POLYSICS -- I My Me Mine

As much as I compare Yellow Magic Orchestra with Germany's Kraftwerk, I see the band POLYSICS as being alongside Devo. Weird and quirky and fun and more musically rock than pop, I think that the band members for the former got their orange jumpsuit idea from the latter.

"I My Me Mine" is a track on their 2005 7th album "Now is the Time!" which is a short-but-sweet sonic glass of OJ. Written and composed by band member Hiroyuki Hayashi, yep, the song evokes a lot of those Devo memories again with those instruments that sound like kazoos on steroids, along with a most happy recorder. And the lovely thing is that there are two video versions of the song. The above is known as the All-Star Version, featuring among all of the people there, a 10-year-old robot-dancing powerhouse known as Strong Machine 2（ストロングマシン2号）.

Strong Machine 2, aka Mao Murakami（村上真魚）, had already come up with a dance for the entire song, so the powers-that-be were generous enough to create a video featuring just her titled as the Strong Machine 2 version.

"I My Me Mine" was also used as the theme song for "Takeyama Sensei?"（竹山先生?）, a TV Tokyo variety show starring Cunning Takeyama（カンニング竹山）who I saw as being one of the "angrier" tarento out there. The above has Takeyama actually learning some dancing from Strong Machine 2 and her father, Strong Machine 1, who just happens to be a priest at Myouon-ji Temple（妙音寺）in Gunma Prefecture.

"Now is the Time!" peaked at No. 27 on Oricon.

Now in her early 20s, Strong Machine 2 is still dancing away with her Dad.