to ask why? If you have to ask why, maybe turn on the news?
When I discovered the music video for this on YouTube, I shared it on a Discord channel that I’m a member of. I thought it would get a laugh, MC Skat Kat is there after all. But one of the first comments was along the lines of “ah yes, from before we knew recycling was a scam.”
Now, that’s not entirely true. Glass, paper, and aluminum recycling programs work. Be sure to separate those when you take out your trash. Recycling those things not only cuts down on pollution, but it reduces energy consumption and carbon emissions (ever so slightly).
But plastic recycling? Yeah, that’s a complete and total scam. Most of the plastic you that goes to recycling bins just ends up in landfills, or in the ocean. And more to the point, the entire idea that individual people have any power at all to impact the environment in any positive way at all? That’s was just a fucking lie.
And it was rammed down our collective throats in the early 90s, too! “You can make a difference! If we all work together, we can save the planet!” was the hot shit social cause for a bit. I mean, there wasn’t a lot else going on, I guess – and America wasn’t ready to talk about homophobia or racism in any real way, so we all just felt more comfortable talking about six pack rings killing fish. But it was a cause that went nowhere, because the reality is that there’s nothing that individuals can do that can “save” the environment. The amount of pollution created by individual people pales in comparison to the ways that corporations work to destroy the planet.
All the environmentalist entertainment of the 90s was a joke. Thanks for telling me how much energy I save by recycling my newspapers, Ozzy, but it didn’t matter. I know you meant well, Captain Planet, by telling me to cut up six packs rings before I threw them away, but it didn’t do a heck of a lot of good; the oceanic ecosystem is still on the verge of a complete and irreversible collapse. Bette, I really liked your performance as Mother Earth in the 1990s Earth Day Special, but I don’t think anyone learned anything from it that resulted in the air being cleaner. Ferngully, you weren’t only a box office failure, but you failed to stop the deforestation of the rain forest as well.
While celebrities and cartoon characters were trying to get suburban moms to take their plastic water bottles to the recycling center, the plastic industry was spending millions to lie about the effectiveness of recycling so they wouldn’t have to spend the billions that was needed to actually recycle said plastic water bottles. So now the oceans are full of plastic, our air is toxic, and the earth is warming up at an incredibly rapid rate. There’s not a goddamn thing any single person can do about it, either, because as long as *gesticulates wildly at everything wrong with the world and politics* is happening, the people who are truly responsible for the destruction of our planet are going to continue destroying it, because it helps their bottom line.
I just wish someone could be held accountable for any of this. I bet that he Warner Bros. executive who signed off on this disaster of a charity single suffered more consequences for that than any oil executive has ever suffered for destroying the planet. The people who created MC Skat Kat faced bigger repercussions for that than anyone did for pushing the lie of plastic recycling. And, yeah, MC Skat Kat sucks, but that’s really fucked up.
And it’s been the same shit ever since. No accountability for the Iraq War(s). No accountability for the subprime mortgage crisis. No accountability for AI frauds, crypto scams, racist fearmongering, police brutality, sexual assault, literal murder, the list goes on and on.
Sigh.
And yes, this was where my mind went when listening to this shitty cover of “Yakety Yak.”
No, I’m not doing very good at the moment.
Yes, I am in therapy.
No, I still won’t forgive the creators of MC Skat Kat for what they did. Just because oil companies haven’t been held accountable for their evils, doesn’t mean that those motherfuckers get a pass.
No music in this post, although I do promise to share some pretty interesting stuff that I’ve found by the year’s end. Today I wanted to give an update on some projects I’ve been working on, and put out a call for help.
My Websites
This website, and my even more neglected other website, Mostly-Retro, are INCREDIBLY BROKEN.
A reminder, this website is old. Really old. It’s Web 2.0 old. I started this website in 2006. On Blogger. And then when it became clear that Blogger was cracking down on MP3 blogs, very hastily converted to WordPress and moved it to its own domain, with the MP3 files hosted on a separate domain.
(There was a reason for that at the time, but I forgot what it was).
The only update I have made to this website’s design in the past 18 years is changing the background of the text sections from black to white. That’s it. In this time, WordPress has changed a lot. Parts of the website are just broken now. I’m sure they are fixable, but my HTML knowledge stopped with WYSIWYG editors in 2007. I can’t fix it. Comments on this site became so overwhelmed with spam that I had to disable them outright. Comments on Mostly-Retro just don’t work anymore. I don’t know why. People can leave comments (I still get an angry Doug TenNaple fanboy comment about six times a year) but they don’t show up on the site proper.
I want to keep this site going, but it needs a complete and total overhaul.
I want to make LostTurnable more of a general blog/website where I can write whatever. Recently, I’ve been experimenting with other platforms like Medium and Ko-Fi to get my writing out there. I think they’re really good (especially Ko-Fi) but they’re just not for me. I like having my own site, my own playground, my own little corner of the internet. More specifically, I like having a place that is deliberately not social media. I don’t want my work to be part of “feed”. I like it being its own thing.
As for Mostly-Retro, I’m going to shut that site down in the near future. But don’t worry, nearly everything on there will be migrated over here. Then I might finally finish that Madonna Remix guide and update the Tokyo Record Store guide.
But I don’t know how to do any of the things I need to do to make this a viable website. I need help.
I’m looking for someone with web design experience to help me rebuild this site. It doesn’t have to be anything complex, just your basic blog with some categories. I will pay a fair rate for this work. I don’t accept handouts and I don’t pay in “exposure.” Repeat: I will pay for this work. If you want to make money working on my website, hit me up on Twitter or Blue Sky.
YouTube
I want to get back into videos at some point. But I probably won’t be doing any more record store videos. I definitely won’t be doing any more Hard-Off videos. They’re both a ton of work, and would be even more difficult with my current health problems (mobility issues related to fibromyalgia, nothing life-threatening).
I’m thinking about doing videos about my record collection and maybe some “what I bought this week” type stuff. The type of things that don’t require much editing or narration. Hopefully I can get started on those before the year is out.
Cinema Oblivia
I’m thinking of winding Cinema Oblivia down as well. It’s been a blast doing it, but I’m going to be honest with you: when I created that podcast, I was really hoping that it would be popular. I put a lot of effort into it, went after guests who I thought would help me get exposure, and tried to make it more than just yet another “me and my friends bullshit about movies” podcast.
I really enjoy doing it, but it’s not at a place where I’m happy with it, both in terms of popularity and quality. And I’m nearly 100 episodes in now. Podcasts like mine don’t suddenly become popular years into their run. I missed the boat.
But that’s okay! Because I have another idea for a movie podcast! This one is a bit more focused than “weird old movies.” I think I found a gimmick that will make it stand out at least a little bit. At some point, I’ll probably stop with Cinema Oblivia and launch this new one. My goal is to do that by the end of the winter. If that takes off with any modicum of success I’ll probably revive Cinema Oblivia as a “sometimes” thing where I can go off about weird movies that I really want to talk about, with people I really want to talk to.
So yeah, big plans for the future, assuming the world is still here in 12 months. I guess that’s a big assumption considering the state of things. Sigh.
Anyways, in the meantime, if you like my writing I’m gong to focus on posting things at Ko-Fi for the moment. That’s really just a place for me to let loose and write whatever the heck I feel like. And I write reviews for every movie I watch over on Letterboxd, so be sure to follow me there.
To the few people who will read this, thanks for sticking with me for all these years. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve what few loyal fans I have left. You’re cool.
Yeah so I hoped to write more in 2023 but that sure as shit didn’t work out huh?
So what had happened was my health got worse, my podcast work got more intense, my work got busier, my social life got more hectic, and I spent about a month in the states, which ended up exacerbating several of my health problems.
(Don’t worry, none of my health issues are life-threatening and I am currently seeing multiple medical professionals to improve my health. Also, I can afford all of this, so no need to offer donations or any financial support).
In addition to all of that, this was the year it finally happened: I couldn’t find anything out-of-print worth sharing here. You know my policy; for me to share something on this blog it has to be out-of-print in the majority of the English speaking world. Sure, I would occasionally bend the rules now and then, but after my Warner Bros/YouTube bullshit copyright battle, I’m extra careful now.
I guess I could have scoured the prog store from some ultra-obscure European jazz-rock album or something that has never been re-issued, but I learned a long time ago that whenever I buy music simply because it’s out-of-print, with the intent of sharing it here, it’s rarely something I have any interest in writing about.
But recently I got lucky with three releases that I am 99% sure have songs that are 100% out-of-print, at least in the forms I’m sharing today. And they’re not video game music! They’re proper songs (well, some of them) by artists you might have actually heard of.
I actually do have a few other out-of-print albums that I want to share at some point, but I am making zero promises as to when I will actually do that. Sorry. Life. It’s in the way. Hopefully my health will improve so I can dedicate more time to writing once more.
In the meantime, if you’re really hankering for any written word by yours truly, your best bet would probably be to check out my Letterboxd page. I review every movie I watch. Sure, sometimes it’s just a sentence or two, but sometimes it’s a bit more in-depth. Typical rule of thumb: the more obscure the title is, the more likely I am to write more on it. I’m not going to go deep on something like Robocop when I watch that. Everything that can be said about Robocop has been said. I have nothing to add to that discourse.
Additionally, I am still on Twitter (sigh) and I’m also on Blue Sky. As always, those remain the best way to keep in touch with me, especially since the comment section on this website is now broken. I had to close all comments because I was getting inundated with spam and no filters were able to fix the problems. Sorry about that.
And there’s the podcast! Cinema Oblvia is still going strong! I had to cut down my production schedule a bit, again because of my health, but I’m still putting out at least one episode a month. And I feel pretty safe in saying that I’ll be able to keep that going for a while now. It’s hard work, but I enjoy it more than anything I’m doing at the moment.
If you listen to my podcast and you want to hear more of my absolutely lovely voice that no one at all finds weird or irritating, I was recently on an episode of Gayest Episode Ever talking about Benson, and was also recently on Retronauts talking about Night of the Living Dead, a film that traumatized me so much as a child that I needed to go to therapy because of it. You can find those wherever you get your podcasts. You can find my podcast on most podcast places/apps/websites/whatever as well. Except for Spotify. Because fuck that company.
Have a good new year! I’ll see you here at some point in 2024, that much I can promise.
Fred Myrow and Macolm Seagrave Phantasm Disco
Okay, so there are two different songs called “Phantasm Disco” that incorporate the theme from the 1979 film Phantasm. Yes, really.
One is by an artist called Captain Zorro, which is actually a pseudonym for the disco producer Biddu. People seem to really like that version, but I’ve never come across a physical copy of that 12” single. I would buy it in a heartbeat.
This is not that version, this is a version by the people who composed the music from the film, Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave. In fact, a version of this track is on the Phantasm soundtrack proper, under the name “Phantasmagoria Silver Sphere Disco.” It’s a mix of two different tracks, actually, a spacey, creepy ambient bit followed by the disco tune.
This version is on a 7” single that completely removes the “Phantasmagoria” bits and extends the disco section. I think this version might be on the original Phantasm LP? But I don’t think it’s on the Mondo re-issue from a few years back, as that version (with both parts) is shorter than the 7” single version.
I love the fact that Japan had an exclusive 7” single for the theme to Phantasm and the B-side was an exclusive remix of an album track. Because…why?
If you haven’t seen Phantasm and you like beautiful, surreal horror films that aren’t that scary and don’t make a lick of fucking sense, I recommend it. Someday I’ll get around to watching the multitude of sequels and no doubt be disappointed by all of them.
It’s a five inch record that was distributed as a promo item exclusively in America to promote the group. It came out in 1980, probably around the time that the export version of X∞ Multiplies was released. In Japan, that album was an EP that had both comedy skits and some previously unreleased tunes by the group. Europe and the United States each got exclusive versions that combined songs from their previous albums with some new tunes. The US version of X∞ Multiplies is actually how I discovered the group, buying it in a used record store probably close to 20 years ago. It’s a safe bet that me discovering that record led me on the road that ended with me moving to Japan, which means that my mom probably hates that record.
This promo has three tracks, a very short 15 second intro, followed by two very short medleys of YMO tracks, oddly with excerpts from the Japanese only version of X∞ Multiplies edited in. As a thing to listen to it’s not that great, but as a historical curiosity for maniac YMO fans like myself, it’s fun.
This is the strangest thing I’ve bought all year, and I bought a lot of stupid shit this year. I found it in a used hardware store for about ¥500, and I bought it without knowing what it was because it was ¥500 and I like Japan (the band, I mean, I like the country too but anyways).
But this is not a Japan record. This is David Sylvian only. And he’s not playing any music. Instead, he’s reading Japanese lyrics to Japan songs. The lyrics were submitted by Japanese fans of the band, and they are not translations of the original lyrics, but new original lyrics that are meant to convey the musical mood of the original songs. At least, that’s what the Discogs page says. (Also, for the record, all the art for today’s post was taken from Discogs, my records are currently packed up for an upcoming move.)
I have not bothered to translate these lyrics, and I haven’t asked my boyfriend either, he has more important things to do. Sorry, but it’s already been nearly a year since my last post. If I had put it off until we had time to translate this, I might not have posted anything again until the 2030s, sigh.
Wanted to get one more post out before the year was up. I know that a lot of you who still read this site (thank you) aren’t all that into video game music, but I’ve been meaning to share this for a long time now, and it’s what I really want to write about, so either it’s this or several more months of radio silence.
Before we get to the music, hey, hi, how’s it going? It’s been a busy year for me. Cinema Oblivia, my movie podcast, is still going strong so I hope you all check if out if you can! Unfortunately, we had to call it a day on Alexander’s Ragtime Band, the amount of work involved in researching, recording, and editing was just too much for us. Hopefully it will be able to return someday.
The same goes for my YouTube channel. I really like filming YouTube videos! Unfortunately, I really hate editing YouTube videos, and I REALLY hate doing voiceover on YouTube videos. I’m trying to think of ways to streamline the process. I don’t know how people like Techmoan can bang out multiple videos a month. Must be easier when it’s your full-time job. I do mean to get back into it soon though, I keep getting new subscribers! I have nearly 700 people following me on that hellsite now, I feel that I owe it to them to update with something sometime soon. Maybe over the holiday break?
Speaking of hellsites, I’m still on Twitter. As I write this I’m coming off of a 12 hour “twitter timeout” for saying that cisgender people commit more crimes than transpeople (yes really). I vowed to quit that shitshow multiple times, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. If nothing else, I need to use Twitter to find guests for my podcast. I also follow a billion Japanese record stores too, and how the hell else am I going to know when a copy of Capcom Game Music Vol. 3 is available on vinyl at a Hard-Off on the outskirts of Tokyo? That’s important shit.
Anyways, as I’ve said before, this blog isn’t going anywhere even if updates have slowed to a glacial pace. Thanks for sticking around in 2022 and I hope to get more written in 2023.
For those who don’t know, Akihabara is an area in Tokyo that’s well-known the world over for its abundance of “nerd” friendly stores. Most of the biggest electronics stores are there, as are several stores dedicated to other geekly delights such as action figures, comic books, video games, and hardcore pornography of both the animated and live-action varieties.
Of the gaming stores, the most famous is Super Potato. It’s a really good store, don’t get me wrong. But for me, the best store in the Akihabara is Beep, a much smaller store located a bit off the main drag. It’s a tiny basement, and most of the store is dedicated to things I have no interest in, such as vintage Japanese computers and arcade game boards. But I still try to make my way to the store every week or so because they have often great game music releases that I never see anywhere else.
I got a crazy selection of vintage flexi discs taken from old game magazines there, for example. I also bought from them about about three dozen game music releases on motherfucking cassette tape.
I’m not saying I don’t have a problem, okay? I know I have a problem.
Most of them don’t even have any unique or original music. And I even owned quite a few of them on CD and LP. But…they’re tapes! Yeah, they sound like garbage, cost too much, and I’m probably only going to listen to them a handful of time at most, but…they’re tapes! They look cool. Sound bad. Look cool.
But I did pick up a few that were legit rare, with some honest-to-goodness hard to find tracks. Like this Double Dragon tape, for example.
This is the soundtrack to the original Double Dragon arcade game. The game came out in 1987, this tape came out in 1988. It was never released on LP, only on this tape and on a mini-CD that I have never found anywhere ever – not even online.
While it calls itself an arcade soundtrack, the tape is comprised entirely of arranged versions that I think are unique to this release only. At least, I’m pretty sure. The tracks aren’t on any other Double Dragon soundtrack release I have (and I have a lot, trust me).
They’re really good too! They all have that unique, 80s video game sound, just punched up just a bit. They sound too good to be authentic to 80s game hardware, but still sound like game music. This version of the main theme fucking slaps. And I really dig the version of “The Battle Is Over” and “Forest” too. “Forest” hits especially hard. Sounds like music from a lost 80s ninja flick like New York Ninja (you should watch New York Ninja, by the way).
Another stand-out, simply for how batshit bizarre it sounds, is “Abobo the Giant Appears,” which is a remix of the main theme comprised entirely of sound effects from the game. Imagine Art of Noise covering Double Dragon. Bonkers shit.
It also came with this rad double-sided poster with liner notes. Love the artwork on this.
And it’s nice to know that I am, canonically, the same height as Abobo.
Anyways, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, all that jazz. I’ll be back next year at some point – I promise.
Why the even longer break than usual? Well, the typical “I can’t find anything to share” excuse aside, this year has proven to be incredibly busy for me. Since my last post, I got a new job! I’m still teaching English in Japan, but now I’m working for a company that doesn’t seem to actively hate me, so that’s nice. I am working more hours though, which means it’s harder to dedicate free time to creative endeavors. And since more people seem to be visiting my YouTube channel and listening to my podcast than frequenting this blog, those have taken precedence, sorry.
As I’ve said before though, this blog isn’t going anywhere. On the off chance that I do decide to shutter it for good, I’ll definitely put out an update, but again, that’s not likely.
I got some really cool and rare video game music recently, but I know that most people who read my blog don’t come here for that and would be bummed if my first post in nearly half a year was dedicated to Double Dragon remixes, so I’ll save those for next time. Instead, hey check it out more YMO.
Yellow Magic Orchestra Tong Poo (Special DJ Copy) La Femme Chinoise (Acoustic Version) Where Have All The Flowers Gone? (Acoustic Version) Greenback Dollar (Re-Mix)
My new job is in an area with some record stores. As you can imagine, this is a problem. Thankfully the really good record store is some distance away, just far enough that I can’t make it there during my usual lunch break. However, if a student cancels their lesson, and that lesson is right before my scheduled lunch break, then I have more than enough time to make the walk and spend too much money on CDs I don’t need!
For example, I bought yet another Yellow Magic Orchestra greatest hits compilation. That brings the total number of YMO albums in my collection to a completely unsatisfying 87. That number is like a dare. It’s sitting there, egging me on to see if I can get to an nice big round and even 100. Goddammit.
Anyways, the compilation in question is YMO Go Home!, which the group released in 1999. It’s a two disc set, and while it’s not as good as what I consider to be their definitive greatest his set, UCYMO, it’s still damn good. In addition to all the bangers you’d want, it also has a few harder to find tracks, which are the ones I’m sharing here. The Special DJ Copy of “Tong Poo”was first made widely available as a part of the 1992 Techno Bible 5CD box set (which I own). I think before that it was only on some promo 12″ singles. It’s not crazy different than the original, but it has enough deviations to make it worth a listen.
When this compilation came out in 1999, it was probably most notable for being the exclusive home of both of those acoustic tracks. They have seen been re-released as a part of the 2005 8CD mega box set L-R Trax, which I do not own because I own nearly every single song in that box set and it usually goes for hundreds of dollars these days. I’m crazy, but I’m not an idiot.
The acoustic tracks are great. “La Femme Chinoise” works oddly well as a slow, acoustic number. The song’s melody sounds surprisingly haunting when plucked on an acoustic guitar. Makes me wish for acoustic re-workings of more YMO classics.
“Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” is a bit, well, weirder? First of all, it’s a cover of a Pete Seeger song. How/why/when the hell YMO decided to do a Pete Seeger cover is a mystery. It’s probably for the best that they kept in an acoustic affair though. Pete Seeger’s quiet, contemplative anti-war ballad didn’t need a sequenced beat. Like the other acoustic number, it’s very good. And again, I hope that YMO have some more hidden acoustic gems in the vault that they’ll release someday.
Finally, there’s “Greennack Dollar,” which is on an entirely different YMO compilation called One More YMO, which collection of live cuts. I think that every track on that compilation was previously released save for this one. It was recorded in Budokan in 1980, but not as part of the December concert that served as the source for their legendary Budokan live album, it was recorded earlier in the year.
If you don’t know, “Greenback Dollar” is a cover of a Hoyt Axton song from the early 60s. So, yes, this is YMO covering a song written by the dad in Gremlins. The world is weird sometimes.
Eh, yeah right. I hope you’re all doing better than me, I’ll just leave it at that.
If you’re subscribed to my YouTube channel you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t updated it in a while. Sorry about that. Life (and omicron) got in the way. I have a lot of footage shot, I just need to edit it and record voice over. Hey, it turns out that making good YouTube videos is really hard! There’s like, work involved, and stuff. How come more people can’t read blogs dammit! Writing is fun and easy! And no one has to hear my voice!
But if you do want to hear my voice, good news, you can do that on not one, but TWO podcasts this month. I’m still doing new episodes of Cinema Oblivia every other week, and there’s a new episode of my progressive rock podcast, Alexander’s Ragtime Band this month too! I’ve been taking over hosting duties as of late, and it’s been a lot of fun. The latest episode features Dr. Sparkle of Chrontendo fame. He, along with my regular compatriot Elliot Long, discuss three bands who only had one album of note: Affinity, Babe Ruth, and England.
Of all the podcast work I’ve done in the past year or so, I’m most proud of this episode from an editing standpoint. I think it turned out great, give it a listen if you have time.
Planet Earth only released one album, a self-titled record that came out in 1978. I don’t know if they were even a real band, or if they were just a collection of musicians assembled by a producer or something like that. It’s not a bad record, kind of mellow disco-influenced instrumental rock, although to be honest, the highlights on the record are the covers I’m sharing now and not the original tunes. I might just think that because they happened to cover three songs that I absolutely love, including “Telstar,” I can’t even tell you how many versions of “Telstar” I have.
Wait, they’re all on my computer, yes I can. I have 10 versions of “Telstar.”
This isn’t the best one, but it’s a really good one! “Telstar” is a hard song to fuck up though, ditto for the other two tracks they cover. Have you ever heard a bad version of the Doctor Who theme? I thought not.
One thing is for sure, this is a really strange collection of musicians.
The album’s main guitarist is Colin Green, who was a session guy who played for a few different acts in the 70s up through the early 2000s. He’s the one playing guitar on Elton John’s “Your Song,” and apparently he’s one of 8 million people featured on Bjork’s “It’s Oh So Quiet.” Drummer Barry Morgan also played on “Your Song,” and in addition to his work with Elton John he also played with David Bowie, The Walker Brothers, and Harry Nilsson.
The most surprising credits on here though are probably synthesizer players Karl Jenkins and Mike Ratledge. They were both in Soft Machine! That’s just…what?
Keiko Nosaka Greensleeves Auld Lang Syne
I’ve discovered that I apparently have a thing for reworkings of Western music on traditional Japanese instruments. I got a Beatles on bamboo album that’s decent (maybe I share some later) and I’ve previously shared koto harp reworkings of works by Vivaldi and Bach. I don’t know what it is about them. I find them oddly soothing I guess. I know I would never listen to more traditional versions of these. It’s really the koto that puts them over the top for me.
These tracks are from an album that koto player Keiko Nosaka released in 1980, simply entitled Koto Greensleeves. The album is comprised entirely of traditional English compositions performed on the koto. It’s quite pretty.
Nosaka released many albums during her career, and apparently she specialized in non-traditional music. She has a record that features her interpretations of Debussy and Ravel, and acclaimed Japanese composer Akira Ikafube (Godzilla) composed music for her. I think that her Discogs page is woefully incomplete, her personal site lists far more records. I hope I can track them down sometime.
Also, not gonna lie, when I hear “Greensleeves” on koto, in my head I imagine a feudal era Japan remake of the original King’s Quest.
THAT WOULD BE SO DOPE.
Tokyo Solisten Yesterday Eleanor Rigby Here Comes The Sun
In 1978, this group released not one, but three albums of classical re-imaginings of Beatles tunes. These albums are really something. Their not just classical reworkings of Beatles tracks, actually, they often incorporate or interpolate classical compositions into the Beatles tunes. Don’t ask me which classical pieces, I’m bad at that. By anglophile boyfriend could compile a whole list of which songs pull from which Bach pieces, or whatever, but he has better things to do I imagine.
I’m not a giant fan of The Beatles, but I love these tracks. Like the koto tracks, they are very soothing. It’s been a rough year (already).
I don’t know who most of the individual performers in Tokyo Solisten are, but I can tell you that the conductor for a few of these tracks is Tadaki Otaka, who has served as the conductor for both the BBC and Wales. Additionally, if Discogs is to be believed, the harpsichord player on these tracks also played harpsichord on a Fire Emblem soundtrack album. Weird.
Like I said, there were three of these albums. I only have volume one and volume three. It’s safe to assume that I’ll acquire volume three soon. I also might try to seek out the CD release, but that’s sadly only a greatest hits compilation, and doesn’t include everything. Maybe I’ll share more of these at some point. I really love them.
This blog is intended to shine light on music that has been unjustly lost through the years. If you can find the stuff here, buy it. Songs are only available for a limited time.
If you own the copyright to anything here, email me at lostturntable AT yahoo DOT com and I will have them removed.
RANT
For the love of God don't leave random requests in my comment section. If I have it, I'll post it here eventually, nothing you say is going to make me buy a record you're too damn lazy to find yourself.
