Thanks to Brian ( Fever B ) for this great review. This LP is the best thing I've heard in a long time.
Philips 1966
My favourite ever Japanese band is Carol. This is true.Their first album Louisiana,from the amazing cover art to every single tracks attempt to recreate the Star Clubs famed Silver Beatles is a masterpiece ...but the first Japanese band I ever fell in love with was the Spiders! At a flea market in Santa Cruz, Ca. I found a guy selling records five for a dollar and one of those records i bought (and i bought about fifty ) was Big Lizard Stomp! It's a 90s compilation of Japanese bands from 66-69 and on this comp the Spiders tracks were real stand outs for me with both covers, Johnny B. Goode and Boom Boom sounding almost like 70s punk!... Not to get side tracked but i always thought of Godzilla the "big lizard" as being a metaphor for nuclear bombs but maybe it has as much or more to do with earthquakes and tsunamis!!! If you're a child(or a writer) feeling the ground shake, maybe it's better to think of Godzilla off in the distance somewhere fighting Mothera? I dunno. Maybe it just made those movies even scarier for Japanese kids in the end having the ground shake all the time and wondering if he/she/it is real and maybe thats why later on Godzilla was turned into a good guy and then even later into kind of a joke!
Ok! Enough wondering about what goes on in the mind of Mr. Tanaka. Back to the Spiders! Generally speaking GS (group sound)bands have 7 or 8 members including two lead singers and at least two guitarists so they can cover a wide range of rock an roll styles and the Spiders were no different in this regard. They were a seven piece like other GS bands ,but other GS bands were also generally cover bands and the Spiders on this Lp play mostly originals as far as I can tell setting them apart from most other GS bands of the day... at least for Lp "No.1" anyway, I think. I'm not going to pretend to know anything more about the Spiders than what i can see and hear and read on the record that is written in english. I am not japanese and I am not going to pretend to be. I do know from japanese friends that there's a lot of lore surrounding all of the GS bands like there is about the "big lizard" and I am sure the Spiders are no exception. I will say though from what my ears tell me about what is real about the Spiders is that Furi Furi '66 has a drum beat like no other rock and roll song of this period as well as the in the song Mr. Monkey and the drumming in general on this record truly sets this band apart from any other group in the world in 1966 in my opinion! I've heard comparisons made to the Monks probably mostly because of the odd beats and I think that's fair but they are not by any means a Monks cover band! Their sound is their own and it's a great one!!! like the Japanese people that i have met, they are creative and fun and though ive never met them i am sure they are really cool..
Furi Furi 66
here's the whole LP
