TEST PATTERN: Tokyo Jihen, R.I.P.
Western critical neglect of Shiina Ringo continues to be near-absolute,(*) and I’ve sometimes wondered if one contributing factor is that — after releasing her masterpiece, 2003’s Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana, easily one of this millennium’s very best albums — she abandoned her solo career and backed into a role fronting a bunch of dudes. Instead of being a Tin Machine-sized curiosity, Tokyo Jihen has been long-lived and popular enough (in its homeland) that its product might obscure Shiina’s superior solo output for casual listeners obsessed with trending topics and Tumblr-wagging.
But that act is finally coming to a close. Come March, Jihen will be no more.
To celebrate that end and appreciate its career, I’ve culled the band’s five-and-a-half albums, b-sides, and a pair of live releases into the 80-plus-minute sampler linked below. (Loosely chronological, it starts with a clipped version of Shiina’s original farewell single and Jihen’s raucous remake of same and ends with Jihen’s last single.) As easy as I find it to resent Jihen’s very existence, and as grating or bland as its chaff could get, there’s some fun and catchy and engaging stuff!(**) They’re incredibly proficient musicians with wildly diverse concerns, and the mix careens from straight-up rockers and pop- and R&B-ballads to dense, proggy tangles of everything. (The live version of “Kenka Joutou,” which breaks up its jazz scat show tune punkabilly ELP heavy metal ridiculousness with intense theatrical breaks, is a personal favorite.)
“Diverse concerns” were probably Tokyo Jihen’s greatest strength and ultimate failing; Shiina’s presence was by far its greatest asset and perhaps too formidable a distraction. As the band’s run progressed, and the members who weren’t Shiina Ringo asserted themselves in the writing, quality dipped but left-field impulses could prove (circle one) interesting/irritating. The democracy of the project(***) doomed it to be less substantial than Shiina’s restless, focused solo work. Still, it was a band with Shiina Ringo in it. If that encouraged impossible expectations, it also meant that it had her pop genius on which to draw and provided a platform that guaranteed at least some new Shiina material. The best succinct assessment of Tokyo Jihen I’ve seen comes from ILX: “My favorite consistently disappointing band.” Tokyo Jihen is dead, long live Shiina Ringo.
Again: There’s fun and catchy and engaging stuff! None of the band’s output is available domestically in the U.S., physically or digitally. So do grab this mix before SEAL Team Six swoops in and plucks the head of Mediafire off his diamond-encrusted toilet.
DOWNLOAD: Tokyo Jihen - TEST PATTERN
Tracklist: (album tracks, except where noted) : (1) Ringo no Uta (Shiina Ringo single version)(Edit) -> Tokyo Jihen Kyouiku version)/(2) Sounan/(3) Gunjou Biyori (Dynamite Out version)/(4) Yukiguni -> Kabuki/(5) Shuraba (Single version)/(6) Superstar (Just Can’t Help It version)/(7) Kenka Joutou (Just Can’t Help It version)/(8) Ekimae (Dynamite Out Version)/(9) Himitsu/(10) Blackout/(11) OSCA/(12) Boutomin/(13) Tsukigime-hime/(14) Ikiru(Edit)/(15) Denpa Tsuushin/(16) Gaman/(17) Noudouteki Sanpunkan/(18) Tengoku e Youkosos (For the Disc)/(19) Kinjirareta Asobi/(20) Atarashii Bunmei-kaika/(21) sa_i_ta/(22) Konya wa Karasawagi
(*) One single Tokyo Jihen song got noticed by one single person on this year’s Pazz/Jop poll, and I think that may count as progress? If you’re one of those people getting vociferously frustrated over casual resistance to the act that topped that poll with massive consensus, I’ve got a pair of moccasins you can borrow. I’d slit my wrists if that’d somehow bring American ears to Shiina Ringo. (But wouldn’t want to risk rebranding her as “that singer that one guy killed himself over.”) (And don’t condone suicide as promotional stunt.) (Marketing has already ruined so much, at least leave us our indignities.) (Sorry about the parentheses, am currently reading Something Happened and, for those of us (me) naturally given to asides, anyway, the style’s not just infectious, but smothering.)
(**) Mileage will vary. Shiina fans are a fervently dedicated, hard-arguing, hard-to-satisfy lot. As many people will be angry that I left out “Killer Tune” as would be angered had I included it. Some will object that I included anything from Variety at all.
(***) At least the dissolution proved conceptually playful: Jihen’s final EP, Color Bars, not only divided its five tracks evenly among its members, but the very packaging is designed to fall apart. In their final video, the band cashes out.
Local H, “What Would You Have Me Do? (edit)”
Y’all have yourselves a safe and happy new year.
I’ve badly fumbled my promise to post this at least once a week.
Ry Cooder with Eldridge King, Terry Evans, and Bobby King on vocals.
Sure, “Dark End of the Street” can be a spiritual, why not?
Jamey Johnson, “Even the Skies Are Blue (edit)”
When I think back to last year’s The Guitar Song, I don’t get far past my mental review of the record. Which went something like: Concept double-album abandoned in favor of a handful of solid songs, some slavish country traditionalism, and amiable, jammy time-filler.(*)
When I actually pop The Guitar Song into the stereo, what I get is good times. Good times and this song, which bypasses all objection by finding the shortest distance between my ear and that dark thing in the gut what makes the throat swell.
(*) Including some interesting left-field quotes. And it is hard to blame anyone for not wanting to cut Eddie Long short. He is greatness.
Let it be noted that Tuesday, After Christmas started streaming on Netflix on the Tuesday after Christmas. (Also, Tales from the Golden Age. I’d queue them up, but fear that adding even one more contemporary Romanian film to my account would qualify me for that service where they send someone to the house to slit your wrists for you.)
Top: Rüdiger Vogler (as Philip Winter) and Yella Rottländer (as Alice) in Alice in the Cities (1974).
Bottom: Rüdiger Vogler (as Philip Winter) and Yella Rottländer (as Winter’s Angel) in Faraway, So Close! (1993).
David Byrne, “Angels (Live)”
Byrne’s flippant connection to his subject matter lets him nod at both Tony Kushner and Wim Wenders to no meaningful end, but I’ve always loved this song’s jangle and clatter, have been drawn to its bold opening pronouncement (which can sometimes feel true)(as if it could not be?), and have often found myself thinking, in its rhythm, “I am just an advertisement. For a ver - sion. Of - my - self.”
Opting for the video here so’s y’all can admire Mauro Refosco as he rotates through his array and dig Byrne’s Danzig ‘do.
Faraway, So Close! (1993, Germany, d. Wenders)
Never-finished business. Just six years after Wings of Desire, Wenders rightly realized that Berlin needed re-documenting. Putting Otto Sander’s Cassiel on the path to mortality — a coda that had wound up on Wings’ cutting room floor — the director simultaneously wanted to explore the reunification and reach back into the city’s Nazi past.
Whereas Bruno Ganz’ Damiel had wanted to become human simply to experience life, Cassiel wants to Do Good Things; this becomes his downfall, as he amiably winds up a lackey for an ex-pat crime lord. (According to Wenders, the flood of guns from the East made it cheaper to use real guns on the production than props.) The crime lord, meanwhile, is searching for the family his father left behind when fleeing the country in the 1930s.
Messing with everything is a never-defined character played by Willem Defoe, Emit Flesti. Emit interacts with humans and angels, in b&w and in color, tends toward grand pronouncements like, “Time is the absence of money.” His name is “Time Itself” spelled backwards — something near-impossible to pick up while watching a film, and something that doesn’t seem to matter in the long run. He’s more a distraction than a device, he’s a symbol of all the bad decisions this movie makes.
The idea of the flood of memories of a whole city unleashed by a great event is swollen with promise — Gorbachev even shows up, with a speech he wrote for the film! — but everything that had fallen into place so perfectly on Wings was forced out of it for this follow-up. Wenders: “I wanted it to be different… I didn’t want it to be a sequel, so I did everything I could to work against that.” Fully scripted, and utilizing none of the same behind-the-camera talent, Faraway manages to be a sequel in the worst ways — the first hour feels like outtakes from the original, there are heavy-handed callbacks wasting time throughout — while forsaking Wings’ coherent grace for something of a caper film. It was mostly shot in the former East Germany, but its locations (including a flooded storage facility under an airport, the Niederfinow Boat Lift) are used less to evoke spirit than to house contrived set pieces. The director claims it as a favorite, but his offering is awkwardly staged, confusing, unlikely, and dull.
