Thread: Asai Kenichi
View Single Post
Old 2013.12.20, 09:58 PM   #114
Glathannus
True Final Boss
 
Glathannus's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 2,423
Glathannus knows what you did last summerGlathannus knows what you did last summerGlathannus knows what you did last summer
Default

If you find a CD in his name, it will only be solo-career material. Each of his bands were signed to different record labels, and sometimes they jumped labels. Until recently, you couldn't even get any one compilation or anthology spanning Blankey Jet City's overall career, because 1991-1995 was owned by EMI while 1997-2000 was owned by Universal. Then Universal bought out EMI, and thus the "Complete Singles Collection" (released on 2013.03.27) can span the whole timeframe, but that's just one band. All bets are off (about which facets of his career we'll get material from) when we start talking about concert DVDs (just like with Shiina Ringo), even though that crosses over the record labels in a way that the studio releases typically wouldn't.

Start with BANG (Blankey Jet City's 2nd album), and if that doesn't do anything for you, then probably none of his other albums will. I'm not saying that's his best one or that you have to like everything on it, but it's a good test.

If you want a mix of material from different bands, the best release for that is Johnny Heaven, his first solo-career concert DVD. At that time his solo-career only consisted of one album, so the concert included nearly an hour worth of material from his other bands. I wouldn't say that Johnny Heaven is his most satisfying performance or setlist, but it ranks really high up there, and it certainly gets the job done if you're trying to become acquainted with several facets of his career.

Interchange Coconuts is my favorite concert DVD. Although officially a JUDE release, it has the drummer from AJICO and the keyboardist from SHERBETS, plus there's little bits of material from Blankey Jet City and SHERBETS. Not the most career-crossing setlist for a new listener, but I think it's Asai Kenichi's best performance on DVD.

By the way, Kiken Sugiru (the solo-career A-side with backing vocals from Shiina Ringo) is consistently disappointing each time he performs it live, because Shiina Ringo is never there, and the guitarwork in the studio recording was done under very controlled conditions which can't be duplicated live. Kiken Sugiru is very much a studio song, which isn't true about most of his solo-career (or BJC/JUDE/AJICO) songs. SHERBETS is mostly a studio band, while the rest of the bands are great either way.
__________________
You know Tokyo Jihen is a supergroup, when you can't blame most of the members for wanting to pursue other projects.
Glathannus is offline   Reply With Quote