Episode One

Featured Bands

The Mops and UT

The Mops Rule Ok! The Mops are the undisputed "kings" of the late 60's/early 70's Japanese rock scene who were included in the Psych/Garage set. Japan's premier psychedelicians. These pioneers in their home country, were one of the originators of the Japanese GS Group Sound scene. (what are the Group Sounds? So, when the Beatles visited Japan and performed in Tokyo. Japanese teenagers got so excited that there was an almost dramatic shift in the way young musicians formed groups, played their instruments and thought about fashion and style. This new wave 1960s Japanese rock groupwas called Group Sounds-or GS for short.) Anyway, The Mops were among the first in Japan to experiment with psychedelic studio effects - trying as best they could to make up for the scarcity of hallucinogentic drugs like LSD in Japan! Huge lighting rigs began to appear at Mops shows, and flangeing, wah-wah pedals and fuzz boxes saturated their live sounds, while the band themselves grew their hair even longer, adopted granny glasses, and played blind-folded in order to disorientate themselves and stimulate natural psychedelic effects. How rad is that? The Mops have covered some big British and American bands like the Animals, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors -- but they also wrote originals, such as their Monkees-like theme song, the wonderful "I'm just a Mops" Which is just charming stuff. Check these guys out. They are cool. It's that simple.

Rare Live

Footage (1968) performing "Asa Made Matenai"



Set 1
Garage
Mary Mary - The Shandels
Come See Me - Sandy Edmonds
No Comin' Back - The Palace Guards
Go on Leave - Red Beard & The Pirates
Flash and Crash - Rocky & The Riddlers
Cry in the Night - Q65
Can't Pretend - The Pleazers

Set 3
Psych Garage
The Si-Dells - Watch Out Mother
The Mops - Atsuku Narenai
The Hippy's - Perigiali
Bills and The Psychedelic Band
Adams Boys - Get Away Grom Me Now
Appolonians - Vassilikos

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Sprung from the downtown No Wave scene, UT (Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham and Sally Young) originated in New York City in December 1978. The inheritors of the fertile collision between rock, free jazz, and the avant garde the first manifested itself in the velvet underground, UT soon became a serious force within the New York music scene. The band were joined briefly by film-maker Karen Achenbach in 1979 before resuming as a three-piece and migrating to London in 1981. UT toured the UK with bands such as The Fall and The Birthday Party. Originally releasing albums on their own label Out Records, the band became a favorite of John Peel's and recorded several sessions for his show before joining forces with Blast First in 1987. In the broadest sense, UT was a democracy. Three women trading off on instruments and vocals-the set-up represented "internal democracy in a non-hierarchical structure," to quote critic Dan Graham. They weren't interested in having a single focal point, a star in the spotlight, center stage. Their goals were slyer, and deeply radical: to find the beauty in chaos, the calm at the center of the strom. To wrest the purest expression out of potential anarchy. Their name may have been deceptively simple and declarative, but the music was hardly easily reduced. But then, with UT the journey was more important than the destination.

Set 2
Indie/No-Wave/Post Punk
The Vanishing - Love Sick
The Chinese Stars - (Love) and the Electric Chair
The Sick Lip Stick - Get Up Catch Up
Cut City - Postcard
Anavan - Waiting List
The Rakes - Binary Love

Set 4
APB - Talk to Me
The Unicorns - I was Born
Tracy and the Plastics - Best of 70's 80's and 90's
Clap your Hands and Say Yeah - Satan said Dance!
Errase Errata - CA Viewing
Adult - Contagious
UT - Sham Shack