The Vocoders -- Part of me/Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

From YouTube

When it comes to the band POLYSICS, my impression of them has always been of them being a Japanese version of Devo with their techno-rock New Wave style, although on their Wikipedia page, the band has called their brand of music as "technicolor pogo punk"; the punk I can understand. They've never been boring to me.

Technopop fan and KKP commenter Tae let me know this interesting development in the history of POLYSICS a few days ago. Around 2018 or 2019, POLYSICS decided to generate a side project called The Vocoders. Under this guise, Hiroyuki Hayashi（ハヤシヒロユキ）and his group opted to shed the Devo coveralls and frenetic energy and garb themselves in the style of another iconic band, Germany's Kraftwerk, even wearing the familiar black ties and red shirts.

Putting out a debut album under The Vocoders' name, "1st V", in 2019, I have a couple of tracks with their music videos. First up is "Part of me" which begins with a mighty synthesizer thrum and follows with Hayashi and company enjoying their vocoders and a certain low-key energy...just like their Dusseldorf counterparts. Still, some of that synth and guitar work has reminded me of the Australian band INXS. As for the video, I'm sure that there are probably many corporate staffers in Japan who wouldn't mind cutting loose in the office like those actors did.

Another track is "Repeat, Repeat, Repeat", a plea from a friend to another friend to not hesitate in opening up when needed. The techno 1970s are back again! Along with the observation that The Vocoders have also emulated Kraftwerk's performance stance of sitting in one straight row (mind you, the Japanese band prefers sitting), I've noticed that for the first time, I have been able to see everyone's full faces after years of seeing POLYSICS perform behind those Geordi LaForge visors.

POLYSICS -- Dr. Pepper!!!!!

 

It's not exactly a Reminiscings of Youth situation today but ahh, that commercial of actor David Naughton singing and dancing about while giving his ode to Dr. Pepper certainly brings back memories. That ad was huge on television back when I was a teenager. But oddly enough, it wouldn't be until I was in Japan from the mid-1990s onward that I would discover the wonders of the cola that wasn't Coke or Pepsi. There were certainly vending machines and supermarkets in my area that sold the stuff, and I was more than game for it, although I have friends and students who would pucker their face up into a knot whenever I mentioned it, accusing Dr. Pepper of tasting like medicine.

And this is how we segue into POLYSICS' "Dr. Pepper!!!!!", the lead track from their March 2015 album "HEN Ai LET'S GO!"（HEN 愛 LET'S GO!...Favouritism Let's Go!）. Ironically, according to J-Wiki, band member Hiroyuki Hayashi（ハヤシヒロユキ）had his first taste of Dr. Pepper when he was in Grade 3...and couldn't move fast enough to expel it, and the kid was crying! Well, apparently, the maturity of his tongue grew so that now he not only could fall in love with the stuff, he even ended up creating this very song, a wildly fizzy concoction hailing the joy of drinking Dr. Pepper. I can certainly sympathize.😆

My worry is that Hayashi may have been drinking too much of the cola when he and the rest of POLYSICS recorded "Dr. Pepper!!!!!!". The coda to all this, though, is that since returning to Canada over a decade ago, I really haven't drunk all that much cola of any of the brands; it's been mostly Canada Dry or Sprite now.

POLYSICS -- Electric Surfin Go Go

 

Every variety show in Japan has its time and then it leaves the stage and camera. My family has been watching "VS. Arashi"（VS嵐）, the game show starring the former Johnny's Entertainment boy group Arashi which officially broke up at the end of last year. Being on TV Japan, "VS. Arashi" is about a year behind its original broadcast in Japan so we're still getting new episodes, but it's especially poignant since we know that the show finished its run once its hosts finished theirs, especially with the fact that during the pandemic era, the audience could no longer appear with Arashi and their weekly celebrity guests in their final months. We got the first episode of the new reality last night, so we know that it won't be too long before the curtains fall on this very long-running program (although I've read that a new similar program has launched with lone Arashi member Masaki Aiba and a few other junior Johnny's members)

Along with the four games that are regularly featured in "VS. Arashi", there is the pre-game chat fest first just among the Arashi members and then the competing team. After that comes the introduction of the two guests to compete alongside the Arashi team in which they (usually manzai comedians) get raised up to the top of some steep stairs before they come stepping down to meet the rest of the bunch. The introduction of the guests is accompanied by some raucous technopop music (unfortunately, I couldn't find any videos with the introduction scene).

Well, just by chance, I discovered that little techno insert music is actually part of a bigger song. Just like how I discovered that deranged comedian Egashira 2:50's（江頭2:50）intro song was actually Tomoyasu Hotei's（布袋寅泰）"Thrill", the insert music is "Electric Surfin' Go Go" by the techno rock band POLYSICS. Whaddaya know?

POLYSICS's 6th single from June 2006, this was written and composed by member Hiroyuki Hayashi, and it's the usual wild n' crazy musical thrill ride by the band. The video, which is a sequel to its equivalent number for "I My Me Mine", is also a thrill to watch with another appearance by dancing wunderkind Strong Machine 2（ストロングマシン2号）and her clones.

"Electric Surfin' Go Go" hit No. 46 on Oricon and is also a track on POLYSICS' February 2007 album "Karate House" which peaked at No. 27.

POLYSICS -- MEGA OVER DRIVE

 

It's a Wednesday night...Hump Day aftermath and all that. Probably feeling as tired as you will get all week with two more days before the weekend. How about some "MEGA OVER DRIVE"?

Yup, nothing like a POLYSICS song to get your motor running. The title track from the techno-rock band's October 2013 mini-album sounds like what would happen if a video game soundtrack were plied with a cocktail consisting of Red Bull and atomic-grade shochu (not that I would ever recommend such a drink to humans). The synths and vocoders are really going overdrive.

Written and composed by POLYSICS members Hiroyuki Hayashi and Fumi, "MEGA OVER DRIVE" just has to get you out of your midweek blues. The guys from Devo and Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）would look upon the song with great contentment, and my compliments also go to the music video and its denizens. Those three ladies have probably come up with an exercise regimen that could shed twenty pounds off anyone within the nearly four minutes of the song. Nice shoutout to West Shinjuku at night, by the way.

POLYSICS -- New Wave Jacket

 

I'll be honest here and say that I can get quite groggy during afternoons. A large lunch and a warm room, especially after completing an assignment, will deck me out like any punch from Mike Tyson. However, smelling salts aren't the thing to get me back up and running...it's actually the Portals scene from "Avengers: Endgame". Yep, there's nothing like watching for the umpteenth time all of the superheroes getting together and getting ready for battle against Thanos before Captain America finally makes the command "AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!".

Recently, though, I have encountered a J-Pop equivalent that could liven me up from my mid-digestive stupor. It happens to be the 3rd single by the techno rock POLYSICS. "New Wave Jacket" released in April 2001. Especially when the audio is ramped up, I actually need to pour some chamomile tea down my throat to crawl back from the ceiling. The music video definitely does help as well in waking me up.

POLYSICS member Hiroyuki Hayashi came up with the loopy words and music and according to the J-Wiki article on "New Wave Jacket", he was requested by the recording company to whip up a song that would become a classic for the band...the executive suggested something on the lines of Denki Groove's（電気グルーヴ）"Flashback Disco". Well, "New Wave Jacket" was the result. It's certainly got the DEVO in there which is the famous American rock band that POLYSICS has often been compared to, but at the same time, those crash-and-bang guitars even remind me of some of the more uptempo hits by Australian outfit INXS. As for the music video, I received some warm memories of my time playing the ancient video game of Breakout! 

Speaking of the video, that New Wave jacket reminds me of the garb that Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor wore during his time in "Doctor Who". One wonders whether Russell T. Davies had gotten inspired in terms of fashion when he saw "New Wave Jacket". In any case, the song hit No. 86 on Oricon while its home album "ENO" which actually had been released earlier in June 2001 peaked at No. 61.

Anyways, I'm perfectly awake now.

POLYSICS -- Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto（ドモアリガトミスターロボット）

I was fortunate enough to have discovered my love of music on both sides of the Pacific, just when the tradition of music videos started being born in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was quite the novelty to see these mini-films that were concocted around the songs that they were to advertise. For me, some of the videos that became forever entrenched into my memories were Donald Fagen's "New Frontier", Chaz Jankel's "Questionnaire", Madonna's "Borderline", Michael Jackson's "Thriller", Thomas Dolby's "Hyperactive" and the one below.

Styx's "Mr. Roboto" had quite the video, didn't it? Not only did the song contain Japanese lyrics but the music video had me wondering whether it was just part of a major motion picture starring singer Dennis DeYoung. All that stuff about robots tyrannizing human society, Kilroy starting a rebellion and that amazing music in "Mr. Roboto"...some of that did get into some later movies, I'm pretty sure.

The original song was often used in a number of scenes of the 2005 Japanese TV drama "Densha Otoko"（電車男...Train Man）about an otaku who saves a beautiful young lady on a subway and promptly falls in love. However, I think the above video is more of "Mr. Roboto" adorning scenes of the happy life in Akihabara. I enjoy myself whenever I go there.

In 2002, the band POLYSICS provided their own version of "Mr. Roboto" with the fuller title of "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto" as a track on their mini-album "LO-BITS". However, this isn't a cover at all, really. Outside of the declarative four lines from Styx's original, vocalist Hiroshi Hayashi provides his own techno-rock music and lyrics for the rest of it. I've heard the POLYSICS version a number of times on TV, and according to J-Wiki, it's been used as the theme song for a number of shows.

The video is pretty funny, too, as a temperamental robot star finally cracks up under the strain and goes on a rampage against everybody even the show's director and some playground kids (the violence is G-rated, I assure you). The rebellion in this case is just him against everybody else, it seems. Meanwhile, Hayashi's lyrics laud the robot as if he were still the hero in the program. His melody is darn catchy with that "dooka, dooka" beat!

"LO-BITS" managed to peak at No. 97 on Oricon.

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.

NHK Jido Gassho Dan/Cosmic Invention/Polysics/Miku Hatsune -- Computer Obaachan （コンピューターおばあちゃん）

I realize that I've been getting a bit heavy on the technopop over the past few days, but after coming across this adorable piece of techno kayo, I just had to get it onto the blog.

"Computer Obaachan" (Computer Grandmother) is this song written and composed by Ryoichi Ito（伊藤良一...I hope I've pronounced that correctly） and arranged by Yellow Magic Orchestra's Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）that was placed onto the NHK children's segment, "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた...Songs For Everybody） back in late 1981. I think at the time, a lot of pop music was going a bit YMO-happy so why not a kid's song? In any case, the NHK Jido Gassho Dan（NHK東京児童合唱団...NHK Tokyo Children's Choir） as led by moppet Shuuko Sakai（酒井司優子）took care of this catchy technopop ode to a grandmother so cool and smart that she is just like a living computer to her adoring grandkid. The song proved so popular that it kept coming back onto the segment off and on over and over again from 1981 to 2009. The music behind the choir was two-thirds of YMO with Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）on the drums.

However, it was originally performed in the same year by a short-lived technopop band, Cosmic Invention (1979-1982). The original arrangement was by Hiroyoshi Oda（小田啓義）which sounded a little sluggish to me when it was performed by this group that was nicknamed YMO Junior. The reason for that lay in the fact that the members were all either elementary or junior high school students. 

Over a quarter of a century later, technorock band Polysics provided their own fun cover of "Computer Obaachan" via a 2007 compilation album titled "Rock For Baby".

Then in 2011, Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）gave a groovier version via the album "Miku Hatsune Sings New Wave". I have to say that in each of the versions, it's the "Yay, yay, yay" and "Whoa, whoa, whoa" that keep it fun for me.

Roppongi Hills

February 5th 2019: I found out a bit of history concerning this classic.

Denki Groove/POLYSICS/Rie Eto -- N.O.

Getting to know about those zany cool guys that make up techno unit Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）from the late 1990s, when I heard that the boys were going to release a bunch of their best hits, I knew that I had to grab the album. Well, it turned out that "The Last Supper" from July 2001 was not quite a BEST album but more of a compilation of Denki Groove's different takes on some of their past tunes. No matter. I was quite happy to get it. Of course, being the goofy contrarians, Takkyu Ishino（石野卓球）and company just had to release their album in a long silvery case which would just protrude out of my shelf.

http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B00005L9KD/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=187205609&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B00005L9KC&pf_rd_m=AN1VRQENFRJN5&pf_rd_r=1VG58CCD4Z2BYBVAF9MS

(excerpt only)

One of the songs I enjoyed from the self-tribute album was this cute entry called "N.O. (Nord Ost)" which had multilingual singer Rie Eto （衛藤利恵）singing it in German. Not knowing anything about its past, I still thought the song had that not-so-serious whimsy typical of a Denki Groove entry although the techno was definitely toned down. As for Eto, I actually knew her more for her voiceover work, specifically on an old midnight entertainment show on TV Tokyo that I used to catch over the weekends, "Showbiz Countdown". Unfortunately, probably due to copyright reasons, the video below just has the opening sequence and Eto just saying the title.

Also on "The Last Supper" was another take on "N.O." by the techno-rock/new wave band POLYSICS. The folks there apparently like to describe their music as "technicolor pogo punk". Hey, whatever works. In any case, POLYSICS has been a band that I've seen now and then here and there on the video channels, and I figured that this group was the Japanese cousin to the new wave band Devo. There are the deadpan faces, the nuclear reactor jumpsuits and the thrashy guitars. Rie Eto is once again the voice here but she has got a lot more musical excitement surrounding her this time.

Some time after getting "The Last Supper", I finally got to hear the original version of "N.O.", and perhaps not surprisingly, this is the take I've enjoyed the most. Originally made by Ishino for the 1990 debut album, "662 BPM BY DG" during Denki Groove's indie days, it was re-made for the band's 4th album under Ki/oon Records, "Vitamin" in 1993. It was later released as their 3rd single in February 1994. What I liked about it was just the percolating synths that reminded me of the old days of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Supposedly, Ishino's choice in title was from the initials of British band New Order, a group that he greatly admired, but somewhere down the line the title came to stand for "Nord Ost" by the time of "The Last Supper". The song peaked at No. 21 on Oricon.

The last video here is to show Ms. Eto through a commercial she did back in the 90s.

P.S. I also covered a song in an article from a couple of years back which was also on "The Last Supper".