VOWZBAND -- Bonnou Funk（煩悩ファンク）

 

This act will most likely go down as one of the more unusual bands to make its way onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for reasons that will soon become evident. 

I actually first heard about these guys when one of them appeared on an NHK variety show several weeks ago. The program was "Dame Jiman ~ Minna ga Deru Terebi ~"（NHKだめ自慢 〜みんながでるテレビ〜...Boasting of Failures ~ TV that Anyone Can Join） and it has regular people show up talking about some of their most hilarious failures in front of a panel of discriminating tarento.  On one episode, a Buddhist priest (from Tokyo, I believe) came on to talk about a major goof that he ended up perpetrating but that wasn't the thing that I remembered from his turn on the stage. It was actually the fact that he and a few of his fellow priests had their own rock band.

Yep, you read that correctly. There is a rock-funk band called VOWZBAND（坊主バンド...Buddhist Priest Band） which has their own website and even their own YouTube channel. Apparently, they started things off fairly quietly in 2010 but then got their own gigs at live houses which turned into music videos and so far, they even have their own self-titled album.

Looking at some of their videos, I think that VOWZBAND has got a good sense of humour about it which is another revelatory observation since up to now, I had only thought of Buddhist priests as being very serious, humourless and not particularly interested in rock. Well, I was absolutely wrong on all counts. Anyways, I'm not sure when this particular song came into being, but the above video of the priests has it being uploaded in 2016 so that's how I will date it. 

"Bonnou Funk" (Funk of Worldly Desires), although the vocalist in the video seemed to have pronounced it a bit more profanely (but that can't be so), comes across as a comical piece of old-style funk from the 60s or 70s. That guy on the far right even has what I would describe as an electro-shakuhachi...and he's shredding it! These guys can do Vegas if they wanted.