Tokyo Bravo -- Eleki de Swim（エレキでスイム）

 

It was probably through doing some of the articles for eclectic bands such as Emmylee & The Psyzans（エミーリー&ザ・サイザンス）recently that I came across this particular group called Tokyo Bravo（東京ブラボー）. According to one site, the band began with vocalist Kan "Kang-Chang" Takagi（高木完）, guitarist Bravo Komatsu（ブラボー小松）and organist Mitsuwa Sakamoto（坂本ミツワ） back in 1981 with bassist Hajime Okano（岡野ハジメ）and drummer Toshiro Sensui（泉水敏郎）joining later. Tokyo Bravo was around only for a short time, breaking up in 1984, but during that period, they were more than happy to dabble in Group Sounds, glam rock, surf rock, garage rock, punk and New Wave for their fans' pleasure.

Kang-Chang didn't sing on this instrumental which seems to be the band's calling card (though he makes for an engaging encourager). The Bravo Komatsu-penned "Eleki de Swim" (Electric Guitar Swim) has got that feeling of jangly rock and New Wave, and I couldn't help but hear a bit of the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black" and some B-52s due to that combination of guitar and organ. 

If anyone can confirm this, I'd appreciate it, but my impression is that while they performed between 1981 and 1984 in the live houses of Shinjuku, they never released anything on vinyl with a CD of their exploits only coming out in 1990. Continuing with the timeline, Tokyo Bravo got back together for a short time in 1999 and did the same thing in 2008. According to his J-Wiki page, Takagi has gone into hip-hop and during his university days in the late 1970s, he was once acquainted with Kensaku Okubo（大久保謙作）, later to become the bassist and leader of the thoroughly entertaining Kome Kome Club（米米Club）. Before coming across this fact, I had also gotten that impression that there was a bit of a proto-K2C in Tokyo Bravo thanks to that performance video up above with Takagi leading the audience like good ol' Carl Smokey Ishii of the later band. Incidentally the aforementioned bassist Okano was also participating in other groups such as another multi-genre group Cioccolata.