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Rating: Kintsuba Yokan are delicious jelly candies, popular for over 500 years in Japan. They are often served in the traditional tea houses of Tokyo. They are delightfully sweet and colorful, they stick to your teeth and have the strangest flavors. Once you start eating them, you can't stop.
A lot of sweet and colorful things can be found over there.
But the best candies in Japan are others.
"Shonen Knife: The most adorable punk pop band in the world!!
Or rather: “Every Band Has a Shonen Knife Who Loves Them” as the title of the tribute album that people like Sonic Youth, Red Kross, L7, Chemical People, and others (more than twenty!) wanted to dedicate to them.
Because everyone, everyone loves these three colorful Kokeshi dolls. And how can you not love them?
Flower-power-pop-punk from Japan!!
This introduction might already be enough to give you an idea of the wonderful Shonen Knife, a trio of sunny girls who formed in the Land of the Rising Sun, precisely in Osaka, back in 1981. But we'll add something about their musical history, for your delight.
Two sisters in love with surfing, the Beatles, the Ramones, Elvis Costello; they are Naoko and Atsuko Yamano, the first on guitar and vocals, the second on backing vocals sitting behind a drum set (which she plays as if she were a member of a cartoon band). Joining them is bassist Michie Nakatani; and there you have the band ready to start working, writing songs about dolls, goldfish, happy rides with bicycles in flower fields, rivers of chocolate and ice cream.
The music you'd expect to hear at a party in Wonderland, with the Wizard of Oz passing a cigarette to the Cheshire Cat. But don't get strange ideas: this is serious stuff, damn serious. Because fantasy is not to be messed with, fantasy is a serious thing.
And life isn't exactly colorful: Mani Nishiura will fly with his car to the "Neverland" on November 4th, 2005, and Atsuko will leave her sister to get married and become an adult.
But Naoko doesn't give up.
Because they're still a Punk band: a light and innocent Punk, that could be played to accompany children's sleep, in a nursery.
In an old interview, Naoko said: "I like to play with the songs we write as if they were toys I take out of the toy box. We're not inclined to write love songs: we're very shy."
This is Rock’n Roll, the real kind, the one that saved our lives at least once for each of us.
A long series of albums released and promotional tours around the world; I even saw them in concert decades ago and I must admit that live they really knew their stuff, with a punch and a drive that increased dramatically compared to the clarity and auditory purity of their studio work. It was the Spring of 1993 and I remember very well that before their performance, they took a good number of photos of the blooming trees around the small Milanese venue, accompanying it all with healthy and complacent laughter: could it be the Bloom of Mezzago? Who knows...hahaha!!!
Do you understand what luck this southern mountaineer has?
In 2011 they celebrated thirty years of career with a tribute album to the Ramones: we're here to talk to you about "Osaka Ramones," with that cover that echoes "Road To Ruin" of the New York brothers. Atsuko had already left the band and Emi Morimoto came in her place: the substance doesn't change a bit (and then with such a surname tell me what other instrument sweet Emi could have played). Thirteen tracks played first of all with that energy and fun that was never more necessary, considering that Shonen Knife have always been regarded as the Ramones in miniskirts!! The late Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee, and since 2014 also Tommy, certainly would've appreciated it.
It starts with the absolute anthem of "Blitzkrieg Bop" and before you know it, it comes to an end, marked by "Pinhead". But it was a lot of fun: damn, you must be lobotomized if you can listen to it while staying still!
This is the sky of Queens seen from a window in Osaka.
Not even the Ramones knew they were so colorful, sweet, and psychedelic. No one could have reinterpreted those songs in such a calligraphic yet innovative way. If you really want to understand the Ramones, you must listen to the Osaka Ramones.
Got it, @Pinhead?
But we're sure you have this record (because you do, right?) and so we dedicate this review to you.
How can you not love these little Hakata dolls, how can you stop eating Kintsuba Yokan?
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