The Legacy of Shibuya-Kei Part Two

Last time, we left our protagonists Oyamada Keigo and Ozawa Kenji on the verge of their first record release.

The Primordial Flipper

On August 25, 1989, the five-piece Flipper's Guitar released their first album Three Cheers for Our Side 海へ行くつもりじゃなかった on Polystar (named for an Orange Juice song). Ozawa - a student at top-ranking Tokyo University - wrote the band's English lyrics. The sound was straight-up Neo-Acoustic with nods to Anorak Pop and UK schoolboy culture. While the subject matter generally ranged from adolescent concerns like red shoes and cafe au lait, "The Chime Will Ring" was a grown-up realization that they were approaching the "end of youth." The lyrics to the similarly-themed "Goodbye, our Pastels Badges" contain a laundry-list of references to influential bands: the Boy Hairdressers, Aztec Camera, Haircut 100, the Monochrome Set, etc, etc.

The album was a commercial flop.

And then Flipper's Guitar went from five to two.

The story goes that Flipper's manager at Polystar realized that the two charming boys fronting the band were a marketable power team and the other three were deadweight. (The alternate theory is that Ozawa was so difficult to work with, the other three quit.) Now a duo, Flipper's became a vehicle for the Double Knockout Corporation songwriting team (a reference to the KO initials of the two lead members). They got a big break when their English-language single "Friends Again" was used as part of the Shibuya chiimaa-idolizing film Octopus Army ~ Shibuya de aitai! in early 1990.

Polystar repackaged the boys as pop idols, and suddenly they began to sing all their songs in Japanese. In May 1990, Flipper's mania reached fevered pace when their new Italian film soundtrack-flavored single "Young Alive in Love (恋とマシンガン)" became the main themesong to the popular drama "Youbikou Bugi" (Cram-school Boogie).

Ozawa and Oyamada released album number two, Camera Talk, in June 1990. All the lyrics were now in Japanese, and even though they had a new pop direction, their sound broadened out to include more obscure and sophisticated sounds: bossa nova/latin ("Summer Beauty 1990"), vocal jazz ("Southbound Excursion"), house music ("Big Bad Bingo"), and spy thriller instrumentals ("Cool Spy on a Hot Car"). References to British bands still made the cut (songs called "Colour Field" and "Haircut 100"). Flipper's also won the award for the most clumsy sampling ever for the intro to "Wild Wild Summer."

Defined

Sometime before or after this period, the media discovered that Flipper's Guitar, the rap group Scha Dara Parr, older lounge-rockers Pizzicato Five, and a couple of other bands were making it up the charts just by selling well at the recently opened HMV Shibuya. All of these acts had a similar interest in a slightly-more elitist European mode of music, and the media christened the group of performers "Shibuya-kei." The musicians themselves never formally associated themselves as a movement, but the label stuck. Their more dainty sound, however, was a big departure from the super-masculine Band Boom that had been entrancing Japan since the late 80s.

Contrary to myth, the term "Shibuya-kei" never had anything to do with Shibuya being a particularly stylish part of town. If anything, the rich Setagaya kids running around and reeking havoc on the neighborhood in their chiimaa turf wars had abandoned Harajuku designer fashion for a sloppy, casual "shibu-kaji" look. If "shibuya-kei" had a defining style, it was French coastal - Saint James border shirts and berets. Hardcore "Shibuya-kei" fans were essentially upper middle-class high-school kids who were "anchi-meijaa" - anti-major label - and embraced Flipper's sophisticated tastes.

Flipper's kept busy with a string of big singles, a widely-heard radio show called Martians Go Home, and a monthly column in the hipster mag Takarajima. Their mainstream popularity introduced the average Japanese person to a highly-obscure, well-curated world of hipster bands, movies, and brands.

A year after their hit Camera Talk, Flipper's changed directions again and put out the sample-crazy, psychedelic/Madchester-influenced Doctor Head's World Tower. The title is a reference to the Monkees 1968 film Head and samples from the movie's dialogue are sprinkled throughout. The film's theme - studio-created pop stars busting out of their shells into more "groovy" territory - obviously resonated with the two young stars. "Dolphin Song" is a reference to Head's "Porpoise Song" and a pastiche of the Beach Boys' "Heroes and Villains"-type pop symphonies. "Aquamarine" is a knock-off of My Bloody Valentine's "Lose My Breath." Primal Scream's Screamadelica was the other blueprint: "The Quizmaster" is just "Loaded" with Japanese lyrics and "Groove Tube" takes its verse melody from "Come Together."

Goodbye, our Flipper's Badges

Three months later, on October 29th, the media announced that Flipper's Guitar had unexpectedly broken up. Tickets for the album tour had gone on sale, but the shows had to be cancelled. Apparently, Ozawa and Oyamada were no longer talking during their publicity appearances. The "rumor" to emerge was that the two were fighting over the same girl - ex-Onyanko Club member Watanabe Marina. (Her love of the band had introduced the young hipsters to the Jpop idol world of Myojo). Imai Kentaro from the Aprils told me that this rumor was just a cover story for the real reason: playing the new sample-based material live was not sounding good at the rehearsals and these problems snowballed into ill-will between Ozawa and Oyamada.

By late 1991, Flipper's Guitar was over, but the Shibuya-kei sound explosion had hardly begun. While not as big as Nirvana was in the US, Flipper's were certainly the cultural equivalent: they opened the floodgates and indie culture poured into the mainstream.

Posted by marxy at November 16, 2004 9:07 PM