Speed, Glue & Shinki
Eve

LA RECENSIONE

Riding the wave of enthusiasm brought on by reading Japrocksampler by the good Cope, I naturally felt obliged to immediately obtain some of the albums so highly praised by the author. Since the three albums on the podium all seemed potentially interesting and, above all, were found at affordable prices on Amazon, I ordered them without hesitation, filled with curiosity and hope for the future. And while Les Rallizes Dénudés and the Flower Travellin’ Band were delightful surprises for me, unfortunately, this album did not achieve the same feat of shaking up my musical existence.

Speed, Glue & Shinki were a power trio from the lucrative world of the Japanese beat (which spread in the long wake of the Fab Four's visit to the Empire of the Rising Sun). After a career marked by success and easy money, they decided to change their lives, dedicating their souls to the rough and wild rocker lifestyle, made of sex, drugs, and of course, rock ‘n’ roll in abundance. Especially in Japan, a country always very averse to drugs (so much so that the most common drug was liquid glue, which was sniffed due to the difficulty in obtaining better substances), such an open dedication to excess caused considerable indignation among the well-meaning folks; seeing as our heroes openly flaunted their main substances/sources of inspiration in their name, in their lyrics they mainly focused on themes like: „drugs are great“; „life sucks so I use drugs and it's awesome“, „my chick is a b**** because she smokes all my drugs“ and so on. So, maybe in Japan at the time, such things could create a sensation and present a socio-cultural earthquake, but it is equally true that today such behaviors mostly make us smile, used to much worse „scandals“ even from 12-13-year-old kids; hence what remains for us to evaluate/appreciate is the mere musical value of the work.

Well, what Cope hails as rough and anarchic rock (earning it a joint first place with the FTB) reveals itself upon listening to be decent rock-blues, perhaps with a slightly rougher and freer spirit than average (especially in compositions like M Glue), but in the end, nothing truly epochal or unmissable... In short, if you are passionate about Japan or the genre in question, you might risk an ear without the risk of regretting it, but I believe it is unlikely this group would have received such attention if they had been from Europe or the Anglo-Saxon world.