I originally thought I would wait a while and then do something similar to the first series of videos, but I YouTubed a favorite Puffy video tonight and then watched another one and another one and decided to do a block of early (amiyumi Jet Fever) Puffy PVs. I lived and breathed Puffy from '03 to '05, and doubt I will ever be as focused on a single band again. I just really like far too many groups now to concentrate on one of them.
I'll start off with my first exposure to Puffy, who were featured at the end of a
Japanarama video. After playing the tape a few times I realized that the song was actually
good. Little did I know then what a long journey that spark of insight would lead me on.
And on we go.
The next song is really mid-career Puffy (The Hit Parade) and not even a PV, but its the third thing I clicked on and I love this song. And its got lots of cute pictures of Ami, who is totally my favorite.
To illustrate producer Tamio Okuda'a arranging and production skills, here's a "live" robo-pop version of the same cover song. It sounds like the music was recorded in a stairwell down the hall from the vocal mikes, and the arrangement, well, it speaks for itself.
But enough about Tamio. Puffy's other original producer was LA's Andy Sturmer, who was in the band Jellyfish. He named the band and is known as "the godfather of Puffy". His roots are more in the '70's than Tamio's. He also lets the girls sing harmonies, vs. Tamio's inclination towards unison. I like that. Here's an early PV featuring a puzzlingly peripatetic polar bear.
And we'll mix it up a little bit with one of my favorite Jellyfish songs. Very E.L.O. I love just about anything that Andy touches.
The next Sturmer-penned song actually predates Puffy. Ami recorded a solo album before meeting Yumi, and the results were eventually paired with an album of Yumi's in the double CD SoloSolo, which officially is not a Puffy release. It features Ami's pet rabbit. Yumi had a cat at the time, and their pets inspired artist Rodney Alan Greenblat's book Thunder Bunny and Wonder Mew.
It was translated into Japanese by Ami and only distributed in Japan. Rodney did the cover art for all the band's 3" early singles.
It seems only fair to play Yumi's solo single as well. It was written by Pizzicato Five's Yasuharu Konishi. Her solo album was produced by some guy named Tetsutaro Sakurai, whom I know nothing about. A brief Googlesearch reveals that he did some work for the anti-band Morning Musume, and after learning that, I really don't care.
We'll keep with the beach vacation theme with our next PV which was filmed in Thailand. I don't know why this particular version is subtitled in romaji, (karaoke?) but I'm not going to bother finding a cleaner copy right now. A piece of trivia that means absolutely nothing to me is that in the first episode of the Japanese drama "Love Generation", Matsu Takako and Kimura Takuya sing karaoke to this song while doing the punching moves from the music video.
Just for fun, here's a live version, with kind of creepy bluescreen video effects. At this early point in their career, their handlers were trying to get them to do the traditional pop idol synchronized motions, but their choreographers could only teach them the most rudimentary moves because both of them are totally uncoordinated. But that was part of their charm. They became sort of anti-idols, which endeared them with their fans. Later on they just ran all over the place, wearing whatever they wanted to and doing whatever they damn well pleased. Which is how it should be.
Let's get out of the sea and into the clouds. I have no idea why they're up there, anymore than I understand why they were flying around in a low budget spaceship during most of my Jet Video DVD. But who cares?
As we wind this down we'll return to their first album. Even at this early stage, at least in their PVs, they were dressing casually and asymmetrically, and bobbing about in what their fans called their "drunken dancing" style.
We end where it all began. Their first single was a huge hit, launching them into geosynchronous orbit, where they have stably remained for over a decade whilst countless other Jpop bands have briefly shot up and then disintegrated in the atmosphere far below them. I think the song is about meeting people from other countries on the web, but there are lines like "Take every panda and line them up, every single white one". I wish I could find an FAQ on why Japanese lyrics sometimes seem utterly random.
I just stumbled across this, a punk cover version of the song. Very cool.