Weather in my region of Southern Ontario should be seen as a treasure trove or a Valhalla for meteorologists around the world. As I've often said to my students asking about what weather is like in my area of Toronto and beyond, it's predictably unpredictable. It was broiling hot a couple of days ago with a Humidex into the low 30s Celsius and yet tomorrow afternoon, we will be lucky if we even reach 7 degrees! My brow wouldn't even twitch at any reported prediction of snow. It would be quite the magical carpet ride for weather forecasters here.
Well, speaking about magical carpet rides, I found this one album, "Anzen Band no Fushigi na Tabi" (Anzen Band's Strange Trip) by Anzen Band（あんぜんバンド...Safety Band）, and no, I'm not referring to the 1980s hit band Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）. For one thing, the considerably more obscure Anzen Band had its time merely within the 1970s (1971-1976) and their sound has been described as something in the progressive rock vein.
I couldn't find very much on this group at all except through a blurb at Recochoku. In 1971, guitarist Tamio Aizawa（相沢民夫）, bassist/vocalist Hiroyuki Nakazawa（長沢博行）, and drummer Junichiro Ito（伊藤純一郎）formed Anzen Band, later to be joined by guitarist Tomokuni Aizawa（相沢友邦）. Not sure if the Aizawas were related. Their debut album, "Album A"（アルバムA）, was released in 1975 and gained some popularity for its emulation of its American rock sound akin to that of the Doobie Brothers at that time.
"Anzen Band no Fushigi na Tabi" was their 2nd and final album (love that cover, by the way) released in 1976 after which Anzen Band broke up despite good critical reviews. I haven't really written about albums that I don't already own for a while now, but listening to some of this LP, I've gotten intrigued enough to at least give it a go for the first three tracks.
The brief Recochoku description for the album states that "Fushigi na Tabi" highlights some more of the band members' personal tastes in the music. For instance, the first track (right at the top), "Hatenonai Tabi"（果てのない旅...The Endless Trip）, is an instrumental appetizer that is dreamy, jazzy and breezy...perhaps something to be heard at an outdoor concert in a park on a Sunday afternoon. Meanwhile, the second track, "Jikan no Uzu"（時間の渦...Time Vortex） below , has more of that prog rock flavour with some blues and the usual frills of the genre (including some spooky vocal bits...maybe they were watching "The Exorcist" back then) thrown in. It's a fascinating track that goes on for nearly 6 minutes (so perhaps it's a more conservative progressive rock piece?), and it makes me wonder if I should explore more of that 70s prog rock with bands such as Genesis and Supertramp.
Track 3 is "Yuuhi no Naka e"（夕陽の中へ...Into the Setting Sun）. With some glorious riffing by the electric organ and some triumphant electric guitar, it aurally takes listeners like me into suborbital space with the sun glowing in the darkness. There's even some jazzy smoothness thanks to a saxophone solo so maybe following that launch, everyone got invited to some club to mellow out.
Anyways, give "Anzen Band no Fushigi na Tabi" a try. I will delve a little deeper myself.
If you're interested in progressive rock, Genesis and Yes are the usual entry points, but Japan had a distinctive style all its own. The touchstone album that kicked off the scene could probably be the debut LP from Shingetsu, released in 1979. The album was heavily influenced by early Genesis and Italian bands like P.F.M. and Banco. It could be seen as the catalyst for other Japanese bands later on in the 80s, offering a super-symphonic sound influenced heavily by Renaissance, the Enid, light classical music and homegrown "art song" performers like Hiroko Taniyama. Bands like Pageant, Mr. Sirius and Mugen were typical. Of course, the reality is that the scene was quite a bit more diverse than that, but such acts dominated the 80s and early 90s.
ReplyDeleteTokyo's Silver Elephant club was an important venue for giving such bands a forum (and its still going today), as was the Made in Japan record label.
Here is Shingetsu performing "Oni," the opening track of their album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU9hnzd-QWY
Hello, Mike. Thanks for introducing Shingetsu to me. While I'm typing this, I'm listening to "Oni". It's definitely quite the prog rock trip. "Oni" at least is not quite on the same operatic level as perhaps certain Yes, early Genesis or Supertramp songs were, but there are an intimacy and subtlety that makes it indeed quite Japanese.
DeleteAlso, I notice that with Makoto Kitayama's performance and appearance, perhaps Shingetsu inspired glam rock/Visual-kei to some degree? The Wikipedia article for Shingetsu mentions that Kitayama has been called the Japanese Peter Gabriel, but I'm not sure Kitayama ever went full pop into the 1980s.:)