Tokyo Kid Brothers - Saiyuki - The Moon Is East, The Sun Is West -1972- (LP, Dutch Private Pressing), Japan

After this first record I posted a while ago, here is the second Dutch private pressing of this freaky Japanese acid drenched, political activist theatre outfit. Actually the recording for this album, which came out one year later after Story Of Eight Dogs, was made during a performance in London, but was only released in The Netherlands in limited quantities. More information about Tokyo Kid Brothers in the previous post.

The music consists again of some real communal psychedelic jams combined with cheerful songs and a lot of humor. Through this stance the Tokyo Kid Brothers are also able to express their criticism on certain things in society. Unfortunately, unlike their early Japanese releases, most songs are cut off quite early which doesn't allow them to get into real long jams, but it's nevertheless really enjoyable. You really get a sense of a community feeling during the play, because they always interact with the audience. Also during the first couple of songs a baby is crying throughout the recording.

Some of the highlights on the album consist, among others, of Motorbike in which they mix a song in Japanese with yelling "Motorbike". In another song called Jumping Song, one of the Japanese girls is "looking for the monkeys" and tells people they look like a monkey in a very playful manner. The most psychedelic jam is Goeika. Other songs are about Mao, socialism or have hippie titles like Budist Trip. Ofcourse part of the NWW-List.

"You look like a monkey!"

 Get it HERE

Tokyo Kid Brothers - Songs Of The Story Of Eight Dogs -1971- (LP, Dutch Private Pressing), Japan

This vinyl is a private pressing of the recording of the play “The Story of Eight Dogs” by Japanese musical theatre group Tokyo Kid Brothers. In 1971 they played the "The Story of Eight Dogs" for five weeks at the Shaffy Theatre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This record came out in very limited quantities in Holland during their period of performing in Amsterdam.

These NWW-listers stand in a similar tradition as other counter-cultural musical theatre outfits like the American Living Theatre or Théâtre Du Chêne Noir from France. Tokyo Kid Brothers was founded by Yutaka Higashi in 1968 and made some very weird recordings during the early seventies like the albums “Throw away the books let’s go into the streets” and "Golden Bat" from 1971. Those are being regarded as two of the most important cornerstones of Japanese freak-out psychedelia from the seventies. They should reissue that stuff on vinyl. Tokyo Kid Brothers' early sound was reminiscent of other Japanese acid fuelled underground groups like J.A. Seazer and Food Brain, but also brings to mind some of the more free-form krautrock bands like Amon Düül and Faust. During that era The Tokyo Kid Brothers performed quite often outside of Japan, like New York and Amsterdam.

This recording has some great seventies underground jams combined with intense Japanese vocals. Also the difference between audience and actors at times becomes blurry when they involve the audience and try to teach them about Japanese language characters and so on in a subversive and playful manner. All with a great Japanese English accent.

My copy is not in the best shape as you can see and is quite crackly. It might have had an insert, but I don’t have it. The record doesn’t list titles of the songs, which doesn’t really matter, because it was meant as a play. Anyway this is crazily rare if you’d ask me and absolutely essential to all Japanese psych-heads and NWW-list fans.

“The history of eight dogs is the story of the Japanese young generation in reality and illusion. We came to Holland: Exodus from Japan!”

Get it HERE! Or check it out here: