WEBVTT
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Hi, I'm Slice.
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And I'm Emily.
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And welcome to another episode of Home Records, the podcast where we, two married musicians, pick an album at random from our 2000 piece find a collection and discuss its personal and cultural importance.
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I'm excited about this one.
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Yes, so this is uh just getting right into it.
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This is kind of the part two from our uh previous episode where we discussed uh the artist, uh the Japanese artist Harumi Hosono and his album Hosono's House.
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Yeah, so why uh tell everyone why we wanted to do a part two of this of this So I f I think it's because there's another there's another group that Hosono was involved with, also another seminal record that I think is very important to talk about um in this historical context.
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You know, when in our last episode we talked about going to Japan, we visited, we went there for our honeymoon, and uh I did quite a bit of record shopping, and the record we're talking about today was actually one of the primary records I was looking for from Hirumi Hosono's uh other group that he formed called Yellow Magic Orchestra, or otherwise known as YMO.
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Which that, to be honest, I I did not really know a lot about Harumi Hosono at all, but I did know of YMO.
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I had heard of that, and so I feel like you know, if a lot of Americans are listening to this, they may have had some name recognition of that group.
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Yeah, they would have been more maybe more familiar, uh depending on what side of Japanese music you're coming from or what side of music in general, because YMO was a synthpop outfit.
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And um, I first actually heard about this album from uh YouTuber music critic Anthony Fantano.
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He talked about this record in a classic review, and so that's how I came across it.
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And um, yeah, it's one of those synthpop uh it's not even I wouldn't even say say it's like a synth pop gem, it's kind of more than that.
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You know, it's very it's considered a very influential album for a lot of different music genres.
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Which, like, just to reflect back on our part one, if you remember him as a solo artist, that record was very folk rock, almost like Hawaiian influenced.
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Well, it's very exotica influenced.
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Yes.
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And and that's uh the trajectory he continued for his next few solo records, including his second solo album called Tropical Dandy, which is one of my favorites, and then he released, you know, a couple other records like that.
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He sort of slowly delved into, you know, more synthesizer electronic music, you know, very influenced by crowd rock bands like Kraft Work.
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Yeah, and this is a totally different genre.
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This is all electronic music, which is a very interesting genre that I don't know a lot about.
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So I'm excited about this and excited to kind of keep diving deeper on an artist that we've talked about.
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Um which do you feel like is bigger?
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Do you feel like him as a solo artist is bigger or YMO is bigger?
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Um, it depends who you talk to because here's the thing um all the members of YMO are huge, they're all very well known and all very influential.
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It was kind of a super group because this is how YMO came to be is that all the members of YMO, they were all part of this collective of studio musicians in Japan called Tin Pan Alley.
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Rumi Hosono was primarily a bass player, and then you had uh the second member, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was a keyboard player primarily, and then you had uh Yukihiro Takahashi, the third member of YMO, who was a drummer.
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So they all played on uh records for various uh Japanese artists, and then they also collaborated on each other's uh records.
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Ryuichi Sakamoto put out his first solo record before uh joining YMO, and I believe uh Hosono is on it, and Takahashi was involved in it in a in a little bit too, and that that's a great record as well.
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And uh you can hear what Takahashi also did an album, uh his first solo album, which was actually more French pop influenced.
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Oh, that's interesting.
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Yeah, it's also a really great record.
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They all and so they were all pre-established by the time that uh they came together, and Hosono was kind of the uh driving force in the sense of like he got everybody together, said, Hey, we want to do the synth pop electronic music thing, you know, and everyone was into the idea.
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And so um, you know, they they uh made their first album, which was uh self-titled, and it had a song on it called Firecracker, which was actually a cover of uh by an artist named Martin Denny, who was an exotica uh performer back in the early 60s, and um and which was so who Osono was obsessed with at the time, and so they did an electronic version of that song, and it ended up becoming uh kind of a hit in the States, actually, and it was sampled by hip-hop artists and hip-hop DJs used it for break beats, and you know, is using a lot of utilizing a lot of breakdancing culture.
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So that's how that was kind of the first bug of YMO really coming to prominence, but really it's this album that we're talking about, Solid State Survivor, that really became uh as a whole, like their most influential album.
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And for many, again, for many different music genres and fields, which uh you'll be hearing us talk about today.
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And so, one of the things before we dive really deep into that album, one thing I love about this podcast is as you know, we're not only podcast hosts, but we're also individual musicians uh ourselves, and we're also married.
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So the really fun thing about this record, some of our records have really fun stories as to how uh Slice got them or certain things about them.
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And this one to me is my favorite story about how you got a record because I happened to be there because it was on our honeymoon.
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Well, when we were planning going to Japan, one of the uh one of the things I was planning on doing was visiting Tower Records in Shibuya, which is in Tokyo.
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And because I, you know, I knew YMO was very well regarded in Japan.
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So um, you know, the second or third day we were in Tokyo, we went to visit Tower Records, and I pretty much bought nearly every YMO record.
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They had all of them, including this one, Solid State Survivor.
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And uh they also had some Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuchi Sakamoto solo records.
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Didn't really find much Hosono stuff, too.
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Some of his stuff is really hard to come by for some reason.
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Well, let's dive into this record.
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Um, so for me, this record is unlike anything I've ever heard, and maybe that's because this is probably one of the first electronic albums I've personally listened to.
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Um, but it's also interesting because it's kind of half instrumental.
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They do a few covers of some English songs, so a little bit of his of it is in English.
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The original songs have the English lyrics on them.
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And so, you know, explain to people like me and maybe someone listening who isn't really familiar with electronic music why this was such an influential record and such a big leap in that genre.
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I mean, you kind of have to hear it to kind of uh understand it, but at least the best I could put into words is you know, you listen to this record.
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This came this was made and came out in 78, 79.
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So synthpop was just starting to, you know, become a force in popular music.
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You had, you know, like it's mentioned before, you had craft work, you had um some pioneering artists like Gary Newman, um, artists that were coming out of the post-punk scene, like Joy Division, and bands that were utilizing, you know, um electronics in their um, you know, in their sound, in their pop songs.
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And um and and YMO were were kind of leading that charge, but sort of coming from a from a very different place.
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And their their songs, I think some people would call it techno, or they would they uh or what hip artists would think about techno would come from this record, you know, but they also were you know trying to create pop songs in an inventive new way, and one of the things I always say too with this record is that it was influenced, like their last record, on video game music, but in a lot of ways they influenced a lot of later video game music in the 80s, you know, and to that point, um, you know, there was a big movement starting to happen around that time period called City Pop in Japan, and that was where you had these artists that were making these very like very slick, very smooth, sort of yacht-rockish, jazzy rock type of music.
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And YMO wasn't entirely city pop, but the sounds they were using were used in a lot of city pop records, and like I said, they were all kind of collaborating with each other and they all collaborated, played on art on records from those city pop artists, too.
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So everything was very so yeah, everything was sort of you know kind of happening at once, but I think it was this record that really solidified YMO in terms of their sound, in terms of their influence.
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You know, they made a few other records later on that kind of went into more pop ish territory, not so much city pop, but more like synth pop, even more so than this than this record.
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You know, music always reflects the culture.
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It just it just does.
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That's one thing that I love about it is it if you can always learn more about the culture of a place by listening to the music that comes out of there.
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And in Japan, you know, there's the arcade district if you ever get a chance to visit.
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And literally every section of that area in Tokyo is filled with arcades, it's filled with anime, it's filled with Pokemon, it's filled with all these things, and you can so like you can understand why music like this that sounds like video games.
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It just reminds us so much of that electronic, fast-paced kind of feel would come out of a place like that.
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It just makes a lot of sense to me.
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One thing that is always interested to me, you know, I'm someone that's in I I make country, I make Americana music, and so the kind of the focus in those genres is live instruments when you're recording.
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And so one thing that I think is interesting is obviously in electronic music, you're using drum loops, you're losing synthesizers, you're losing, you're using, you know, all of these electronic things that are not real people.
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I'm curious from a recording standpoint how that changes the creative process.
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Well, the but the here's the thing this is early electronic music, so they didn't do any of that.
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Oh, that oh, I want to know more about that.
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That's cool.
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Yeah, there were no sequencers really at that point.
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There were no sequencers, everything had to be playing real time.
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Like I said, Akahashi was a drummer, so he played real drums, and they had invented an inversion of this thing that Kraftwerk invented, which were like these kind of drums that you played with.
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It was like an electronic drum that you lit that you physically played, and that's what created that sort of electronic sound.
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And to to kind of further explain it, um YMO, when they would go out to play live, there's a great um concert film they did um that's on YouTube from the Greek Theater in LA.
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And the thing was when they played live, you know, they they there was actually kind of a fourth um sort of unsung hero of of YMO, and his job was to because they were still using old modular Moge synthesizers, they were still using the type of synthesizers that you had to literally switch inputs and output cables to get a specific sound for a specific part of the song, and so they needed somebody to to work that in real time, so while they were while they were playing the keyboards.
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So, and um I'll tell you real quick, yeah, and that person was named Hideki Matsutake, um, who was pro uh who is uh on this record credited as microcomposer programming.
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So he was literally moving cables around so that everyone could play the sounds that they needed to in real time.
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That's fascinating because I would imagine if you're making electronic music today, it is not like that.
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Not necessarily, you know, everything can be sequenced and programmed pretty quickly.
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You can copy and paste things pretty pretty quickly, you know, but there was none of that.
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Everything was still analog.
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There was no digital.
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Like, like we still didn't have digital recording by that point, you know?
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So they I think this is fascinating.
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If you're listening and you you've never been in a recording studio, like even what I do, which is a lot more live, it's not electronic at all, we'll even take things and like copy and paste vocal sections, like a real voice in different spots if needed.
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So like the idea that something that sounds so electronic, that's so video game based, is all done live essentially, and that's a performance that's captured.
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That's a really, really interesting thought if you've seen that process of kind of being able to loop drums and things like that.
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I mean, looping really wasn't a thing.
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I mean, you had sequencers in some ways, but you couldn't loop sequencers.
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You had to play, you had to, if you had something that had an arpigiator on it, the because that's what what really existed before sequencers was arpigiators, you still had to play that for as long as the recording lasted.
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You know, you couldn't just hit but hit a button and and let it be automatic.
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I mean, some for some ARPs you could do it because that's what's well they are ARPs, but you still had to like record them to tape in real time with everything else going on.
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Yeah.
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You know, you again we didn't have you know digital interfaces or anything like that.
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Everything was still analog.
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Yeah.
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So and because you know, this band, you know, they're very perfectionist about you know their compositions and the way things sounded, you know.
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So it took I say it took some time to make this record, but really they just worked all hours of the day, I think, on this album, you know, and that's why it came out so so perfect, pretty much, you know.
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Um I love it.
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I okay, I want to know specifically about the songs.
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Do you have a favorite on the record?
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Um, I think well, uh the funny thing for me is that I think my favorites are actually the usual suspects for this record.
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So that is unusual that you're picking the usual the usual hits.
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Well, I think in some regards, these are also the most influential ones, though, or the ones that have, you know, kind of made the the most uh the most impact, um, being the third track, Rydeen, which uh which was actually the first Hawaiimo song I ever heard.
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And because when I heard it, I'm like, this is Sonic the Hedgehog.
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You know, it is literally Sonic the Hedgehog.
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It really is.
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Well, and that's so we never talk about what our favorite tracks are before we start recording.
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And I wrote down my favorite track was number three, right now.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, it is such a memorable melody, you know, and it it uses all those synthesizers that are like, yeah, that pretty much is the sound of video games for like the next 10 years, you know.
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Yeah, and it has like this interesting, like I put I put down, it has like this interesting, like swooshing sound that I just hadn't ever quite heard before.
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And I think once when music is purely instrumental or electronic like this, I feel like that's the part that makes me go, huh, that's really really interesting, is if it's a sound that I qu I haven't quite heard yet.
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And that's I think something that gets like I'm not as hip to a lot of modern EDM, but I just kind of feel, and this is maybe from my own ignorant opinion, is that you know, I feel like melody gets kind of uh waylaid a bit in modern EDM, you know.
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Yeah, I don't I mean there's some electronic music artists that I heard that like that kept pretty intact, but it's something kind I kind of miss, which is probably why I don't gravitate towards it as much.
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It's like it's nice to hear a dance beat and a track, but it's like I need some sort of melody to kind of latch on to.
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And this has that motif.
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It has that, yeah, in all the songs, in all the songs, pretty much.
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Which is such a funny word to use because motif is a very classical word that they use to talk about a melody that repeats over and over again.
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It's kind of like the way we think of hooks and pop music.
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Well, that's the thing.
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But that's exactly what this is.
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Well, you because uh because Ryuchi Sakamoto was was kind of raised up on classical.
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I think out of all the three, he's probably the most like classical based uh composer, you know.
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So he probably would have thought about that in terms of kind of creating these songs.
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Yeah, he was definitely the most composition-based uh songwriter of the group, I would say.
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Um although ironically, this one song was written by Yukihiro Takahashi.
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He actually wrote this, and he but he's also very like, I think, kind of kind of the best of both words.
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He's kind of the middle ground between pop song and composition, you know.
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And that's the thing, because they all have that composer sensibility.
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I think Osono comes the most from the pop world because he was in, you know, the rock bands and he grew up on the Beatles, you know, and things like that.
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So And this record is only eight songs long.
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It's a f it's four four songs on the first side, four songs on the second side.
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Like it's pretty, pretty short in terms of albums in today's standards for sure.
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Well, it took a long time to make, uh, like I was kind of alluding to before.
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So it's like uh if we could get it in an album is worth, you know, then we would have uh done our bit, you know.
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And the other thing that's really interesting is there are covers of American rock tunes.
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There's Day Tripper on this.
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And actually, that's the only one.
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That's the only American song on the actually not American, it's British.
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But it is behind the mask, though.
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Okay, so that's another cover, isn't it?
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Nope.
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So Behind the Mask, um, it's funny because um I teach songwriting or I teach music um as my day job.
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And um when we talk about production, we talk about uh demos and we talk about a little bit of electronic music and we talk about synthesizers, and I always bring up YMO.
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It's not in the curriculum, but I do it because you know it's the Lord's work, but I digress.
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So I mean if you're gonna talk synthesizers from everything I've heard, they know they're synthesizers.
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Yeah, exactly.
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But I always I always come up to Behind the Mask when I'm talking about this, and I always leave off and saying, Yeah, Matt Behind the Mask has probably the most interesting shelf life of any song that any of of almost any song, really.
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So Behind the Mask, you know, on the record uh by YMO on Solid State Survivor, it's sung by uh Sakamoto through a vocoder, you know, and singing words in English, because there was a um the I think the lyricist is uh an American guy, Chris Mistell.
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So I think I think that's why I thought it was a cover.
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So that's the original version.
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Okay.
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Um so a few years later, this song actually um came across I I don't know exactly who it came across um that led to this, but it was actually um supposed to be recorded for by Michael Jackson for the album Thriller.
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Oh, that's fascinating.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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Oh, interesting.
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Yeah, so so Michael did record a demo.
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Uh he rewrote the lyrics, uh, some of the lyrics, um, just to kind of I think match his vibe a bit more.
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And they were and they recorded a demo.
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The engineer, I think, basically he just took the original YMO track and just had um Michael singing over it, which it's mostly instrumental anyway, and you could have easily, you know, uh quite you know turned down that vocoder vocal.
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But um it didn't end up on thriller because uh there was some issue with the songwriting royalty distributions with Sakamoto because he wrote the music for it.
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So because of that, I think they just um you know they couldn't they couldn't uh come to an agreement for whatever reason at that time.
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That's interesting.
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So it was inevitably left off the album.
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Now the song you can actually find the demo of the song on one of the deluxe editions of Thriller, but they also did um do a uh fully produced version that ended up on the post-humous album Michael uh in 2010 that came out like a couple years after he had passed away.
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So you can hear a fully produced version of Behind the Mask by Michael Jackson.
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Um can you imagine like having your song taken off the thriller record because they couldn't figure out how to pay you?
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Essentially, like that's what you're saying.
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I can't, I would be kicking myself for the rest of my life because Thriller is the top-selling album of all time, or at least it was non non-compilation, it is.
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Non-compilation.
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I mean, oh my gosh.
00:21:27.279 --> 00:21:30.640
I mean, that paycheck would have been crazy.
00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:44.880
The funny thing is, to be fair, I mean, if you listen to even the demo, even if you listen to the uh completed posthumous production, it would I think, in my opinion, I think it would have been a bit out of place on Thriller compared to everything.
00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:46.400
Maybe it was meant to be anyway.
00:21:46.559 --> 00:21:59.839
Yeah, like I mean, he is definitely he was like, Oh yeah, I want to record it, I rewrote these lyrics, you know, but it would have definitely fell out of place, I think, compared to you know the other like Quincy Jones joints and things like that, and Rodman Temperton joints.
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:15.839
But if that doesn't like help people understand how influential this record is, the fact that there was a song from it that was almost added to the thriller record, I feel like that is a great as someone who doesn't know a lot about it, to me that's that says a lot.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:18.240
Well, yeah, but the story doesn't even end there.
00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:38.240
Um so it was left off Thriller, and one of the studio musicians that played on Thriller, worked on Thriller with Michael was a guy named Greg Filling Gaines, who has also worked with Stevie Wonder, and after his stint with Michael, uh went on to work with Eric Clapton.
00:22:38.960 --> 00:22:54.880
I think, in my opinion, well, I don't know this for sure, but I like to believe that Greg told Eric, like, yeah, I was working on Thriller, and uh, you know, we had this song, we didn't end up cutting it, or we didn't end up finishing it.
00:22:55.039 --> 00:22:57.039
Maybe you could do something with it.
00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:09.200
So Eric Clapton actually recorded a version of Behind the Mask with Michael's lyrics, and it ended up on a terrible album called August from the mid-80s.
00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:14.559
And when I mean terrible, I mean the cover his cover Behind the Mask is probably the best track on that album.
00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:18.720
That's you know, and the track is pretty good, but everything else is pretty terrible on that album.
00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:21.599
And I bought that album like a few months ago.
00:23:22.480 --> 00:23:23.680
Just for Behind the Mask.
00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:24.720
But we own it.
00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:25.440
Yeah.
00:23:25.759 --> 00:23:32.240
But we will not be talking about that album because the only thing worth talking about on that album is Behind the Mask.
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:41.519
But yeah, Clapton's version is like I mean, it's basically Michael's version without the RB programming and things like that.
00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:47.839
Um, it definitely sounds a little off-putting hearing Clapton sing what Michael would have sung.
00:23:48.079 --> 00:23:49.839
Yeah, those are definitely not the same voices.
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:50.480
No, they're not.
00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:51.119
They're very, very much.
00:23:51.519 --> 00:23:51.920
No, they're not.
00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:56.480
Yeah, so that's the very strange and interesting shelf life of behind the mask.
00:23:56.640 --> 00:23:57.599
You know, yeah.
00:23:57.839 --> 00:23:58.799
Oh, fascinating.
00:23:58.880 --> 00:24:01.039
I mean, this this whole record is really fascinating.
00:24:01.279 --> 00:24:02.799
The whole group is fascinating.
00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:11.680
I mean I mean they're all they're all incredible virtuosos, um not just instrumentally, but just compositionally, you know.
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:17.200
And um, I mean, this is like the record that kind of really put them on the map.
00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:31.200
And one thing I will add because I like to, you know, we're talking about this record, but uh we're also I also want to talk about sort of the history of YMO a little a bit, you know, and its members, you know, we've alluded to it a little bit in the last episode.
00:24:31.279 --> 00:24:41.119
We're talking about Hosono's career, and he went on to do a lot of other different things later on, but um the record they made after this was actually uh a mini album.
00:24:41.279 --> 00:25:00.640
It's a title with a symbol, so uh, you know, and it w like I said, it was a mini album, but it was this weird album that had like this, like these jack Japanese comedy bits in between songs, and yeah, it's called Infinity Multiplies, which sounds like a math formula, anyways.
00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:21.759
So, but one of the most notable tracks from that album, that mini album, was a cover of Tighten Up by Archie Bell and the Drells, uh from like the from the sixties, you know, as a soul cover, and it was because of that cover that they became the first and I think only Japanese act to perform on Soul Train.
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:24.720
Now make sure everyone knows what Soul Train is.
00:25:24.799 --> 00:25:26.000
Everyone knows what Soul Train is.
00:25:26.160 --> 00:25:34.480
But if you don't, if you live under a rock like my wife, um I know what Soul Train is now because I married you.
00:25:34.799 --> 00:25:35.920
My point stands.
00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:47.920
Um but yes, the uh the pinnacle of soul music on television, soul artists perform and for and and audiences dance to soul music.
00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:59.119
There have only ever been, I think, kind of before that, two uh non-African American artists on there, and that was Average White Band, the Scottish Funk Group, and David Bowie.
00:25:59.359 --> 00:25:59.519
Yeah.
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:00.160
They both perform.
00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:02.559
Oh no, I'm that's uh there's actually three.
00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:07.119
Also, um Elton John performing Benny and the Jets, because that was a number one RB record.
00:26:07.279 --> 00:26:11.680
And Soul Train had the potential to break an artist, it just introduced it to so many people.
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:14.559
The same way our our talk show performances do now.
00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:17.680
Like if you perform on SNL, it would be the equivalent of doing that.
00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:18.960
Pretty much, you know.
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:27.279
The funny thing about Soul Train, although it is like it's it was kind of like American Bandstand where you kind of lip sync to your track things like that.
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:50.559
It there were some exceptions, but uh YMO were slightly uh slated to perform on there, and they performed Tighten Up and Firecracker, and that was like, you know, that I think that was kind of what really um excuse me, solidified their influence on on hip-hop, really, because hip-hop was just kind of starting out in the mainstream at that point.
00:26:50.720 --> 00:27:02.240
Um, not necessarily like the real hip-hop acts, there were still manufactured hip-hop, but YMO really kind of solidified their place because yeah, it was like people dancing to it like they would dance to breakbeats, you know.
00:27:02.799 --> 00:27:11.119
So YMO continued making records, and then you know, they kind of broke up and then they reformed a few years a few times over the years.
00:27:11.359 --> 00:27:26.319
But Hosono continued making music, he made continued making sit-pop, he made ambient music, he made um you know boogie-woogie music, yeah, country music, blues music, you know, he dabbled in pretty much everything you can think of.
00:27:26.559 --> 00:27:37.279
Ryichi Sakamono went on to do film scores, most notably winning the Oscar for doing the score for The Last Emperor, along with David Byrne, and he also did Merry Christmas, Mr.
00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:49.920
Lawrence, which the theme of that film is probably the most right one of the most recognizable film score melodies of all time, and they still play it during the holidays in some commercials and things like that here and there.
00:27:50.079 --> 00:27:56.960
And Takahashi continued collaborating with them on and off and continued doing his own records as well.
00:27:57.119 --> 00:28:03.599
So they all had very fruitful and you know kept themselves very busy throughout their lives.
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:21.440
Um Sakamoto and Takahashi passed away a few years ago, but Osono's still around, and he's um he's actually been kind of embracing more of um of uh the sort of renewed interest in a lot of his older catalog, including YMO.
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:42.480
And he's done he he still does some YMO songs live occasionally whenever he does perform, but he's definitely I think embraced the younger crowd and younger audiences that have become interested in his music, and especially because during the lockdown, City Pop kind of had a resurgence uh because of TikTok.
00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:54.880
And again, even though YMO was not entirely exactly City Pop, they were still there while that was all happening and they were still part of the records being made, you know, as individuals.
00:28:55.200 --> 00:29:02.640
I feel like if I could pick one word for this group, it would be reinvention, you know.
00:29:02.799 --> 00:29:15.920
And I think like just Hosono going from the record we talked about last episode, which is very folk rock, to something that is so electronic and influential in both genres, both worlds.
00:29:16.319 --> 00:29:23.920
And I think, you know, just on a personal level, you know, I just am curious, like, have you ever felt the need to reinvent yourself musically like that?
00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:37.759
I think it I think it all felt like a natural progression, especially if you listen to all the albums, all of his albums, um, leading up to YMO, because um, I think it was probably by um there were two records.
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:56.880
I mean, because he did the um tropical trilogy, the exotica trilogy, excuse me, of Tropical Dandy, um Bon Voyage, and then the third one, Pariso, which was the first time he had worked with Takahashi and Sakamoto, because that was credited as Hurumi Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band.
00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:05.680
And that was where we started here synthesizers, but he also did was dabbling with synthesizers on another collaborative record before that called Cochin Moon.
00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:21.680
And so it was it was like, yeah, he was becoming curious about synthesizers because it was new technology at the time, and because Japan has always been seen as or at some point they were kind of regarded as being on the cutting edge of technology.
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:32.079
So I think it was just this natural curiosity of you know what can what we can use to make music that really led to the reinvention.
00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:37.200
So I don't know, I don't think it necessarily was uh reinvention for the sake of reinvention.
00:30:37.279 --> 00:30:42.400
I think it was more of just being curious about, you know, what is possible.
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:58.960
And Sakamoto was also, I think, in that it like he was he was the first one to kind of take that on with his first his first solo record specifically, you know, and that kind of I think naturally coalesced into the three of them getting together to do this YMO thing.
00:30:59.279 --> 00:31:07.279
One thing I've loved like in my career is is meeting different musicians and figuring out what is it that that moves them to create things.
00:31:07.519 --> 00:31:13.119
Like for me, I think it it was it's always you know trying to figure out a way to ex express emotion.
00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:18.079
And so I feel like I'm always drawn to storytelling and very lyric driven.
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:24.559
Um, but I'm I'm so interested in people like these artists who I think are driven by a curiosity of sound.
00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:27.839
Like, what if I can make this kind of sound or this is in my head?
00:31:27.920 --> 00:31:30.559
What what equipment do I use to make that?
00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:34.960
Um, because it's such a different way of approaching music, and it's it's just fascinating.
00:31:35.039 --> 00:31:38.480
In a lot of ways, it's what uh moves production forward.
00:31:38.799 --> 00:32:05.359
And I agree with that, and I think you know, you look at music from many different cultures, you will the more you listen and the more you kind of dig into it, the more you understand the different mindsets that exist within different cultures and sort of their not just their reasons for making music, but just you know, their approach and how they are attempting to achieve what they want to.
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:32.720
And that's why YMO kind of sticks out a little bit more, why they're sort of a little bit separated from the city pop, because city pop is is about like escapism, it's sort of this very futuristic um optimist type of uh idea, which never really quite existed, maybe in some form, in some ways, but you know it it it wasn't that was kind of what it is.
00:32:32.799 --> 00:32:43.839
It was there was a nostalgic element to it, and that's the one thing I think that YMO actually doesn't have that that City Pop does, is they they don't have like sort of that nostalgic factor.
00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:47.920
There's nothing nostalgic sounding about YMO's records.
00:32:48.079 --> 00:32:55.680
I think that's the big I think that's the big difference because YMO, you know, it sounds now, it sounds it sounds like the future.
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:58.079
I think musically it sounds a lot like that.
00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:01.519
Yeah, it either sounds modern or even futuristic.
00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:14.559
And and that's you know, because it's electronic and it also it also doesn't have a lot of the sort of jazzy um or jazz rock type of uh chord progressions and sounds that City Pop has.
00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:17.839
It was definitely more kind of pop music based.
00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:20.720
That's also a fundamental difference as well.
00:33:21.039 --> 00:33:25.119
I've been listening to a lot of city pop lately, so I've been it's top of mind.
00:33:25.359 --> 00:33:40.079
Yeah, yeah, and actually it's kind of helped uh me kind of figure out how that discerns from what YMO and and the and sort of their camp were uh creating at that same exact time.
00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:48.000
So I want to ask you about the cover, because the cover is one very Japanese, which I love.
00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:55.759
Um I love the colors in it, and they're the three band members, but then there are these two other characters.
00:33:55.920 --> 00:33:57.039
Are they mannequins?
00:33:57.200 --> 00:33:58.079
Like they look like dolls.
00:33:58.640 --> 00:33:59.519
They're mannequins.
00:33:59.680 --> 00:34:01.279
Okay, they're mannequins.
00:34:01.519 --> 00:34:06.880
Um on a side note, I do want to highlight as well.
00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:12.480
There is also another unsung hero of the uh Wine Mo camp.
00:34:12.639 --> 00:34:34.960
And um, she's not necessarily featured on this album, but she does participate with the band live, and that's uh Akiko Yano, who um would be married to Sakamoto uh not too long after this, but she's also an incredible artist in her own right, and she was one of the one of the touring keyboardists for YMO around the time that this album was made.
00:34:35.119 --> 00:34:38.000
If you haven't heard her records, definitely check them out.
00:34:38.079 --> 00:34:42.239
And like I said, you know, definitely check out the discography of all the members of YMO.
00:34:42.320 --> 00:34:58.800
There's it's such a rabbit hole, which is why, you know, when we went to Japan and I went to Tower Records, I pretty much scoured, you know, finding all the YMO records, as many Sakamoto records, uh Takahashi records, and yet they had no Asono.
00:34:59.199 --> 00:35:01.360
I had to I thought that was the white whale.
00:35:01.679 --> 00:35:09.920
That was the white whale, which we in fact, yeah, and um listen to our previous episode if you haven't already to uh hear that story.
00:35:12.639 --> 00:35:16.000
Well, you know, I'm gonna say something a little controversial.
00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:20.960
I personally am probably not a big electronic music person.
00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:29.039
I really am not either, but I kind of put this in more of the synth pop canon, uh which which I'm a huge fan of.
00:35:29.519 --> 00:35:31.280
Yeah, I was gonna say like synthpop.
00:35:31.760 --> 00:35:37.760
If someone's listening and they're not really into like EDM or electronica, like why would you still say, hey, give this one a shot?
00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:38.719
Give this record a shot.
00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:41.199
I mean, uh there's a there's there's two reasons for that.
00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:51.119
One of them is because, you know, I think it's important to I think now more than ever to embrace the music of other cultures.
00:35:51.760 --> 00:36:07.039
And if you're gonna look for a record that you feel like has some common ground with what you're already familiar with and what you've heard, this would be the record to start off with, you know, with Solid State Survivor by Yellow Magic Orchestra.
00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:08.800
I think it's definitely this album.
00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:15.199
There's definitely other incredible Japanese artists that have also made their splash.
00:36:15.440 --> 00:36:18.400
Hosono's discography, you know, it's so rich.
00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:24.079
Some of it's hard to come by, a lot of it's on YouTube, not on streaming, but a lot of that is great.
00:36:24.239 --> 00:36:31.519
And if you're into classical or film scores, Sakamoto's um Sakamoto's discography is great for that.
00:36:31.679 --> 00:36:36.000
Takahashi's done a lot of different things, so definitely get into him.
00:36:36.079 --> 00:36:36.960
Don't sleep on him.
00:36:37.119 --> 00:36:39.679
I have a few of his records I still need to get through.
00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:51.039
But this is kind of where everything just coalesced all at once into a really great and uh memorable, memorable piece of art.
00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:57.519
I really love what you said about you know not being, you know, being aware of other cultures' music.
00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:12.480
In our very first episode, we did Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen, and and we said multiple times in that episode, if I had to show anyone a record and you know, just to introduce them to American culture, this would be probably top on my list.
00:37:12.719 --> 00:37:25.199
And I really feel like if you feel that way about Japanese culture and understanding the kind of music that is there, because music again is always an example, it's always a reflection of the culture that's there.
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:28.880
Probably this record and the last record we talked to are some of the ones that I would share.
00:37:29.119 --> 00:37:35.760
Well, what I would also add, too, is that they are that, but they're also kind of subversion of that, too.
00:37:36.079 --> 00:37:51.760
Because, and I said this in the previous episode talking about Hosono's house, is that um a lot of Japanese culture in terms of art had kind of been lost or really kind of put to the side because of the effects of World War II.
00:37:52.079 --> 00:38:10.079
So people were trying to find their identity uh as Japanese artists because before Hosono's house, and really actually before Harumi Hosono's second group, Happy End, rock bands, Japanese rock bands would sing in English, you know, they would sing in English.
00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:21.519
Even I think uh Hosono's first band, April Fool, they would primarily sing in English, but then when Happy End came around, they're like, No, we're gonna sing in Japanese, because up to that point that was the argument.
00:38:21.679 --> 00:38:33.440
But then when once Happy End had some success, their second album is considered sort of the proto, the catalyst, actually, rather, of city pop, even though it was psychedelic rock or folk rock.
00:38:33.599 --> 00:38:49.199
But that was the album, those were the the Happy End was the band that kind of laid that argument to rest, and that was when all the Japanese musicians kind of came up and said, Oh, we can be ourselves, we can do this while also being influenced by Western music.
00:38:49.280 --> 00:39:22.559
You know, we try to find our identity, and that's really what's made Hosono's work, um, solo work really subversive in that way, is like there's that influence of the West, but it's also flirting with Japanese identity or that the exotica thing, you know, where it's really um subverting uh uh you know Pacific Islander identity, and he would go on to do that in various other projects, especially the album Pacifica that he did with uh uh one of the artists was on that was Tatsura Yamashida, who is the king of City Pop, you know.
00:39:22.719 --> 00:39:27.760
And so if you listen to that record, that's kind of the Proto uh City Pop record.
00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:37.199
So that's what that's one of the most interesting things, I think, when you're when we're looking at this record, because again, there's a Beatles cover on here, Day Tripper.
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:39.199
They were all huge Beatles, you know.
00:39:39.599 --> 00:39:44.880
So you're gonna find things familiar, but you're also gonna be having your expectations subverted, you know.
00:39:45.039 --> 00:39:55.440
It's you know, we we think of J-pop and K-pop these days, you know, with BTS and Pink Panther S and you know, Blackpink, all these groups, you know.
00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:58.960
Well, and and some of them were some of them are K-pop.
00:39:59.119 --> 00:40:13.360
There's also Korean City pop, which is a whole other thing, but even some of that is the same as simil has similarities to Japanese city pop, but it all really starts with this record Stall Estate Survivor and a lot of the Hosono stuff.
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:22.639
Well, and I think there's a lot of um there's a lot of probably American audiences who don't understand, you know, current modern Japanese artists.
00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:24.559
A lot of English speaking audiences.
00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:25.519
Yeah, exactly.
00:40:25.599 --> 00:40:34.320
And I I think, you know, I think one of the things that I love about Japanese culture is they have preserved their traditional music so well.
00:40:34.559 --> 00:41:08.719
So I think a lot of people have an understanding of what kind of traditional Japanese music sounds like, but to know what like the youth are creating today and what people who are um pushing music in that culture today, what they're trying to do, I think it's really I think it's really important to be up to date on that and to understand to understand it and to understand that it's not um it's not coming from just traditional Japanese music, it's coming from um a lot of different inspirations, including the West, including different things that they're experiencing in their own worlds.
00:41:08.800 --> 00:41:12.480
And I think I think that all that's really important, and you can hear that on these records.
00:41:12.800 --> 00:41:40.480
But that's actually kind of the reinvention that happened because um in it um you know, in those happy end days, because Hosono said himself it felt like there was like it's not that there wasn't traditional Japanese culture, it just felt like because World War II kind of you know created this uh separation of generations um in an obvious way.
00:41:41.360 --> 00:41:47.280
Uh that's why by the by the mid-late sixties they felt very disconnected from that.
00:41:47.440 --> 00:41:51.519
And I think there's been efforts to try to preserve that even more now than ever.
00:41:51.760 --> 00:41:59.280
But at that time, you know, people were still recovering, they were still like 10 to 15 years away from their own economic boom, too.
00:41:59.440 --> 00:41:59.599
Right.
00:41:59.920 --> 00:42:08.559
So they were so Japanese artists were looking for well, the only identity they felt like they could rely on was Western music.
00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:19.280
And until Happy End came around, then that's when it felt like we could create our own new identity as Japanese people to this popular music that was happening.
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:23.840
So that's a little bit about YMO's record.
00:42:24.079 --> 00:42:26.079
Yep, and Solid State Survivor.
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:35.119
And I hope, you know, I hope there are some people who have never heard of this record, and maybe it was really interesting to learn about something probably really different and from a different culture, even.
00:42:35.360 --> 00:42:40.239
Um, we always end our episodes with two of the same questions every time.
00:42:40.400 --> 00:42:51.920
Um and the first one, you know, really the only cre the only um prereq for the records we cover is that it is in some way influential to the culture.
00:42:52.480 --> 00:43:00.239
Um it can be from any genre, it can be from any time period, but for some reason we think that it has changed music history in some way.
00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:07.760
So that's my qu that's one of our questions that we always end on is why does Solid State Survivor matter to the culture?
00:43:08.079 --> 00:43:14.800
And uh I will say it again because reiterating it is very important, especially for an album like this, you know.
00:43:14.960 --> 00:43:28.239
It influenced synth pop, it influenced hip hop, it influenced video game music, and all the members of YMO have been influential in their own in their own unique ways, pre and post YMO.
00:43:28.880 --> 00:43:49.119
You know, and as far as Japanese music, this is you know, I mean, we we you go to Tower Records in really any Tower Records, but we're going to the one in Shibuya, and in the vinyl section of popular music, one uh YMO and its respective members take up an entire wall.
00:43:49.440 --> 00:43:49.599
Yeah.
00:43:49.760 --> 00:43:52.079
That that's which is unlike any other artist.
00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:53.199
That that is unique.
00:43:53.440 --> 00:43:55.599
That yeah, really it's YMO.
00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:03.840
Um, you also have some of the city pop guys like Yamashida and And um and and and art other artists like that for sure.
00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:08.239
Although I I mean I wasn't paying attention to City Pops, I was just focused on YMO at the time.
00:44:08.320 --> 00:44:11.440
So if I went back there and took a second glance, I'm sure I would find them too.
00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:15.039
YMO had its own corner, it was its own giant wall display.
00:44:15.199 --> 00:44:17.199
Like it was just different than the other groups for sure.
00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:31.920
It really was, you know, and and incidentally, um, they've actually began to reissue the YMO albums, or actually not even reissue, issue for the very first time the YMO albums in the States, some of them.
00:44:32.239 --> 00:44:54.559
So now you can find them as non-imports, which is really incredible, and I think a testament to, you know, this again, this renewed interest in City Pop, but just this renewed interest in what they're doing, especially again with Hosono, you know, kind of embracing young, you know, the his older work and its interests with young younger audiences.
00:44:54.800 --> 00:45:02.320
So that's why it's I consider this record and this group and its respective members immensely uh influential.
00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:07.920
And then the last question of our podcast episode is always why should someone take a chance?
00:45:08.079 --> 00:45:09.440
Why should they listen to the record?
00:45:09.679 --> 00:45:15.199
If they haven't listened to this record before, you know, why would they take some time out of their week this week to maybe check it out?
00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:20.960
I think, you know, I think in this record there is a little bit of something for everybody.
00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:30.000
And, you know, if anyone has ever been interested in Japanese music, this is a great, great, great starting point.
00:45:30.239 --> 00:45:40.800
And you know, that was the thing, is I I found out about this record only a few years ago, and it only took this album to really get down a rabbit hole of so many different albums.
00:45:41.280 --> 00:45:44.320
You are in a rabbit hole, I feel like, of this of these artists for the world.
00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:44.639
Oh, yeah.
00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:47.679
Yeah, of Japanese music at in that time period, you know.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:46:05.280
You'll hear familiar things, you'll hear the origins of a lot of what later became video music and influences in techno and hip hop, and you know, it's it's just it's such an enriching world of music, you know.
00:46:05.360 --> 00:46:21.280
And if you are really interested in enriching yourselves in a world outside of the terrible one we are all living in currently, some more than others, then I think this would be your very a very fun curiosity.
00:46:21.679 --> 00:46:30.559
Yeah, I would say for me, I would I would tell someone this this record will help stretch your mind as far as what is possible sonically.
00:46:30.800 --> 00:46:38.079
Um, I think it for me it just made me go, wow, I haven't thought about using that sound before, or wow, I haven't heard things put in that way before.
00:46:38.159 --> 00:46:42.159
I think that is a very uh cool thing for a record to do.
00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:50.880
And then also just culturally, like we said earlier, I think it's really important for people to hear music from different cultures and understand different cultural perspectives.
00:46:50.960 --> 00:46:56.559
I just think like overall this music will expand what you think is possible.
00:46:56.960 --> 00:47:00.000
And that's what I'm looking forward to in this podcast, too.
00:47:00.079 --> 00:47:24.159
There will be uh many moments um where we will be exploring records from other cultures, from other countries, you know, you know, and and just not not only how influential the record was for that culture itself, but how they have some have some have had some influence in Western music or in other cultures per se, you know.
00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:35.039
And there are of course artists that have made records, English speaking artists that have that have utilized the sounds of other cultures and countries in their own work, and we'll be talking about that too.
00:47:35.199 --> 00:47:38.159
And that's kind of the overall idea.
00:47:38.639 --> 00:47:48.559
You know, it's a pretty open uh open territory of where the music comes from that we will talk about on uh on this podcast.
00:47:48.880 --> 00:47:52.320
Thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of Home Records.
00:47:52.400 --> 00:47:55.440
We just want to say we've loved sharing this new adventure with you guys.
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:59.360
Thank you for showing your support, telling us what records you want us to cover.
00:47:59.519 --> 00:48:02.239
This has been a really fun new journey for us.
00:48:02.559 --> 00:48:10.400
Yes, and uh, if you like what you've been hearing, uh you could follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever podcasts are available.
00:48:10.559 --> 00:48:22.480
And if you also like to show your support even further, just please give us a five-star review on uh whatever platform you listen in, and just be sure to spread the word to all your friends and family and enemies.
00:48:22.800 --> 00:48:26.639
So thank you once again, and uh we'll see you in the next episode.
00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:27.519
Bye, guys.
00:48:27.840 --> 00:48:28.159
Bye.
00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:18.399
Hi, I'm Slice.
00:00:18.640 --> 00:00:19.359
And I'm Emily.
00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:31.600
And welcome to another episode of Home Records, the podcast where we, two married musicians, pick an album at random from our 2000 piece find a collection and discuss its personal and cultural importance.
00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:33.840
I'm excited about this one.
00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:37.280
Yes, so this is uh just getting right into it.
00:00:37.359 --> 00:00:47.920
This is kind of the part two from our uh previous episode where we discussed uh the artist, uh the Japanese artist Harumi Hosono and his album Hosono's House.
00:00:48.240 --> 00:01:05.920
Yeah, so why uh tell everyone why we wanted to do a part two of this of this So I f I think it's because there's another there's another group that Hosono was involved with, also another seminal record that I think is very important to talk about um in this historical context.
00:01:06.079 --> 00:01:26.959
You know, when in our last episode we talked about going to Japan, we visited, we went there for our honeymoon, and uh I did quite a bit of record shopping, and the record we're talking about today was actually one of the primary records I was looking for from Hirumi Hosono's uh other group that he formed called Yellow Magic Orchestra, or otherwise known as YMO.
00:01:27.200 --> 00:01:34.480
Which that, to be honest, I I did not really know a lot about Harumi Hosono at all, but I did know of YMO.
00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:41.120
I had heard of that, and so I feel like you know, if a lot of Americans are listening to this, they may have had some name recognition of that group.
00:01:41.359 --> 00:01:52.000
Yeah, they would have been more maybe more familiar, uh depending on what side of Japanese music you're coming from or what side of music in general, because YMO was a synthpop outfit.
00:01:52.239 --> 00:01:57.920
And um, I first actually heard about this album from uh YouTuber music critic Anthony Fantano.
00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:03.519
He talked about this record in a classic review, and so that's how I came across it.
00:02:03.760 --> 00:02:11.599
And um, yeah, it's one of those synthpop uh it's not even I wouldn't even say say it's like a synth pop gem, it's kind of more than that.
00:02:11.680 --> 00:02:17.039
You know, it's very it's considered a very influential album for a lot of different music genres.
00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:26.560
Which, like, just to reflect back on our part one, if you remember him as a solo artist, that record was very folk rock, almost like Hawaiian influenced.
00:02:27.199 --> 00:02:28.960
Well, it's very exotica influenced.
00:02:29.039 --> 00:02:29.199
Yes.
00:02:29.439 --> 00:02:40.319
And and that's uh the trajectory he continued for his next few solo records, including his second solo album called Tropical Dandy, which is one of my favorites, and then he released, you know, a couple other records like that.
00:02:40.479 --> 00:02:49.840
He sort of slowly delved into, you know, more synthesizer electronic music, you know, very influenced by crowd rock bands like Kraft Work.
00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:52.800
Yeah, and this is a totally different genre.
00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:58.400
This is all electronic music, which is a very interesting genre that I don't know a lot about.
00:02:58.479 --> 00:03:03.680
So I'm excited about this and excited to kind of keep diving deeper on an artist that we've talked about.
00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:06.400
Um which do you feel like is bigger?
00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:10.159
Do you feel like him as a solo artist is bigger or YMO is bigger?
00:03:10.479 --> 00:03:20.479
Um, it depends who you talk to because here's the thing um all the members of YMO are huge, they're all very well known and all very influential.
00:03:20.560 --> 00:03:32.560
It was kind of a super group because this is how YMO came to be is that all the members of YMO, they were all part of this collective of studio musicians in Japan called Tin Pan Alley.
00:03:32.639 --> 00:03:46.479
Rumi Hosono was primarily a bass player, and then you had uh the second member, Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was a keyboard player primarily, and then you had uh Yukihiro Takahashi, the third member of YMO, who was a drummer.
00:03:46.719 --> 00:03:54.879
So they all played on uh records for various uh Japanese artists, and then they also collaborated on each other's uh records.
00:03:55.039 --> 00:04:08.400
Ryuichi Sakamoto put out his first solo record before uh joining YMO, and I believe uh Hosono is on it, and Takahashi was involved in it in a in a little bit too, and that that's a great record as well.
00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:15.439
And uh you can hear what Takahashi also did an album, uh his first solo album, which was actually more French pop influenced.
00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:16.480
Oh, that's interesting.
00:04:16.720 --> 00:04:18.399
Yeah, it's also a really great record.
00:04:18.560 --> 00:04:36.079
They all and so they were all pre-established by the time that uh they came together, and Hosono was kind of the uh driving force in the sense of like he got everybody together, said, Hey, we want to do the synth pop electronic music thing, you know, and everyone was into the idea.
00:04:36.319 --> 00:05:15.439
And so um, you know, they they uh made their first album, which was uh self-titled, and it had a song on it called Firecracker, which was actually a cover of uh by an artist named Martin Denny, who was an exotica uh performer back in the early 60s, and um and which was so who Osono was obsessed with at the time, and so they did an electronic version of that song, and it ended up becoming uh kind of a hit in the States, actually, and it was sampled by hip-hop artists and hip-hop DJs used it for break beats, and you know, is using a lot of utilizing a lot of breakdancing culture.
00:05:15.759 --> 00:05:28.319
So that's how that was kind of the first bug of YMO really coming to prominence, but really it's this album that we're talking about, Solid State Survivor, that really became uh as a whole, like their most influential album.
00:05:28.480 --> 00:05:35.920
And for many, again, for many different music genres and fields, which uh you'll be hearing us talk about today.
00:05:36.160 --> 00:05:49.680
And so, one of the things before we dive really deep into that album, one thing I love about this podcast is as you know, we're not only podcast hosts, but we're also individual musicians uh ourselves, and we're also married.
00:05:49.839 --> 00:05:58.800
So the really fun thing about this record, some of our records have really fun stories as to how uh Slice got them or certain things about them.
00:05:58.879 --> 00:06:05.360
And this one to me is my favorite story about how you got a record because I happened to be there because it was on our honeymoon.
00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:14.000
Well, when we were planning going to Japan, one of the uh one of the things I was planning on doing was visiting Tower Records in Shibuya, which is in Tokyo.
00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:18.959
And because I, you know, I knew YMO was very well regarded in Japan.
00:06:19.279 --> 00:06:27.839
So um, you know, the second or third day we were in Tokyo, we went to visit Tower Records, and I pretty much bought nearly every YMO record.
00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:31.759
They had all of them, including this one, Solid State Survivor.
00:06:31.920 --> 00:06:36.720
And uh they also had some Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuchi Sakamoto solo records.
00:06:36.879 --> 00:06:39.360
Didn't really find much Hosono stuff, too.
00:06:39.439 --> 00:06:42.319
Some of his stuff is really hard to come by for some reason.
00:06:42.639 --> 00:06:44.480
Well, let's dive into this record.
00:06:44.720 --> 00:06:53.040
Um, so for me, this record is unlike anything I've ever heard, and maybe that's because this is probably one of the first electronic albums I've personally listened to.
00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:56.720
Um, but it's also interesting because it's kind of half instrumental.
00:06:56.879 --> 00:07:00.800
They do a few covers of some English songs, so a little bit of his of it is in English.
00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:03.199
The original songs have the English lyrics on them.
00:07:04.399 --> 00:07:15.199
And so, you know, explain to people like me and maybe someone listening who isn't really familiar with electronic music why this was such an influential record and such a big leap in that genre.
00:07:15.519 --> 00:07:24.319
I mean, you kind of have to hear it to kind of uh understand it, but at least the best I could put into words is you know, you listen to this record.
00:07:24.399 --> 00:07:28.160
This came this was made and came out in 78, 79.
00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:35.600
So synthpop was just starting to, you know, become a force in popular music.
00:07:35.759 --> 00:07:58.879
You had, you know, like it's mentioned before, you had craft work, you had um some pioneering artists like Gary Newman, um, artists that were coming out of the post-punk scene, like Joy Division, and bands that were utilizing, you know, um electronics in their um, you know, in their sound, in their pop songs.
00:07:59.199 --> 00:08:08.079
And um and and YMO were were kind of leading that charge, but sort of coming from a from a very different place.
00:08:08.800 --> 00:09:05.120
And their their songs, I think some people would call it techno, or they would they uh or what hip artists would think about techno would come from this record, you know, but they also were you know trying to create pop songs in an inventive new way, and one of the things I always say too with this record is that it was influenced, like their last record, on video game music, but in a lot of ways they influenced a lot of later video game music in the 80s, you know, and to that point, um, you know, there was a big movement starting to happen around that time period called City Pop in Japan, and that was where you had these artists that were making these very like very slick, very smooth, sort of yacht-rockish, jazzy rock type of music.
00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:21.759
And YMO wasn't entirely city pop, but the sounds they were using were used in a lot of city pop records, and like I said, they were all kind of collaborating with each other and they all collaborated, played on art on records from those city pop artists, too.
00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:36.159
So everything was very so yeah, everything was sort of you know kind of happening at once, but I think it was this record that really solidified YMO in terms of their sound, in terms of their influence.
00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:48.480
You know, they made a few other records later on that kind of went into more pop ish territory, not so much city pop, but more like synth pop, even more so than this than this record.
00:09:48.799 --> 00:09:51.120
You know, music always reflects the culture.
00:09:51.279 --> 00:09:52.240
It just it just does.
00:09:52.320 --> 00:09:59.039
That's one thing that I love about it is it if you can always learn more about the culture of a place by listening to the music that comes out of there.
00:09:59.200 --> 00:10:03.440
And in Japan, you know, there's the arcade district if you ever get a chance to visit.
00:10:03.679 --> 00:10:19.360
And literally every section of that area in Tokyo is filled with arcades, it's filled with anime, it's filled with Pokemon, it's filled with all these things, and you can so like you can understand why music like this that sounds like video games.
00:10:19.440 --> 00:10:26.240
It just reminds us so much of that electronic, fast-paced kind of feel would come out of a place like that.
00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:27.840
It just makes a lot of sense to me.
00:10:29.759 --> 00:10:41.200
One thing that is always interested to me, you know, I'm someone that's in I I make country, I make Americana music, and so the kind of the focus in those genres is live instruments when you're recording.
00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:52.480
And so one thing that I think is interesting is obviously in electronic music, you're using drum loops, you're losing synthesizers, you're losing, you're using, you know, all of these electronic things that are not real people.
00:10:52.639 --> 00:10:56.799
I'm curious from a recording standpoint how that changes the creative process.
00:10:57.120 --> 00:11:01.039
Well, the but the here's the thing this is early electronic music, so they didn't do any of that.
00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:02.960
Oh, that oh, I want to know more about that.
00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:03.759
That's cool.
00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:07.039
Yeah, there were no sequencers really at that point.
00:11:07.200 --> 00:11:10.159
There were no sequencers, everything had to be playing real time.
00:11:10.320 --> 00:11:20.960
Like I said, Akahashi was a drummer, so he played real drums, and they had invented an inversion of this thing that Kraftwerk invented, which were like these kind of drums that you played with.
00:11:21.039 --> 00:11:27.200
It was like an electronic drum that you lit that you physically played, and that's what created that sort of electronic sound.
00:11:27.519 --> 00:11:40.960
And to to kind of further explain it, um YMO, when they would go out to play live, there's a great um concert film they did um that's on YouTube from the Greek Theater in LA.
00:11:41.519 --> 00:12:19.759
And the thing was when they played live, you know, they they there was actually kind of a fourth um sort of unsung hero of of YMO, and his job was to because they were still using old modular Moge synthesizers, they were still using the type of synthesizers that you had to literally switch inputs and output cables to get a specific sound for a specific part of the song, and so they needed somebody to to work that in real time, so while they were while they were playing the keyboards.
00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:33.440
So, and um I'll tell you real quick, yeah, and that person was named Hideki Matsutake, um, who was pro uh who is uh on this record credited as microcomposer programming.
00:12:33.759 --> 00:12:40.480
So he was literally moving cables around so that everyone could play the sounds that they needed to in real time.
00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:45.360
That's fascinating because I would imagine if you're making electronic music today, it is not like that.
00:12:45.759 --> 00:12:49.840
Not necessarily, you know, everything can be sequenced and programmed pretty quickly.
00:12:49.919 --> 00:12:54.240
You can copy and paste things pretty pretty quickly, you know, but there was none of that.
00:12:54.320 --> 00:12:55.360
Everything was still analog.
00:12:55.519 --> 00:12:56.320
There was no digital.
00:12:56.480 --> 00:13:00.000
Like, like we still didn't have digital recording by that point, you know?
00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:02.159
So they I think this is fascinating.
00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:16.399
If you're listening and you you've never been in a recording studio, like even what I do, which is a lot more live, it's not electronic at all, we'll even take things and like copy and paste vocal sections, like a real voice in different spots if needed.
00:13:16.559 --> 00:13:26.480
So like the idea that something that sounds so electronic, that's so video game based, is all done live essentially, and that's a performance that's captured.
00:13:26.559 --> 00:13:33.279
That's a really, really interesting thought if you've seen that process of kind of being able to loop drums and things like that.
00:13:33.519 --> 00:13:35.360
I mean, looping really wasn't a thing.
00:13:35.519 --> 00:13:39.919
I mean, you had sequencers in some ways, but you couldn't loop sequencers.
00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:53.679
You had to play, you had to, if you had something that had an arpigiator on it, the because that's what what really existed before sequencers was arpigiators, you still had to play that for as long as the recording lasted.
00:13:53.919 --> 00:13:58.879
You know, you couldn't just hit but hit a button and and let it be automatic.
00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:09.759
I mean, some for some ARPs you could do it because that's what's well they are ARPs, but you still had to like record them to tape in real time with everything else going on.
00:14:09.919 --> 00:14:10.159
Yeah.
00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:14.960
You know, you again we didn't have you know digital interfaces or anything like that.
00:14:15.039 --> 00:14:16.480
Everything was still analog.
00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:17.120
Yeah.
00:14:17.360 --> 00:14:26.240
So and because you know, this band, you know, they're very perfectionist about you know their compositions and the way things sounded, you know.
00:14:26.320 --> 00:14:37.519
So it took I say it took some time to make this record, but really they just worked all hours of the day, I think, on this album, you know, and that's why it came out so so perfect, pretty much, you know.
00:14:37.679 --> 00:14:38.559
Um I love it.
00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:41.919
I okay, I want to know specifically about the songs.
00:14:42.080 --> 00:14:44.399
Do you have a favorite on the record?
00:14:44.720 --> 00:14:50.639
Um, I think well, uh the funny thing for me is that I think my favorites are actually the usual suspects for this record.
00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:55.440
So that is unusual that you're picking the usual the usual hits.
00:14:55.679 --> 00:15:10.159
Well, I think in some regards, these are also the most influential ones, though, or the ones that have, you know, kind of made the the most uh the most impact, um, being the third track, Rydeen, which uh which was actually the first Hawaiimo song I ever heard.
00:15:10.240 --> 00:15:13.679
And because when I heard it, I'm like, this is Sonic the Hedgehog.
00:15:13.759 --> 00:15:15.840
You know, it is literally Sonic the Hedgehog.
00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:16.639
It really is.
00:15:16.879 --> 00:15:21.919
Well, and that's so we never talk about what our favorite tracks are before we start recording.
00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:24.480
And I wrote down my favorite track was number three, right now.
00:15:24.639 --> 00:15:24.960
Yeah, yeah.
00:15:25.120 --> 00:15:34.639
Yeah, it is such a memorable melody, you know, and it it uses all those synthesizers that are like, yeah, that pretty much is the sound of video games for like the next 10 years, you know.
00:15:34.879 --> 00:15:42.799
Yeah, and it has like this interesting, like I put I put down, it has like this interesting, like swooshing sound that I just hadn't ever quite heard before.
00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:55.279
And I think once when music is purely instrumental or electronic like this, I feel like that's the part that makes me go, huh, that's really really interesting, is if it's a sound that I qu I haven't quite heard yet.
00:15:55.600 --> 00:16:15.360
And that's I think something that gets like I'm not as hip to a lot of modern EDM, but I just kind of feel, and this is maybe from my own ignorant opinion, is that you know, I feel like melody gets kind of uh waylaid a bit in modern EDM, you know.
00:16:15.519 --> 00:16:26.480
Yeah, I don't I mean there's some electronic music artists that I heard that like that kept pretty intact, but it's something kind I kind of miss, which is probably why I don't gravitate towards it as much.
00:16:26.639 --> 00:16:33.519
It's like it's nice to hear a dance beat and a track, but it's like I need some sort of melody to kind of latch on to.
00:16:33.759 --> 00:16:35.360
And this has that motif.
00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:38.320
It has that, yeah, in all the songs, in all the songs, pretty much.
00:16:38.480 --> 00:16:45.039
Which is such a funny word to use because motif is a very classical word that they use to talk about a melody that repeats over and over again.
00:16:45.200 --> 00:16:47.039
It's kind of like the way we think of hooks and pop music.
00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:47.679
Well, that's the thing.
00:16:48.000 --> 00:16:48.960
But that's exactly what this is.
00:16:49.200 --> 00:16:54.399
Well, you because uh because Ryuchi Sakamoto was was kind of raised up on classical.
00:16:54.480 --> 00:17:00.240
I think out of all the three, he's probably the most like classical based uh composer, you know.
00:17:01.039 --> 00:17:04.640
So he probably would have thought about that in terms of kind of creating these songs.
00:17:04.880 --> 00:17:12.720
Yeah, he was definitely the most composition-based uh songwriter of the group, I would say.
00:17:13.359 --> 00:17:18.400
Um although ironically, this one song was written by Yukihiro Takahashi.
00:17:18.480 --> 00:17:24.480
He actually wrote this, and he but he's also very like, I think, kind of kind of the best of both words.
00:17:24.559 --> 00:17:28.160
He's kind of the middle ground between pop song and composition, you know.
00:17:28.640 --> 00:17:33.519
And that's the thing, because they all have that composer sensibility.
00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:42.000
I think Osono comes the most from the pop world because he was in, you know, the rock bands and he grew up on the Beatles, you know, and things like that.
00:17:42.079 --> 00:17:44.720
So And this record is only eight songs long.
00:17:44.799 --> 00:17:48.799
It's a f it's four four songs on the first side, four songs on the second side.
00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:53.759
Like it's pretty, pretty short in terms of albums in today's standards for sure.
00:17:54.079 --> 00:17:58.079
Well, it took a long time to make, uh, like I was kind of alluding to before.
00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:03.759
So it's like uh if we could get it in an album is worth, you know, then we would have uh done our bit, you know.
00:18:04.000 --> 00:18:08.480
And the other thing that's really interesting is there are covers of American rock tunes.
00:18:08.559 --> 00:18:10.720
There's Day Tripper on this.
00:18:11.039 --> 00:18:12.400
And actually, that's the only one.
00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:15.759
That's the only American song on the actually not American, it's British.
00:18:15.839 --> 00:18:17.519
But it is behind the mask, though.
00:18:17.680 --> 00:18:19.519
Okay, so that's another cover, isn't it?
00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:19.920
Nope.
00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:27.440
So Behind the Mask, um, it's funny because um I teach songwriting or I teach music um as my day job.
00:18:27.680 --> 00:18:38.319
And um when we talk about production, we talk about uh demos and we talk about a little bit of electronic music and we talk about synthesizers, and I always bring up YMO.
00:18:38.400 --> 00:18:42.640
It's not in the curriculum, but I do it because you know it's the Lord's work, but I digress.
00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:47.759
So I mean if you're gonna talk synthesizers from everything I've heard, they know they're synthesizers.
00:18:48.000 --> 00:18:49.119
Yeah, exactly.
00:18:49.279 --> 00:19:02.559
But I always I always come up to Behind the Mask when I'm talking about this, and I always leave off and saying, Yeah, Matt Behind the Mask has probably the most interesting shelf life of any song that any of of almost any song, really.
00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:19.839
So Behind the Mask, you know, on the record uh by YMO on Solid State Survivor, it's sung by uh Sakamoto through a vocoder, you know, and singing words in English, because there was a um the I think the lyricist is uh an American guy, Chris Mistell.
00:19:20.319 --> 00:19:22.960
So I think I think that's why I thought it was a cover.
00:19:23.200 --> 00:19:24.640
So that's the original version.
00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:25.200
Okay.
00:19:25.519 --> 00:19:45.119
Um so a few years later, this song actually um came across I I don't know exactly who it came across um that led to this, but it was actually um supposed to be recorded for by Michael Jackson for the album Thriller.
00:19:45.519 --> 00:19:46.799
Oh, that's fascinating.
00:19:47.039 --> 00:19:47.839
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:48.559
Oh, interesting.
00:19:48.799 --> 00:19:52.240
Yeah, so so Michael did record a demo.
00:19:52.319 --> 00:19:59.680
Uh he rewrote the lyrics, uh, some of the lyrics, um, just to kind of I think match his vibe a bit more.
00:19:59.839 --> 00:20:01.599
And they were and they recorded a demo.
00:20:01.759 --> 00:20:16.799
The engineer, I think, basically he just took the original YMO track and just had um Michael singing over it, which it's mostly instrumental anyway, and you could have easily, you know, uh quite you know turned down that vocoder vocal.
00:20:17.039 --> 00:20:27.200
But um it didn't end up on thriller because uh there was some issue with the songwriting royalty distributions with Sakamoto because he wrote the music for it.
00:20:27.519 --> 00:20:36.000
So because of that, I think they just um you know they couldn't they couldn't uh come to an agreement for whatever reason at that time.
00:20:36.319 --> 00:20:37.039
That's interesting.
00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:40.079
So it was inevitably left off the album.
00:20:40.400 --> 00:21:00.400
Now the song you can actually find the demo of the song on one of the deluxe editions of Thriller, but they also did um do a uh fully produced version that ended up on the post-humous album Michael uh in 2010 that came out like a couple years after he had passed away.
00:21:00.559 --> 00:21:04.799
So you can hear a fully produced version of Behind the Mask by Michael Jackson.
00:21:04.960 --> 00:21:12.400
Um can you imagine like having your song taken off the thriller record because they couldn't figure out how to pay you?
00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:14.480
Essentially, like that's what you're saying.
00:21:14.640 --> 00:21:24.160
I can't, I would be kicking myself for the rest of my life because Thriller is the top-selling album of all time, or at least it was non non-compilation, it is.
00:21:24.400 --> 00:21:25.440
Non-compilation.
00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:27.119
I mean, oh my gosh.
00:21:27.279 --> 00:21:30.640
I mean, that paycheck would have been crazy.
00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:44.880
The funny thing is, to be fair, I mean, if you listen to even the demo, even if you listen to the uh completed posthumous production, it would I think, in my opinion, I think it would have been a bit out of place on Thriller compared to everything.
00:21:45.119 --> 00:21:46.400
Maybe it was meant to be anyway.
00:21:46.559 --> 00:21:59.839
Yeah, like I mean, he is definitely he was like, Oh yeah, I want to record it, I rewrote these lyrics, you know, but it would have definitely fell out of place, I think, compared to you know the other like Quincy Jones joints and things like that, and Rodman Temperton joints.
00:22:00.880 --> 00:22:15.839
But if that doesn't like help people understand how influential this record is, the fact that there was a song from it that was almost added to the thriller record, I feel like that is a great as someone who doesn't know a lot about it, to me that's that says a lot.
00:22:16.160 --> 00:22:18.240
Well, yeah, but the story doesn't even end there.
00:22:18.480 --> 00:22:38.240
Um so it was left off Thriller, and one of the studio musicians that played on Thriller, worked on Thriller with Michael was a guy named Greg Filling Gaines, who has also worked with Stevie Wonder, and after his stint with Michael, uh went on to work with Eric Clapton.
00:22:38.960 --> 00:22:54.880
I think, in my opinion, well, I don't know this for sure, but I like to believe that Greg told Eric, like, yeah, I was working on Thriller, and uh, you know, we had this song, we didn't end up cutting it, or we didn't end up finishing it.
00:22:55.039 --> 00:22:57.039
Maybe you could do something with it.
00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:09.200
So Eric Clapton actually recorded a version of Behind the Mask with Michael's lyrics, and it ended up on a terrible album called August from the mid-80s.
00:23:09.359 --> 00:23:14.559
And when I mean terrible, I mean the cover his cover Behind the Mask is probably the best track on that album.
00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:18.720
That's you know, and the track is pretty good, but everything else is pretty terrible on that album.
00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:21.599
And I bought that album like a few months ago.
00:23:22.480 --> 00:23:23.680
Just for Behind the Mask.
00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:24.720
But we own it.
00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:25.440
Yeah.
00:23:25.759 --> 00:23:32.240
But we will not be talking about that album because the only thing worth talking about on that album is Behind the Mask.
00:23:32.799 --> 00:23:41.519
But yeah, Clapton's version is like I mean, it's basically Michael's version without the RB programming and things like that.
00:23:41.759 --> 00:23:47.839
Um, it definitely sounds a little off-putting hearing Clapton sing what Michael would have sung.
00:23:48.079 --> 00:23:49.839
Yeah, those are definitely not the same voices.
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:50.480
No, they're not.
00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:51.119
They're very, very much.
00:23:51.519 --> 00:23:51.920
No, they're not.
00:23:52.160 --> 00:23:56.480
Yeah, so that's the very strange and interesting shelf life of behind the mask.
00:23:56.640 --> 00:23:57.599
You know, yeah.
00:23:57.839 --> 00:23:58.799
Oh, fascinating.
00:23:58.880 --> 00:24:01.039
I mean, this this whole record is really fascinating.
00:24:01.279 --> 00:24:02.799
The whole group is fascinating.
00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:11.680
I mean I mean they're all they're all incredible virtuosos, um not just instrumentally, but just compositionally, you know.
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:17.200
And um, I mean, this is like the record that kind of really put them on the map.
00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:31.200
And one thing I will add because I like to, you know, we're talking about this record, but uh we're also I also want to talk about sort of the history of YMO a little a bit, you know, and its members, you know, we've alluded to it a little bit in the last episode.
00:24:31.279 --> 00:24:41.119
We're talking about Hosono's career, and he went on to do a lot of other different things later on, but um the record they made after this was actually uh a mini album.
00:24:41.279 --> 00:25:00.640
It's a title with a symbol, so uh, you know, and it w like I said, it was a mini album, but it was this weird album that had like this, like these jack Japanese comedy bits in between songs, and yeah, it's called Infinity Multiplies, which sounds like a math formula, anyways.
00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:21.759
So, but one of the most notable tracks from that album, that mini album, was a cover of Tighten Up by Archie Bell and the Drells, uh from like the from the sixties, you know, as a soul cover, and it was because of that cover that they became the first and I think only Japanese act to perform on Soul Train.
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:24.720
Now make sure everyone knows what Soul Train is.
00:25:24.799 --> 00:25:26.000
Everyone knows what Soul Train is.
00:25:26.160 --> 00:25:34.480
But if you don't, if you live under a rock like my wife, um I know what Soul Train is now because I married you.
00:25:34.799 --> 00:25:35.920
My point stands.
00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:47.920
Um but yes, the uh the pinnacle of soul music on television, soul artists perform and for and and audiences dance to soul music.
00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:59.119
There have only ever been, I think, kind of before that, two uh non-African American artists on there, and that was Average White Band, the Scottish Funk Group, and David Bowie.
00:25:59.359 --> 00:25:59.519
Yeah.
00:25:59.680 --> 00:26:00.160
They both perform.
00:26:00.400 --> 00:26:02.559
Oh no, I'm that's uh there's actually three.
00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:07.119
Also, um Elton John performing Benny and the Jets, because that was a number one RB record.
00:26:07.279 --> 00:26:11.680
And Soul Train had the potential to break an artist, it just introduced it to so many people.
00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:14.559
The same way our our talk show performances do now.
00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:17.680
Like if you perform on SNL, it would be the equivalent of doing that.
00:26:18.079 --> 00:26:18.960
Pretty much, you know.
00:26:19.200 --> 00:26:27.279
The funny thing about Soul Train, although it is like it's it was kind of like American Bandstand where you kind of lip sync to your track things like that.
00:26:27.440 --> 00:26:50.559
It there were some exceptions, but uh YMO were slightly uh slated to perform on there, and they performed Tighten Up and Firecracker, and that was like, you know, that I think that was kind of what really um excuse me, solidified their influence on on hip-hop, really, because hip-hop was just kind of starting out in the mainstream at that point.
00:26:50.720 --> 00:27:02.240
Um, not necessarily like the real hip-hop acts, there were still manufactured hip-hop, but YMO really kind of solidified their place because yeah, it was like people dancing to it like they would dance to breakbeats, you know.
00:27:02.799 --> 00:27:11.119
So YMO continued making records, and then you know, they kind of broke up and then they reformed a few years a few times over the years.
00:27:11.359 --> 00:27:26.319
But Hosono continued making music, he made continued making sit-pop, he made ambient music, he made um you know boogie-woogie music, yeah, country music, blues music, you know, he dabbled in pretty much everything you can think of.
00:27:26.559 --> 00:27:37.279
Ryichi Sakamono went on to do film scores, most notably winning the Oscar for doing the score for The Last Emperor, along with David Byrne, and he also did Merry Christmas, Mr.
00:27:37.359 --> 00:27:49.920
Lawrence, which the theme of that film is probably the most right one of the most recognizable film score melodies of all time, and they still play it during the holidays in some commercials and things like that here and there.
00:27:50.079 --> 00:27:56.960
And Takahashi continued collaborating with them on and off and continued doing his own records as well.
00:27:57.119 --> 00:28:03.599
So they all had very fruitful and you know kept themselves very busy throughout their lives.
00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:21.440
Um Sakamoto and Takahashi passed away a few years ago, but Osono's still around, and he's um he's actually been kind of embracing more of um of uh the sort of renewed interest in a lot of his older catalog, including YMO.
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:42.480
And he's done he he still does some YMO songs live occasionally whenever he does perform, but he's definitely I think embraced the younger crowd and younger audiences that have become interested in his music, and especially because during the lockdown, City Pop kind of had a resurgence uh because of TikTok.
00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:54.880
And again, even though YMO was not entirely exactly City Pop, they were still there while that was all happening and they were still part of the records being made, you know, as individuals.
00:28:55.200 --> 00:29:02.640
I feel like if I could pick one word for this group, it would be reinvention, you know.
00:29:02.799 --> 00:29:15.920
And I think like just Hosono going from the record we talked about last episode, which is very folk rock, to something that is so electronic and influential in both genres, both worlds.
00:29:16.319 --> 00:29:23.920
And I think, you know, just on a personal level, you know, I just am curious, like, have you ever felt the need to reinvent yourself musically like that?
00:29:24.240 --> 00:29:37.759
I think it I think it all felt like a natural progression, especially if you listen to all the albums, all of his albums, um, leading up to YMO, because um, I think it was probably by um there were two records.
00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:56.880
I mean, because he did the um tropical trilogy, the exotica trilogy, excuse me, of Tropical Dandy, um Bon Voyage, and then the third one, Pariso, which was the first time he had worked with Takahashi and Sakamoto, because that was credited as Hurumi Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band.
00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:05.680
And that was where we started here synthesizers, but he also did was dabbling with synthesizers on another collaborative record before that called Cochin Moon.
00:30:06.079 --> 00:30:21.680
And so it was it was like, yeah, he was becoming curious about synthesizers because it was new technology at the time, and because Japan has always been seen as or at some point they were kind of regarded as being on the cutting edge of technology.
00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:32.079
So I think it was just this natural curiosity of you know what can what we can use to make music that really led to the reinvention.
00:30:32.240 --> 00:30:37.200
So I don't know, I don't think it necessarily was uh reinvention for the sake of reinvention.
00:30:37.279 --> 00:30:42.400
I think it was more of just being curious about, you know, what is possible.
00:30:42.480 --> 00:30:58.960
And Sakamoto was also, I think, in that it like he was he was the first one to kind of take that on with his first his first solo record specifically, you know, and that kind of I think naturally coalesced into the three of them getting together to do this YMO thing.
00:30:59.279 --> 00:31:07.279
One thing I've loved like in my career is is meeting different musicians and figuring out what is it that that moves them to create things.
00:31:07.519 --> 00:31:13.119
Like for me, I think it it was it's always you know trying to figure out a way to ex express emotion.
00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:18.079
And so I feel like I'm always drawn to storytelling and very lyric driven.
00:31:18.240 --> 00:31:24.559
Um, but I'm I'm so interested in people like these artists who I think are driven by a curiosity of sound.
00:31:24.799 --> 00:31:27.839
Like, what if I can make this kind of sound or this is in my head?
00:31:27.920 --> 00:31:30.559
What what equipment do I use to make that?
00:31:30.720 --> 00:31:34.960
Um, because it's such a different way of approaching music, and it's it's just fascinating.
00:31:35.039 --> 00:31:38.480
In a lot of ways, it's what uh moves production forward.
00:31:38.799 --> 00:32:05.359
And I agree with that, and I think you know, you look at music from many different cultures, you will the more you listen and the more you kind of dig into it, the more you understand the different mindsets that exist within different cultures and sort of their not just their reasons for making music, but just you know, their approach and how they are attempting to achieve what they want to.
00:32:05.599 --> 00:32:32.720
And that's why YMO kind of sticks out a little bit more, why they're sort of a little bit separated from the city pop, because city pop is is about like escapism, it's sort of this very futuristic um optimist type of uh idea, which never really quite existed, maybe in some form, in some ways, but you know it it it wasn't that was kind of what it is.
00:32:32.799 --> 00:32:43.839
It was there was a nostalgic element to it, and that's the one thing I think that YMO actually doesn't have that that City Pop does, is they they don't have like sort of that nostalgic factor.
00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:47.920
There's nothing nostalgic sounding about YMO's records.
00:32:48.079 --> 00:32:55.680
I think that's the big I think that's the big difference because YMO, you know, it sounds now, it sounds it sounds like the future.
00:32:55.759 --> 00:32:58.079
I think musically it sounds a lot like that.
00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:01.519
Yeah, it either sounds modern or even futuristic.
00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:14.559
And and that's you know, because it's electronic and it also it also doesn't have a lot of the sort of jazzy um or jazz rock type of uh chord progressions and sounds that City Pop has.
00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:17.839
It was definitely more kind of pop music based.
00:33:18.000 --> 00:33:20.720
That's also a fundamental difference as well.
00:33:21.039 --> 00:33:25.119
I've been listening to a lot of city pop lately, so I've been it's top of mind.
00:33:25.359 --> 00:33:40.079
Yeah, yeah, and actually it's kind of helped uh me kind of figure out how that discerns from what YMO and and the and sort of their camp were uh creating at that same exact time.
00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:48.000
So I want to ask you about the cover, because the cover is one very Japanese, which I love.
00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:55.759
Um I love the colors in it, and they're the three band members, but then there are these two other characters.
00:33:55.920 --> 00:33:57.039
Are they mannequins?
00:33:57.200 --> 00:33:58.079
Like they look like dolls.
00:33:58.640 --> 00:33:59.519
They're mannequins.
00:33:59.680 --> 00:34:01.279
Okay, they're mannequins.
00:34:01.519 --> 00:34:06.880
Um on a side note, I do want to highlight as well.
00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:12.480
There is also another unsung hero of the uh Wine Mo camp.
00:34:12.639 --> 00:34:34.960
And um, she's not necessarily featured on this album, but she does participate with the band live, and that's uh Akiko Yano, who um would be married to Sakamoto uh not too long after this, but she's also an incredible artist in her own right, and she was one of the one of the touring keyboardists for YMO around the time that this album was made.
00:34:35.119 --> 00:34:38.000
If you haven't heard her records, definitely check them out.
00:34:38.079 --> 00:34:42.239
And like I said, you know, definitely check out the discography of all the members of YMO.
00:34:42.320 --> 00:34:58.800
There's it's such a rabbit hole, which is why, you know, when we went to Japan and I went to Tower Records, I pretty much scoured, you know, finding all the YMO records, as many Sakamoto records, uh Takahashi records, and yet they had no Asono.
00:34:59.199 --> 00:35:01.360
I had to I thought that was the white whale.
00:35:01.679 --> 00:35:09.920
That was the white whale, which we in fact, yeah, and um listen to our previous episode if you haven't already to uh hear that story.
00:35:12.639 --> 00:35:16.000
Well, you know, I'm gonna say something a little controversial.
00:35:16.800 --> 00:35:20.960
I personally am probably not a big electronic music person.
00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:29.039
I really am not either, but I kind of put this in more of the synth pop canon, uh which which I'm a huge fan of.
00:35:29.519 --> 00:35:31.280
Yeah, I was gonna say like synthpop.
00:35:31.760 --> 00:35:37.760
If someone's listening and they're not really into like EDM or electronica, like why would you still say, hey, give this one a shot?
00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:38.719
Give this record a shot.
00:35:38.960 --> 00:35:41.199
I mean, uh there's a there's there's two reasons for that.
00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:51.119
One of them is because, you know, I think it's important to I think now more than ever to embrace the music of other cultures.
00:35:51.760 --> 00:36:07.039
And if you're gonna look for a record that you feel like has some common ground with what you're already familiar with and what you've heard, this would be the record to start off with, you know, with Solid State Survivor by Yellow Magic Orchestra.
00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:08.800
I think it's definitely this album.
00:36:08.960 --> 00:36:15.199
There's definitely other incredible Japanese artists that have also made their splash.
00:36:15.440 --> 00:36:18.400
Hosono's discography, you know, it's so rich.
00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:24.079
Some of it's hard to come by, a lot of it's on YouTube, not on streaming, but a lot of that is great.
00:36:24.239 --> 00:36:31.519
And if you're into classical or film scores, Sakamoto's um Sakamoto's discography is great for that.
00:36:31.679 --> 00:36:36.000
Takahashi's done a lot of different things, so definitely get into him.
00:36:36.079 --> 00:36:36.960
Don't sleep on him.
00:36:37.119 --> 00:36:39.679
I have a few of his records I still need to get through.
00:36:39.920 --> 00:36:51.039
But this is kind of where everything just coalesced all at once into a really great and uh memorable, memorable piece of art.
00:36:51.280 --> 00:36:57.519
I really love what you said about you know not being, you know, being aware of other cultures' music.
00:36:57.840 --> 00:37:12.480
In our very first episode, we did Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen, and and we said multiple times in that episode, if I had to show anyone a record and you know, just to introduce them to American culture, this would be probably top on my list.
00:37:12.719 --> 00:37:25.199
And I really feel like if you feel that way about Japanese culture and understanding the kind of music that is there, because music again is always an example, it's always a reflection of the culture that's there.
00:37:25.360 --> 00:37:28.880
Probably this record and the last record we talked to are some of the ones that I would share.
00:37:29.119 --> 00:37:35.760
Well, what I would also add, too, is that they are that, but they're also kind of subversion of that, too.
00:37:36.079 --> 00:37:51.760
Because, and I said this in the previous episode talking about Hosono's house, is that um a lot of Japanese culture in terms of art had kind of been lost or really kind of put to the side because of the effects of World War II.
00:37:52.079 --> 00:38:10.079
So people were trying to find their identity uh as Japanese artists because before Hosono's house, and really actually before Harumi Hosono's second group, Happy End, rock bands, Japanese rock bands would sing in English, you know, they would sing in English.
00:38:10.320 --> 00:38:21.519
Even I think uh Hosono's first band, April Fool, they would primarily sing in English, but then when Happy End came around, they're like, No, we're gonna sing in Japanese, because up to that point that was the argument.
00:38:21.679 --> 00:38:33.440
But then when once Happy End had some success, their second album is considered sort of the proto, the catalyst, actually, rather, of city pop, even though it was psychedelic rock or folk rock.
00:38:33.599 --> 00:38:49.199
But that was the album, those were the the Happy End was the band that kind of laid that argument to rest, and that was when all the Japanese musicians kind of came up and said, Oh, we can be ourselves, we can do this while also being influenced by Western music.
00:38:49.280 --> 00:39:22.559
You know, we try to find our identity, and that's really what's made Hosono's work, um, solo work really subversive in that way, is like there's that influence of the West, but it's also flirting with Japanese identity or that the exotica thing, you know, where it's really um subverting uh uh you know Pacific Islander identity, and he would go on to do that in various other projects, especially the album Pacifica that he did with uh uh one of the artists was on that was Tatsura Yamashida, who is the king of City Pop, you know.
00:39:22.719 --> 00:39:27.760
And so if you listen to that record, that's kind of the Proto uh City Pop record.
00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:37.199
So that's what that's one of the most interesting things, I think, when you're when we're looking at this record, because again, there's a Beatles cover on here, Day Tripper.
00:39:37.360 --> 00:39:39.199
They were all huge Beatles, you know.
00:39:39.599 --> 00:39:44.880
So you're gonna find things familiar, but you're also gonna be having your expectations subverted, you know.
00:39:45.039 --> 00:39:55.440
It's you know, we we think of J-pop and K-pop these days, you know, with BTS and Pink Panther S and you know, Blackpink, all these groups, you know.
00:39:55.760 --> 00:39:58.960
Well, and and some of them were some of them are K-pop.
00:39:59.119 --> 00:40:13.360
There's also Korean City pop, which is a whole other thing, but even some of that is the same as simil has similarities to Japanese city pop, but it all really starts with this record Stall Estate Survivor and a lot of the Hosono stuff.
00:40:13.679 --> 00:40:22.639
Well, and I think there's a lot of um there's a lot of probably American audiences who don't understand, you know, current modern Japanese artists.
00:40:22.960 --> 00:40:24.559
A lot of English speaking audiences.
00:40:24.800 --> 00:40:25.519
Yeah, exactly.
00:40:25.599 --> 00:40:34.320
And I I think, you know, I think one of the things that I love about Japanese culture is they have preserved their traditional music so well.
00:40:34.559 --> 00:41:08.719
So I think a lot of people have an understanding of what kind of traditional Japanese music sounds like, but to know what like the youth are creating today and what people who are um pushing music in that culture today, what they're trying to do, I think it's really I think it's really important to be up to date on that and to understand to understand it and to understand that it's not um it's not coming from just traditional Japanese music, it's coming from um a lot of different inspirations, including the West, including different things that they're experiencing in their own worlds.
00:41:08.800 --> 00:41:12.480
And I think I think that all that's really important, and you can hear that on these records.
00:41:12.800 --> 00:41:40.480
But that's actually kind of the reinvention that happened because um in it um you know, in those happy end days, because Hosono said himself it felt like there was like it's not that there wasn't traditional Japanese culture, it just felt like because World War II kind of you know created this uh separation of generations um in an obvious way.
00:41:41.360 --> 00:41:47.280
Uh that's why by the by the mid-late sixties they felt very disconnected from that.
00:41:47.440 --> 00:41:51.519
And I think there's been efforts to try to preserve that even more now than ever.
00:41:51.760 --> 00:41:59.280
But at that time, you know, people were still recovering, they were still like 10 to 15 years away from their own economic boom, too.
00:41:59.440 --> 00:41:59.599
Right.
00:41:59.920 --> 00:42:08.559
So they were so Japanese artists were looking for well, the only identity they felt like they could rely on was Western music.
00:42:08.800 --> 00:42:19.280
And until Happy End came around, then that's when it felt like we could create our own new identity as Japanese people to this popular music that was happening.
00:42:20.719 --> 00:42:23.840
So that's a little bit about YMO's record.
00:42:24.079 --> 00:42:26.079
Yep, and Solid State Survivor.
00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:35.119
And I hope, you know, I hope there are some people who have never heard of this record, and maybe it was really interesting to learn about something probably really different and from a different culture, even.
00:42:35.360 --> 00:42:40.239
Um, we always end our episodes with two of the same questions every time.
00:42:40.400 --> 00:42:51.920
Um and the first one, you know, really the only cre the only um prereq for the records we cover is that it is in some way influential to the culture.
00:42:52.480 --> 00:43:00.239
Um it can be from any genre, it can be from any time period, but for some reason we think that it has changed music history in some way.
00:43:00.400 --> 00:43:07.760
So that's my qu that's one of our questions that we always end on is why does Solid State Survivor matter to the culture?
00:43:08.079 --> 00:43:14.800
And uh I will say it again because reiterating it is very important, especially for an album like this, you know.
00:43:14.960 --> 00:43:28.239
It influenced synth pop, it influenced hip hop, it influenced video game music, and all the members of YMO have been influential in their own in their own unique ways, pre and post YMO.
00:43:28.880 --> 00:43:49.119
You know, and as far as Japanese music, this is you know, I mean, we we you go to Tower Records in really any Tower Records, but we're going to the one in Shibuya, and in the vinyl section of popular music, one uh YMO and its respective members take up an entire wall.
00:43:49.440 --> 00:43:49.599
Yeah.
00:43:49.760 --> 00:43:52.079
That that's which is unlike any other artist.
00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:53.199
That that is unique.
00:43:53.440 --> 00:43:55.599
That yeah, really it's YMO.
00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:03.840
Um, you also have some of the city pop guys like Yamashida and And um and and and art other artists like that for sure.
00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:08.239
Although I I mean I wasn't paying attention to City Pops, I was just focused on YMO at the time.
00:44:08.320 --> 00:44:11.440
So if I went back there and took a second glance, I'm sure I would find them too.
00:44:11.840 --> 00:44:15.039
YMO had its own corner, it was its own giant wall display.
00:44:15.199 --> 00:44:17.199
Like it was just different than the other groups for sure.
00:44:17.519 --> 00:44:31.920
It really was, you know, and and incidentally, um, they've actually began to reissue the YMO albums, or actually not even reissue, issue for the very first time the YMO albums in the States, some of them.
00:44:32.239 --> 00:44:54.559
So now you can find them as non-imports, which is really incredible, and I think a testament to, you know, this again, this renewed interest in City Pop, but just this renewed interest in what they're doing, especially again with Hosono, you know, kind of embracing young, you know, the his older work and its interests with young younger audiences.
00:44:54.800 --> 00:45:02.320
So that's why it's I consider this record and this group and its respective members immensely uh influential.
00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:07.920
And then the last question of our podcast episode is always why should someone take a chance?
00:45:08.079 --> 00:45:09.440
Why should they listen to the record?
00:45:09.679 --> 00:45:15.199
If they haven't listened to this record before, you know, why would they take some time out of their week this week to maybe check it out?
00:45:15.599 --> 00:45:20.960
I think, you know, I think in this record there is a little bit of something for everybody.
00:45:21.360 --> 00:45:30.000
And, you know, if anyone has ever been interested in Japanese music, this is a great, great, great starting point.
00:45:30.239 --> 00:45:40.800
And you know, that was the thing, is I I found out about this record only a few years ago, and it only took this album to really get down a rabbit hole of so many different albums.
00:45:41.280 --> 00:45:44.320
You are in a rabbit hole, I feel like, of this of these artists for the world.
00:45:44.400 --> 00:45:44.639
Oh, yeah.
00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:47.679
Yeah, of Japanese music at in that time period, you know.
00:45:48.000 --> 00:46:05.280
You'll hear familiar things, you'll hear the origins of a lot of what later became video music and influences in techno and hip hop, and you know, it's it's just it's such an enriching world of music, you know.
00:46:05.360 --> 00:46:21.280
And if you are really interested in enriching yourselves in a world outside of the terrible one we are all living in currently, some more than others, then I think this would be your very a very fun curiosity.
00:46:21.679 --> 00:46:30.559
Yeah, I would say for me, I would I would tell someone this this record will help stretch your mind as far as what is possible sonically.
00:46:30.800 --> 00:46:38.079
Um, I think it for me it just made me go, wow, I haven't thought about using that sound before, or wow, I haven't heard things put in that way before.
00:46:38.159 --> 00:46:42.159
I think that is a very uh cool thing for a record to do.
00:46:42.320 --> 00:46:50.880
And then also just culturally, like we said earlier, I think it's really important for people to hear music from different cultures and understand different cultural perspectives.
00:46:50.960 --> 00:46:56.559
I just think like overall this music will expand what you think is possible.
00:46:56.960 --> 00:47:00.000
And that's what I'm looking forward to in this podcast, too.
00:47:00.079 --> 00:47:24.159
There will be uh many moments um where we will be exploring records from other cultures, from other countries, you know, you know, and and just not not only how influential the record was for that culture itself, but how they have some have some have had some influence in Western music or in other cultures per se, you know.
00:47:24.320 --> 00:47:35.039
And there are of course artists that have made records, English speaking artists that have that have utilized the sounds of other cultures and countries in their own work, and we'll be talking about that too.
00:47:35.199 --> 00:47:38.159
And that's kind of the overall idea.
00:47:38.639 --> 00:47:48.559
You know, it's a pretty open uh open territory of where the music comes from that we will talk about on uh on this podcast.
00:47:48.880 --> 00:47:52.320
Thank you guys so much for tuning in to another episode of Home Records.
00:47:52.400 --> 00:47:55.440
We just want to say we've loved sharing this new adventure with you guys.
00:47:55.599 --> 00:47:59.360
Thank you for showing your support, telling us what records you want us to cover.
00:47:59.519 --> 00:48:02.239
This has been a really fun new journey for us.
00:48:02.559 --> 00:48:10.400
Yes, and uh, if you like what you've been hearing, uh you could follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever podcasts are available.
00:48:10.559 --> 00:48:22.480
And if you also like to show your support even further, just please give us a five-star review on uh whatever platform you listen in, and just be sure to spread the word to all your friends and family and enemies.
00:48:22.800 --> 00:48:26.639
So thank you once again, and uh we'll see you in the next episode.
00:48:26.880 --> 00:48:27.519
Bye, guys.
00:48:27.840 --> 00:48:28.159
Bye.
