Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll

Few people would doubt Cope's extensive music knowledge and good taste. Yet this book is only good as a ponter guide to underrated Japanese rock gems. Cope's writting style singularly fails to engage. I would completely agree with the previous reviewer that this book is repetitive, self-indulgent and at the root of it says 'too much about too little'. Author's continuous attempts at humour and wit largely fail and his references to the wider sociopolitical climate of the period are shallow and selective. Oxfam-bound material.

or "some records I quite like" (1/1 people found this helpful)

God knows we could do with a good book on Japanese alternative music. Sadly, this isn't it. Despite a promising start in which Cope gives a concise pocket history of post-war Japanese culture, Japrocksampler swiftly decomposes into a rambling, repetitive chow-down on some of Julian's favourite groups. Unsurprisingly, this results in something of a narrow focus - Cope likes his bands droney and druggy, so the span of the book doesn't reach much further than the territory covered in the seminal Krautrocksampler. Nothing wrong there, except there's nothing quite so tedious as an old hippy banging on about acid trips - and yes, Mr Cope does like to tell you that (wow) he once did some serious head medicine.

He does pay lip service to Japan's highly idiosyncratic free jazz world with a brief reference to guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi - but why no Kaoru
Abe? Similarly, underground legend Keiji Haino appears as a footnote to the story of Les Rallizes Denudes. Admittedly, the Rallizes story is so strange and compelling you couldn't make it up, but considering that Haino's work merits a book in itself, the scant reference feels a bit shoddy. The absence of any reference to the Noise scene is another obvious gaping hole.

Cope has enthusiasm in spades and a surprisingly incisive intelligence. So yes, despite the disappointments this is still an enjoyable read. However, you can't help thinking that he could have dispensed with most of it and simply published the (highly partisan) top 50 he ends the book with alone.
This would at least be a more honest reflection of his original intent.

Undisciplined, self-indulgent, long-winded, repetitive (10/10 people found this helpful)

Julian Cope must be commended for writing a book that will get people exploring Japanese underground music, but that's almost as far as the recommendation goes. "Japrocksampler" is far too long (it would do better to be half its 300 pages) and repeats itself so often it soon becomes a bore to read. Must Cope relate exactly the same events three or four times over, often using the same language? Anybody willing to take a punt on this book hasn't got an attention span THAT low, and doesn't need to be told the same thing over and over.

For all its problems, "Krautrocksampler" did everything it was supposed to do -- it got German kosmische virgins scurrying to the record racks or online stores. It was small enough to fit in a pocket when scouting out record shops, and brief enough that you got a flavour of the scene without feeling it was a slog. "Japrocksampler" is too long, too big (it's a fairly hefty little hardback) and reading it is one long drag. For the uncommitted or merely adventurous, it's not going to appeal as much as a briefer, more focused, and more entertaining read might have done.

There's another problem. With "Krautrocksampler", you knew that Copey's limited range of bands and albums was merely due to his limited knowledge. Those were the only ones he knew out of a much larger scene. That didn't matter, if that was your first step into the music. You started there, and then launched off into the ether. With "Japrocksampler", you get the suspicion that Cope had to struggle to find enough interesting bands to talk about, which is why his top 50 recommendations are bolstered with 1960s Group Sounds albums, a slew of albums from the 1980s, and a couple of albums that even he admits he doesn't like.

Indeed, the 1970s Japanese underground music scene isn't all that big -- I'd say probably less than 100 albums in total, of which possibly less than 40 rate as "rock". Cope is saying too much about too little. That's not to say the brief Japanese underground rock scene of the 1970s wasn't interesting, but once you've got past Flower Travellin' Band, Far East Family Band, Speed Glue & Shinki and a handful of others, there's nowhere left to go. And it doesn't take 300 pages to introduce all those.

Cope also ignores the massive explosion of Japanese underground music in the 1990s, spearheaded by The Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple, Ghost and so on. In fact, he hardly even hints at it. Newcomers would do far better to seek out Sonore's "Japanese Underground Music", a little out of date now (released c. 2000, at the final flush of the scene) but a terrific and exhaustive catalogue. Sadly, that's hard to find, whereas this near vanity release is going to clog the bargain bins for years.

"Japrocksampler" should satisfy Cope's fans -- it's full of his usual self-indulgent drood-speak oversell and sneering comments about bands he doesn't like (for some astonishing reason, he continually expresses his dislike of the classic Foodbrain album, while grudgingly acknowledging its central place in the Japanese rock scene -- a little like making sneering comments at "Sgt Pepper" because it's just too damn cool to do so). For myself, I thought the first 90-odd pages, in which he tones down the language to give a clear, focused, and insightful overview of Japanese music during the 1950s and 1960s, was excellent, and more than made up for the deficiencies of the rest of the book, which was in desperate need of an editor.

Sadly, in conclusion, a fan-only purchase -- but that's fans of Julian Cope, not Japanese underground music.

The Krautrock Sequel (13/22 people found this helpful)

Being a huge fan of the olde Drude and knowing precisely zero about the subject at hand, I took a punt on this and received my copy this morning. So I haven't actually read it yet, but...

It's a gorgeous little hardback book with a great cover design and a set of full colour plates in the centre depicting many of the album sleeves mentioned in the book. The few pages I've read while avoiding work today have been the usual Cope laugh-out-loud funny proclamations (fans of the Head On / Repossessed autobiographies will be familiar with this) and a clearly passionate, inexhaustible, encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject. And, despite being published by mainstream Bloomsbury (Krautrocksampler was self-published by Head Heritage) it might even be worth a few quid one day like the first editions of Krautrock are. Not that we buy these things because we're investors...

Krautrocksampler made me listen again to some of the further-out bands of the time (I was already a fan of Faust, Can, Neu! etc) and I'm looking forward to discovering what the Japs were up to at this time, and then buying a few CDs.

I wish I could say that the Copester's music output was still as essential as it used to be (although Citizen Cain'd was almost-not-quite a return to some kind of form). I can certainly say that his books definitely ARE essential. Buy this, buy Krautrocksampler (if you can), and buy Head On / Repossessed too. And buy the Antiquarian books. And buy the first seven solo albums (but not My Nation Underground because it's poo). OK, I'll shut up now.

Japrocksampler: How the Post-war Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll

Julian Cope

Reader Reviews:

DullRockSampler (0/0 people found this helpful)

or "some records I quite like" (1/1 people found this helpful)

Undisciplined, self-indulgent, long-winded, repetitive (10/10 people found this helpful)

The Krautrock Sequel (13/22 people found this helpful)

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