Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

Ego-Wrappin' -- Cassavetes (カサヴェテス)


Ego-Wrappin's "Cassavetes" is definitely one unique bird just for the title alone. I don't know whether Yoshie Nakano and Masaki Mori(中納良恵・森雅樹) were fans of one of the pioneers of American indie films, the late John Cassavetes, but I think the song has a style all its own perhaps in the way that the film maker followed his own path.


I remember "Cassavetes" getting all of the hoopla on the music stations with its avant-gardish video starring lyricist and composer Nakano (Mori also worked on the melody) as a Japanese actress who just seemed to end up in some 60s European film. The song launches with a dramatic thump-thump and some urgent mysterious jazz as if it were part of a score for some film noir before Nakano starts singing these rather beatnik words with a delivery as jumpy as the flight of the Millennium Falcon through the asteroid field in "The Empire Strikes Back". Then, somewhere in the middle, there is a brief musical interlude for a bit of café and a waltz in some countryside coffeehouse. As I said, it is one unique bird. I think the one thing missing in "Cassavetes" is the finger-snapping, but I believe the bongo drums are in there. It fits the Ego-Wrappin' bohemian style to a proverbial 'T'.

And strangely enough, it wasn't released as an official single. In fact, there would be a gap of 6 years (2002-2008) between their 2nd and 3rd singles. "Cassavetes" was kept on as a track on Ego-Wrappin's 4th album, "merry merry" which came out in September 2004. It peaked at No. 4 on the Oricon album charts.




Ego-Wrappin' -- merry merry

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