SPANK HAPPY -- Boku wa Gakki（僕は楽器）/Hashiri Naku Otome（走り泣く乙女）

 

A week ago, I wrote on an article featuring a duet between folk group Tulip（チューリップ）vocalist Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）and new singer Midori Hara（原みどり）titled "Tsugunai no Hibi"（償いの日々）. It was the second link in an interesting chain down the rabbit hole which began from listening to Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" podcast last week. Well, I'm going further down the hole since I found out that Hara would later help form a band with the intriguing name of SPANK HAPPY.

Of course, the slightly naughty part of my mind wondered if the origins of the band name came from some sort of S&M flick (the safe word is apples), but according to their fairly detailed J-Wiki biography, SPANK HAPPY, which first began in 1992, adapted their name from 1970s German avant-pop group Slapp Happy. I will let that matter rest then.😏

SPANK HAPPY has had a long history which can be divided into three phases. What has been called Old SPANK HAPPY consisted of vocalist Hara, saxophonist Naruyoshi Kikuchi（菊地成孔）and keyboardist Shin Kouno（河野伸）. In terms of the genres that they covered, once again according to J-Wiki, the band has covered technopop, dance pop, disco, electronica, House and electroclash but the phase that Old SPANK HAPPY covered between 1992 and 1998, seemed to be more about psychedelic rock and perhaps even the avant-pop that Slapp Happy had been aiming for.

Case in point: their December 1994 single "Boku wa Gakki" (I am a Musical Instrument). Written and composed by the band, it definitely doesn't sound anything that I've heard in Japanese pop music at the time. In fact, I'd say that the song hearkens back to the aforementioned psychedelic rock and some of that Beatles late-60s music. For the pop ballad with Zaitsu, Hara may have sounded like she was auditioning for a David Foster love song, but here she sounds like the second coming of Yuki from Judy & Mary with a bit of Chaka from PSY-S.

"Boku wa Gakki" might come across as rebellious and raucous but the lyrics are pretty poignant as they describe the night as being melancholy music with all of the people acting as the musical instruments interpreting what they are feeling. And to keep on that 60s thing, there is a part of that song which reminds me of "MacArthur Park" by actor Richard Harris.

Another song from the early phase of SPANK HAPPY is their maxi-single from earlier in August 1994, "Hashiri Naku Otome" (The Running and Crying Maiden). The Judy & Mary feeling comes even harder here through the song and Hara's vocals, and it's all about a spat playing out downtown as a woman runs off from her boyfriend's car with the usual anger, despair and melodrama being flung about like mortar attacks. "Hashiri Naku Otome" also has plenty of energy with help from some boss horns so this time, I feel that this is straight-up pop/rock approaching that Judy & Mary sound along with a bit of Original Love thrown in. Maybe even a soupcon of 80s David Bowie?

In their live performances, SPANK HAPPY was joined by musicians including trombonist Yoichi Murata（村田陽一）, guitarist Tsuneo Imahori（今堀恒雄）and percussionist Asa-Chang. 

Near the end of 1997, Kouno left the band. Then in 1998, Kikuchi had to be hospitalized for a time due to serious illness, and then later in the year, Hara herself left which meant that the first phase of Old SPANK HAPPY was at an end. A year later, Kikuchi would return and be joined by a new partner to begin New SPANK HAPPY which had a new sound. I'll cover a song during that phase soon enough and then eventually, I'll get to their third incarnation known as Final SPANK HAPPY which started up in 2018.