Copy bands are everywhere in Tokyo. That's not always bad: a carbon copy of some Group Sounds band or other can be enjoyable from time to time, but the sheer lack off originality...of newness...can get really be a drag.

Fortunately, there's the Peacock Babies. While, like those copy bands, they take their influences very seriously, no one will every accuse them of being a copy band. Starting with Kayou Kyoku, a slick, polished kind of Japanese pop most popular in the late 60s and early 70s, the Peacock Babies mix it up with its polar opposite: garage punk and sonic mayhem.

Like many of rock's best bands, on paper, this looks like an awful idea: the execution, however, is something you won't see anywhere else in the world. Credit the band's two guitarists, Gaku Tori and Yoji, for breathing an unimaginable fire into what should be an outdated, stale form.

Recently, the band went into the studio (or, more accurately, their home club, Aoi Heya) to record Psychedelic Town, a collection of Kayou Kyoku tracks as filtered through the band's unique sensibility. Relying on Tori's skills as a producer (most famously, Inu's "Don't Eat," one of the most important albums in Japanese rock history,) "Psychedelic Town" is a fuzzed out blast of grandeur and pain, as ultimately indescribable as it is compelling.

After finishing their first tour across Japan, Tori and Yoji, along with vocalist Manako Kareha, sat down with Jrawk in a Koenji restaurant to discuss youth, age, and being an outlaw...

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JR: First question: the album was recorded live in the club. Did you do any overdubbing?

Manako Kareha

GT: We did all the instrumental parts live, with no vocals, then did Manako later. All the backing parts, no overdubbing. We had fifteen songs, played each three times, so...45 plays! (laughs)

We recorded at (Shibuya live house) Aoi Heya, but Aoi Heya isn't a studio. In a studio, you can punch out, punch in, but there, they don't have the machines! So if one person made a mistake...OK, start again from the top! We used the old time way, the old system.

JR: Why do it that way?

GT: At first, we did it because of money, but really, I wanted that live sound.

JR: Didn't (vocalist) Manako started taking voice lessons?

GT: Yeah, about two months before the recording.

MK: Yeah, I feel they've made my voice tougher, stronger.

JR: Has it changed how you perform?

MK: I've gotten to the point that I've gotten more economical with my movements. I'm more focused.

JR: Has her improvement changed how the rest of you play?

Gaku Tori

YJ: Ah...no! (laughs) If she gets stronger, we play tougher. Our background is punk, and she originally comes from a J-Pop background. She's growing as a rock singer. Vocally, she's a Japanese pop singer, doesn't know that much about rock 'n' roll, especially not punk.

GT: In my opinion, it doesn't matter if her background is rock 'n' roll or not. She's punk. Her existence is punk! She's crazy! (laughs) If she was just an ordinary girl, I wouldn't need her. Her existence is like an outsider. Her image is as important as her voice.

JR: When you put this band together, you've said you had the idea of mixing Kayou Kyoku with punk. When you started the band, did you have her in mind?

GT: We had played a show with her, like a Summer party. But when I got her to sing, I thought "oh my God, that's it!" That's our image, so let's make a band!

YJ: We were looking for a female singer, and we had two other singers in mind, but they didn't join.

GT: She was the last one. Once I saw her singing in Tokyo Yasagure Onna, her style was more Kayou lounge, but she could sing in a more garage style with us. So I thought the last one was best!

JR: The album is all covers. How did you choose?

Yoji

GT: I chose them all! She doesn't really know the 60s, she's too young, and Yoji isn't such a big Kayou Kyoku maniac. That left me, I'm a crazy collector! I'd chose them if they were good for Manako, for two reasons: if it was good for her voice, and the lyrical meaning. I looked for outsider, outlaw lyrics.

I don't really like the major pop stuff from Kayou Kyoku, there's no meaning.

JR: So, Kayou Kyoku is this stuff considered cool?

YJ: You know Kenji Sawada? Glam rock, 70s singer, from The Tigers. He reminds me of David Bowie. He has a good rock 'n' roll spirit, I thought that when I was a kid. He was cool.

GT: I studied a lot of Kayou Kyoku from the 60s, people like Kunihiko Murai, Kyouhei Tsutsumi...Kyouhei Tsutsumi is the Japanese Burt Bacharach. He wrote a lot of big hits. The biggest guy is Yu Aku. He changed the lyrical direction of Kayou Kyoku...before him, Kayou Kyoku was all "I'm bored, crying, I love you baby," etc. He changed that, wrote more directly from life. Deeper life, about humanity. More dangerous lyrics. He started a revolution in Kayou Kyoku , his lyrics were closer to literature. After him, things got more progressive.

Pica

We did "Honmoku Discotheque" on "Psychedelic Town." The lyrics of that are about a girl from a disco who sleeps with everyone, she's almost a prostitute. But she says "who cares about love, who cares about sex, this is real life." Then a guy named Kenji steals the money from the register, and is killed by someone the next morning. But who cares? It's really nihilistic. Not everything, but I'd say about 70% of the lyrics on the songs of our album are like this: who cares about love, who cares about life, fuck you! It's punk.

YJ: You could say it's a kind of blues, the Japanese blues.

JR: This might seem like a strange question, but which do you consider to be the "real" version of the song? Live, or studio?

YJ: Well, we recorded live in the studio! (laughs) Not much difference! But...I love live, playing with an audience.

GT: But the CD is more serious! (laughs) More serious with the singing, more serious with the playing. Live, we're performing, but we're also looking out at the audience, waving to our friends and girlfriends! (everybody laughs) We just get drunk, crazy, stupid drunk. We're more funny on stage.

JR: "Psychedelic Town" is all covers, but when I spoke to you last, you were talking about writing new material.

Monsieur Masuda

GT: I've been writing, but I haven't shown them to the band yet. For me, the music is easy, but the lyrics...I'm writing for her, female lyrics. So I have to change my lyrics, my viewpoint, to that of a woman, and sometimes that's very hard. I can write for myself, that's easy. I've got other things going: Loaded, White Shadows, Peacock Babies...White Shadows is more literary, more like Lou Reed, but the Peacock Babies are very different. I have about three songs now.

JR: So...Manako is like an actress, not just a singer.

GT: You've seen (Manako's other band) Tokyo Yasagure Onna? She's playing a very different character in that band.

MK: (nods) When I'm living my life, I shut a lot of things out, just suppress them. But when I'm singing. these things come out, I open up and let them power the song.

GT: In Tokyo Yasagure Onna, she reminds me of a Japanese (ESP Records' avant garde chanteuse) Patty Waters. But Peacock Babies is something different.

JR: Will the next album be a change in direction? It'll have originals, but where there be a shift in the band's focus?

GT: The next album is important. Now, if people like the first album, it's great, but it's all covers. If they like the next one, 100% original stuff...I followed 60s bands like The Rolling Stones, and their debut was all covers, all R&B, black music. They started with originals later...The Beatles too. I wanted to do all covers first, because rock 'n' roll people HATE Kayou Kyoku ! They think it's "dassai..." Dassai means out of fashion, too old, too conservative. But there are many, many great things about it. I want to show people now that there's a lot of good, strong stuff in there. So, first, all Kayou Kyoku , push that first. Then, second album, we'll mix Kayou Kyoku with other things.

JR: There's a lot of 60s styled bands out there in Tokyo, usually doing GS (Group Sounds) stuff. You guys don't really fit that mold.

YJ: There's a lot of copy bands. We're more of a punk band that covers 60s songs, but most of the GS scene now is just copying, pretending to be a GS band. They want to copy, emulate, get as close to the original as possible.

GT: Yoji and I, in our blood, it's all Stooges, MC5, Johnny Thunders, Ramones. We can't copy when that's what we are!

YJ: (nods) We love enka, GS, Kayou Kyoku , but we're not interested in copying.

GT: There was a review of "Psychedelic Town" in Music Magazine that said we weren't a copy band, that we played Kayou Kyoku with punk blood. New York punk meets Kayou Kyoku . (Sheena and the Rokkets guitarist Makoto) Ayukawa-san said we reminded him of Patti Smith, Television...not Kayou Kyoku. Clever guys, they figured us out!

JR: Were you worried about people lumping you in with copy bands?

(Gaku and Yoji, look at each other, then laugh) We didn't care! Just do it!

JR: How was your tour?

GT: Great! We're not so famous outside Tokyo, but...everybody was very warm. We got a standing ovation in Kyoto! In Nagoya, we played in a new club, we didn't know anybody. But a friend, her son is in High School, and his friends are in a band called Kamikaze Kids. They opened for us, and they're schoolboys! So we had a lot of young kids, a young audience that didn't know anything about Kayou Kyoku. They loved it, dancing everywhere! We were very happy with that.

I shouted at them: "If you wanna play rock 'n' roll, do it until you're old like me! I'm over 50, and I'm still doing it! You're 18, you have a lot of years left!" (laughs) Everybody was very warm.

The last show in Tokyo, it was raining, terrible weather, but the place was full, over 100 people. Everybody was great.

JR: Do you try to create an image? You talk about the MC5, The Stooges, The Ramones, all those bands have a very strong group identity, especially The Ramones. Was that part of your plan?

Manako in the studio

YJ: In the beginning, we didn't think about that much...we just wanted to play, thinking we should get a crazy singer, crazy guitarists, a gangster drummer! I didn't think about it, but now, we've become friends, we've toured, we've become like a family. It just naturally happened. We didn't talk about it, but I think that each member keeps the others in mind when they decide how to perform.

GT: We ended up becoming good friends! I'm like a Daddy with two daughters! (laughs) Our drummer, he lives very far away, but we love his drumming. We've got a lot of respect for each other. Unfortunately, our bassist Pica quit the band recently, 'cause she want do the movie thing seriously. So now we need a new female bassist between 18 and 30. We're more concerned with personality than technique. If anybody wants join, they need to email me.

JR: What do you think you'll still be singing when you're 50?

MK: When I get old, I hope the next generation wants to sing what I'm singing now.

GT: I want to make my own style. Of course, I have influences, but I want my own style. In the Peacock Babies, I'm more of a producer than a performer...in White Shadows, I'm more of a vocalist.

JR: When you write, do you think about her life, or her persona?

GT: Kayou Kyoku is for a wide audience, I don't want to make it too intensely personal. I don't want to sing about personal life, I want something more universal.

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