I thought I'd try something a little different with this podcast; instead of a random assortment of mind-blowing tracks, this is a mix of mind-blowing Japanese tracks from the late 60s and early 70s. For the most part they all incorporate psychedelic fuzz, funk and pop in some form or another.
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Captain Beatfart Mix #7 -> Wasabi Gas: A Full-Bodied Blend Of Japanese Funk, Fuzz & Pop by Captain Beatfart
I went into this knowing the broad strokes, but not a ton about Japanese music from this era: The Spiders were the Japanese Beatles, The Finger 5 were the Japanese Jackson 5, Shinki Chen was the Japanese Jimi Hendrix; as well as some of the prog/proto-metal bands like the Flower Travellin' Band and Blues Creation.
I made it my mission while I was visiting Japan to try to find the Japanese James Brown.
Well, I failed*.
It turns out that while funk did seep into the Japanese consciousness in scattershot forms of funkiness, it never really took off as a scene in Japan like rock and later, disco did.
Despite not finding the Japanese equivalent of JB, I stumbled into a lot of great music while I was there, ate a lot of ramen, met a lot of great people in Japan (and some not so great, like the dickhead manager at the Disk Union in the Nihonbashi area of Osaka who kicked me out the store for bringing too many records to the listening station despite the clerk letting me do so...but that's water under the bridge...) and spent way too much time and money looking for records. I meant to put this mix out in May, but I kept finding more and more great shit online and at fairs so I kept putting it off. I finally decided that I had to put it out now since I'd never stop uncovering new stuff, so here it is.
You probably won't like everything I put on here, but chances are pretty good that even the most fervent musicus nerdus among you won't know most (or any) of the music in here. There's been a ton of compilations covering Brazilian, Indian, Nigerian and even Thai music, but Japan's music scene has been largely ignored in the Western reissue scene aside from a handful GS comps (I'm not sure if this is a case of expensive licensing or apathy). I listened to literally about 8 days worth of music to boil it down to the 30 or so tracks I put in this hour long mix. I'll no doubt be sprinkling more Japanese stuff in future podcasts (specifically stuff by P-Model & The Plastics who I love but didn't really fit with the rest of this stylistically) and look forward to being able to free my mind from obsessing over this for a while.
I hope you like it...
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Feel free to spread it!
*There is a guy named Zainichi Funk who put out a record earlier this year who does a pretty faithful JB thing, but I was mostly focusing on trying to find artists from the 60s~70s rather than modern artists for this podcast. You can check out Zainichi Funk's video here.
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