The Philosophy of Challenging Sushi
First of all, an explanation of the name, "Challenging Sushi." Those of you who may have eaten in a Japanese restaurant in the US may have noticed that there is usually a poster on the wall of the restaurant showing various types of sushi and their names. Quite often, these will refer to sushi which is a little more out of the ordinary such as uni (sea urchin) or ikura (salmon eggs) as "challenging." The idea behind Challenging Sushi is to showcase basically the Japanese music that I like which tends towards the less known and more unusual bands, so I thought it would be appropriate in that much of the music I play may seem a bit strange at first, but hopefully will go down well after you've taken that first bite.
Now for the why. Challenging Sushi is the result of a long relationship with Japan, starting with my first trip there in 1982. I was an university exchange student in Tokyo, and like most students, I was (and still am), a music "head." Now that I was overseas for the first time in my life, and of course, one of the things I looked forward to was finding out interesting local music.
However, in the early '80's, the music scene in Japan was dominated by "idols," girls and boys who major claim to the stage was their looks and their projection of the correct persona Basically, it sucked. And sucked bad. And seemed to be inescapable. No matter where you went, it seemed that somewhere in the background, this inane music was always playing. It was ubiquitously horrible.
In the dormitory I stayed in, one of the favorite things to do for us foreign students was to gather in the social room, watch "Za Besto Ten," a show which showed the top 10 acts in Japan. We would just laugh and laugh at how bad these people were. At one time, for some reason the show did a dual broadcast between Tokyo and the US, and one of these groups, I believe it was Shibugakitai, showed up in the middle of some suburb in New Jersey. Instead of the usual screams of thousands of groupies that these guys normally faced in Japan, all there were were some bored looking housewives and kids who gave them a perfunctory round of applause. Later, the mayor of the town was shown giving the key to the city to a guy called Matchi who was number 1 in Japan at that time, and we all felt he should have been recalled. Given all this, I began to think that there were no good musicians in Japan.
Trying to find more interesting acts, I went to some "live houses" that featured rock and roll, but my impression was mainly bands who were doing their best to imitate the Rolling Stones. I had already heard the Rolling Stones, thought they did a pretty good job of being themselves, and didn't really understand why someone was bothering to try and recreate them.
Still, all was not lost. I had a tape of Yellow Magic Orchestra and I thought much of their music was pretty good. A friend of mine then turned me on to the music of a lady called Togawa Jun, and then I was brought into a world of a Japanese artist who not only created interesting music, but also had a unique style all her own. Another friend later took me to see Hara Masumi live, and I was immediately hooked. His sound, while reminding me of the Talking Heads and Robert Fripp, was also his own. His act was also quite unique. I remember the first time I saw him, he and his band were sitting on the stage all eating a spaghetti dinner. One by one, each of the musicians got up and started playing his instrument and so the show started.
Fast forward a few years to a different place, Okazaki near Nagoya. I had found this weird little coffee shop and live house called Hachiyosha. The first floor was a small coffee shop and the second floor was for live music. It was about the size of 10 tatami mats, and at the most 2 musicians could play while the audience would sit and listen. Well, listen as well as they could. Right next to the shop was the Meitetsu railway line. so the sound of passing trains would sometimes drown out the music. Not exactly the most conducive environment for quality music. However, the strange thing was that all the musicians I heard who played there were very talented. With that experience, and friends introducing me to more and more interesting musicians, it became apparent that Japanese musicians were just as talented and could play a variety of music as anyone else in the world. It was just that if they decided to do so, they wouldn't appear anywhere near the major music outlets.
Thus began the search and the collection that you now hear on Challenging Sushi. It's a collection of music that hopes to show the wide variety of styles and talents that Japanese musicians can muster. Also, one thing that I can say is that the quality of the Japanese musicians in the popular arena is much better these days then when I first encountered it.