Soon finished with Julian Cope's 'Japrocksampler', just the Author's Top 50 section left to go through.
The book is true inspiring. The reason for me to read it was not only deep respect for Cope as both a very interesting musician, always pointing forward, but also a personal and good author. The previous 'Krautrocksampler' is just an example. Through my discovery of the psychedelic etc world of Acid Mothers Temple, Boris, Boredomw, Merzbow + various related for about five years ago my interest of what's happening in Japan these days increases. And with that increasing I also gets more and more interested in What Was Before.
After some introduction chapters about Japanese post-war experimental and avant-garde music development the book focuses mostly of the psycedelic/space/improvised/free-form/etc scene of late 60s 'til mid-70s by chapter-wise short biographies of bands like Flower Travelling Band, Les Ralliezes Denudés, Speed,Glue & Shinki, Taj Mahal Travellers, JA Caesar, Far East Family Band and others.
With his knowledge, good research (= ruin himself by getting the VERY HARD TO GET albums by these artists most people didn't want to know of at the time) and personal approach to both language and content this book is a really good reading and also very inspiring. But, as I just said, the music of most of these groups a rare and very hard to get, no matter what price you're ready to pay. But maybe something will hopefully will happen in the future.
This one, a two-hour long free improvised drone/etc recording from the Modern Museum in Stockholm 1971 is not only one of very few existing releases available from the band (it wasn't released until lately), it's also acclaimed as one of their best performances during their career. In my mailbox next week. Something for the dark nights at Camp Brana.
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