Japanese psychedelic-lite bands of the 1960s

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Nice find! Info on Japanese rock bands of that era is scarce.

There are a few collected together here: http://www.youtube.com/user/ThePsychedelicGomper/playlists

There is one not (very good book) by Julian Cope called “Japrocksampler” from 2007 that covers some of this, but tends towards heavier bands. It feels like he just wrote down things that Japanese informants told him, without really getting the significance or larger cultural picture, and it’s riddled with errors, but it’s a start. It was translated into Japanese to not very good reviews, but it did spur several Japanese authors to write better books on the subject. There is a wealth of this stuff re-released on CD in Japan, but not much of it has made it into English. Here are a few titles that are available on Amazon - “Nippon Girls: Japanese, Pop, Beat & Bossa Nova 1966-70”, “GS I Love You: Japanese Garage Bands of the 1960s” (featuring the “group sounds” bands that popped up after the Beatles), and “Nippon Guitars: Instrumental Surf, Eleki & Tsugaru Rock 1966-1974” (featuring Takeshi Terauchi, the king of Japanese surf guitar). If you want to go back further, a British label just released a Cd of the early recordings of Masaaki Hirao, one of Japan’s early (1958-1960) Rockabilly stars, which is pretty fun.

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