33 rebellions per minute
"Will you give no more than silent support? We're the mother of this world!"
1995
Super Junky Monkey, SCREW UP
I've already given this band a pretty thorough review/ advertisement in my '96 page, for PARASITIC
PEOPLE: Japanese women playing giddy, virtuosic, psychotic speed-metal with every make of kitchen sink
tossed in. Now that I've traded in the sadly defective copy I bought of Dar Williams's folk debut
HONESTY ROOM for SCREW UP, and listened to it several times in a row, I'll at least make some
'94-to-'96 comparisons. The only relative downside of this disc, other than that any record not including
"See Me Feel Me" is a letdown compared to one that does include it, is Mutsumi's undeveloped vocals. It's
not that she hadn't yet found her voice, certainly; it's that she'd only found a few of her voices, and
emphasizes her least interesting: punk shout and hip-hop blare. But her aggressively strained, Bjork-like
tones on the inexorably doomy "Zakuro No Hone" show promise. So does her multitracked effort on
"Shukuchoku No Choro Wa Chirou De Sourau", which sounds like a sacred tribal tap-dancing invocation.
And her performance on "Shower" is spectacular, leaving it equally plausible for four minutes that this could
be a Playboy Channel shower or a Psycho shower, before clarifying that no, actually, this is the kind of
shower in which massed noble savages dance around arguing about how to cook you (which is why I prefer
bathtubs myself).
The music on SCREW UP was already fully developed. Mostly it sounds like a funkier Rage Against The
Machine with some extra talent, imagination, and estrogen. But "Kioko No Netsuzau" sounds like a B-side
from the great old days when Anthrax had a sense of humor. "Bucking The Bolts" is a party song at march
tempo with the rhythmic vocal delivery, on the bridge, of a Mom reading an atypically crabby Dr. Seuss
book. "Get Out" has the jazzy, laconic, half-rapped smoothness of a double-speed Luscious Jackson. And
most amazing of all are "Revenge" and "Decide". Each starts with bell-tolls-for-thee Metallica chords. Then
each take off at an absurd ensemble-tight speed that makes you want to stand in front of them and explain
your charts demonstating that it is simply not possible for human beings to move their limbs so fast. Then
you realize that the air flow out from drummer Matsudaah!'s arms will keep knocking you over, and that's
so undignified. But your fate, if you try to explain to them that women are not supposed to be the best
heavy-metal(ish) band in the world, will be much worse.
1996
Super Junky Monkey, PARASITIC PEOPLE
My impression of Japan--- based on knowing people who've been there although I've never once been outside the
English-speaking regions of North America (Boston's Chinatown is not a "region", and they know all sorts of good English
words like "chop suey")--- is that feminism hasn't gotten too far there and women are still really supposed to be deferential
and tame (I hear Katha Pollitt and Barbara Ehrenreich and Ellen Goodman, journalists fresh from lifetimes competing against
each other for the now-it-exists now-it-doesn't slot of "token female with brain (not too much politics please)", ask "so what
else is different?" Hallucinations like this are why I find the thought of taking LSD to be entirely superfluous). I also am
informed that the Japanese music charts are dominated by a dozen homemade versions of Whitney Houston.
Fortunately,
no-one seems to have told Super Junky Monkey any of that. These four women make fast, raucous, gleefully in-your-face
music that I'd classify as "progressive thrash" (Thought Industry's there too), and know what? I don't think I've heard a
better trio of bass/guitar/percussion players than Keiko, Shinobu, and Matsudaahh!! anywhere in the loud rock field: agile,
abrupt, pummeling, and versatile enough to try jazzy, robotic, hip-hop, spacey, funky, and beach-rock variations on the
steady thrash core. The songwriting itself is merely serviceable, with "See Me Feel Me", a bizarrely adventurous but
melody-retaining rewrite of the last track from the Who's TOMMY, far overshadowing all but one ("Parasitic People") of the
original tracks (no shame, given how awe-inspiring the cover is; I still hear, what's it called, "We're Not Gonna Take It" as
"oh yeah, the See Me Feel Me source material"). But that's okay, since the songs are servicing the often multi-tracked
vocalist, Mutsumi, a wizard, a true star. As appropriate, or pleasurably inappropriate, she can sound like the Beastie Girls,
the Chipmunks, Salt'n/or'Pepa, the Bangles (!), a punk shouter, a bored Bronx phone operator, a shaman leading tribal
invocations, or a baby alligator flushed down the Boston sewers in 1982 and now grown up and _hungry_.
If, however, we treat these not as "songs" but as "compositions", well, they're stunning. SJM obviously had a great
time making these songs, and Mutsumi's vocal gifts have a definite comic streak, so if you can enjoy the whole project more
by regarding it as a goof, I'd not want to stop you. Just understand that there ain't no-one you know who could whip this out
on their vacation time. Or even necessarily in twenty years of intense practice. Shonen Knife, we like your music, but get out
of the way of the stereotype machine. Something new exists under the (rising) sun (have you noticed how magazine
headlines have made unfunny puns an obligation? when did that happen?), and cute ain't it's essence.
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