i first got wind of this band back in 1992 because i was a huge fan of nirvana, and kurdt cobain talked about them in interviews often and had them open up for nirvana on one of their tours. i thought, in my 15-year-old mind, 'if they're good enough for kurdt, they're good enough for me!', so i went out and purchased let's knife, which was their most recent album released, and the only one i could find locally.
the front and back covers made me very curious. three petite japanese women on the front (at the time, and still, i was very much into female-led rock groups), wearing bright crazy multi-colored outfits surrounded by psychedelic cartoon-y flowers. the track listing on the back made me even more curious, with titles such as 'flying jelly attack', 'twist barbie', 'get the wow', and 'tortoise brand pot scrubbing cleaner's theme (sea turtle)', i thought, this has to be good! i got home from the record store (i am almost positive i picked it up from manifest discs and tapes, now monster music and movies), and went straight to my room to crack open the cd. when i put it in my boombox, my mind was blown.
seventeen tracks of perfectly crafted pop music, innocent child-like lyrics, rockin' guitars, good guitar solos, tight drumming, vocal harmonies that made me weep (i have a thing for good vocal harmonies), and the list goes on. at age 15, i had never heard anything else like it, and i devoured it, listening constantly and trying to learn all of the songs on guitar. come to find out, they had quite a back catalogue of albums, so i had some work to do tracking them down through special orders, mail orders, etc (no home internet access back then, kiddies, at least not in the harvey household - i had to order though the mail (!)).
i pushed the album on all of my unsuspecting friends, and a few of them were equally impressed, most notably ron r., oscar r., and charles r. (none of them related, and not the charles r. that i currently associate with). three years later, i discovered they were playing in atlanta, where, coincidentally, ron r. was going to school, so charles r. and i made the road trip and saw them at the masquerade. we were like a gaggle of prepubescent girls staring at a joey mcintyre poster on their bedroom walls, except this was way cooler. we were right up front within reach of naoko yamano, the lead singer/guitarist. they were amazing and larger than life up on that stage. we thought, how can these three little ladies make such an incredible mind-blowing sound? after their set, they came out and signed autographs and stuff. they were very quiet when it was our turn to chat - they were probably a bit freaked out by the 6'3" ugly pimply white dude towering over them. we stood there like idiots, not thinking of anything cool to say. they signed a setlist and a ticket stub for me and i was in heaven.
anywho, on that note, i will leave you with some thought-provoking lyrics from one of my favorite tracks on the album 'i am a cat':
i discover whiskers of a cat
in a timeless zone
and i put them on my face.
in a moment i become a sweet little cat
and i dance on a flying saucer.
so, so cool.
more of this type of thing to come, so stay tuned, if you wanna.
