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PRICE:
$28.00
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1-2 Weeks
ARTIST
TITLE
Throw Away The Books, Let's Go Out on the Street
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
SWAX 062CD SWAX 062CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
1/19/2004

"Typical of the company's early, crazed style is the recently reissued Throw Away The Books, originally released on their own label in 1970. Confusingly, there is a film soundtrack of the same title, but this is the extremely rare original theatrical version and contains entirely different material. Subtitled 'A High-Teen Symphony,' the performance centers around untrained adolescents reading out their own tortured, angry (and in one case, stuttering) texts and poems. Their stories of family disintegration and mother-hate, dreams and hopes for the future, and love songs to teen murderer Norio Nagayama and Mick Jagger are set to an attractively rough and ready pounding psych-rock soundtrack largely composed by organist Kuni Kawachi. Kawachi had been a member of pioneering Prog group Happenings Four and his brooding organ riffs feature throughout. As well as heavy rockers like the great opening 'Lets Go Ornette', with its ripping fuzz lead, Orff-style choral chants and motorbike effects, Kawachi was also capable of delicate, folkish pieces ideally suited for some of the company's outstanding female vocalists, several of whom developed successful singing careers outside of Tenjo Sajiki. Also of note is a track composed by a young design school dropout, Shinjuku street hippy and winner of a nationwide longhair competition, by the unlikely name of JA Caesar (Tenjo Sajiki also had its own Sinatra and Salvador Dali). Set to a simple handclap rhythm, Caesar's tale of the panhandling life possessed a subtle melodic strength and depth that hinted at the minor keys of traditional folk song. Caesar soon came into his own, composing all the music for Terayama's performances and films for the next decade, and finally inheriting the remnants of the troupe after Terayama's death in 1983." -- Alan Cummings, The Wire.