Frederic -- oddloop

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fglhe

Ahhh...back to the days of my childhood in the 60s and 70s (probably a prehistoric age for a lot of you), and ironically I start this article off with an episode of "The Flintstones" which was kinda like "The Simpsons" for my generation. In particular, there was one episode titled "Split Personality" in which Fred bashes his head and ends up with a far more dignified and increasingly unbearable persona called Frederick.

That was probably the only time in my life I heard of that full name being used in pop culture anywhere. And so that is one of the reasons that this Japanese pop/rock band named Frederic (フレデリック) has stuck in my head when I first encountered one of their videos on YouTube the other night. However, the band consisting of the twin brothers Kenji and Koji Mihara（三原健司・三原康司）, guitarist Ryuji Akagashira（赤頭隆児）and (now ex-) drummer kaz. wasn't inspired by that Flinstones episode. Actually the name came from a children's book by Leo Lionni titled "Frederick". Frederic started out in 2009 from Kobe and have released 6 singles, 5 mini-albums and 1 full album as of 2017.

The other reason for Frederic taking up space in my brain is the video for the title track of their first major (mini-)album in September 2014, "oddloop", written and composed by Koji Mihara. The song itself is pretty quirky in itself and I like the electric guitar solo but it's the video that kinda seals the deal for me. I like the down-home settings as if the director decided to use his own suburban neighbourhood as the filming location, plus there are the two women who look like they were recruited from the set of the sci-fi/suspense movie "Ex Machina" to do the oddloop dance.

("oddloop" starts at about 3:40)

Not sure if the oddloop dance ever became a thing at the time but it certainly looked quite catchy. As for the album, it got as high as No. 73 on the Oricon singles chart. And I found out that it was used as the ending theme for the OAD of "Yamada-kun to Shichi-nin no Majo"（山田くんと7人の魔女...Yamada-kun and The 7 Witches）in 2014. I would put up the video but it's just the song playing over the ending credits scroll. Pity...I would have been interested in seeing whether the characters would have done the oddloop dance there.