It may be another catchy pop-punk tune with a repetitive English title and Japanese lyrics like "Linda, Linda" but "Train, Train" is no Nickelback-esque re-write. Instead, as if challenged to top their previous hit, the Blue Hearts (see here) wrote a stunning song that ended up out-selling "Linda, Linda". In 1988's "Train, Train", the chorus is still incessant and staccato but they prettified the intro, amped up the riff and crafted an even stronger, more anthemic melody. Y'know most English-speakers turn a deaf ear to music in another language and that's really to our own detriment.
Supporting the band may be difficult for Westerners but Amazon does stock a few things.
And while the Blue Hearts broke up in the mid-nineties, Hiroto Kōmoto (vocalist) and Masatoshi Mashima (guitarist) have kept at it with great aplomb, as their current band, the more garage-rockin' Cro-Magnons, proves.
MRML makes no claim of being a world music blog or even an internationalist one. Call us ethnocentric if you must, but we fuss over Britain and its one-time colonies because that's what we know. Sure we've visited Germany and France (with more Euro-punk to come) but it's all been so...Western. Case in point, the only Japanese album I've ever owned was a Shonen Knife CD and I'm guessing that Shonen Knife, like pizza, are not considered an exemplar of the culture from which they originated. After all, while Shonen Knife built up a North American cult following, the Blue Hearts stormed Japan's arenas and pop charts.
(Charming video but scroll down here for a more accurate version of the lyrics).
I'm woefully ignorant of the intricacies of Japanese pop culture, so I'll spare you theories of the Blue Hearts' breaking of cultural taboos or their use traditional melodies etc. Instead, I'll just say that through Western eyes and ears they sound like the Ramones being fronted by Darby Crash - especially with this song's recurring animal imagery. It's hard to believe that this was any nation's idea of what constituted a pop song in the saccharine year that was 1987. The glory of the song, however, is that joyously infectious hook, "Linda!, Linda!" - hear it once and you'll be singing it forever, hell, so will anyone else in the world.
(There is a Japanese film about school girls learning the song for a battle of the bands-type event, and yes, to me this version does sound a bit like Shonen Knife, which is only a good thing.)
Well, I'm not sure how well I've convinced the skeptical to reappraise former Hüsker Dü drummer Grant Hart's (see here) accomplishments. However, I have apparently done a number on myself, as yesterday I purchased his long out-of-print 1990 solo album, Intolerance, alongside the Japanese-only, Bob Dylan Live 1961-2000. This pair of purchases forced me to haul out the old Dylan Stick, that crude tool we who feel compelled to write about music so often use to determine just how well any singer who write his own words and music measures up to the mighty Bob.
It's an endlessly fascinating activity, but the outcome is never in doubt. Bob's untouchable, even if he puts out endurance-defying crap (Christmas in the Heart for fuck's sake!) during his cyclical nadirs, he still fascinates more than most artists at their apex. That being said, Grant Hart and Bob Dylan share more in common than you'd think. They're both Minnesota boys, influential underground song-writers who were later branded sell-outs and who, after hitting their greatest commercial successes (assisted by near-lethal doses of narcotics), crashed and had to rebuild their reputations. Of course Dylan never played drums in a hardcore band and Intolerance isn't Hart's Blood on the Tracks. Instead Intolerance is like the mid-way point between the soundtrack for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and the almost-comeback album Planet Waves. Listen to the fluttering harmonica on "Now That You Know Me" or the rueful anger in "2541" or that warping of a traditional folk melody (probably "A Pair of Brown Eyes") to devastating effect on "The Main" and judge for yourself how high up on the Dylan Stick he gets.
Another of the sad joys scattered throughout Hart's sketchy discography, is the 1990 single. "All of My Senses". In the A-side, an organ-driven dose of thin wild mercury music, there's a weighted pause after Hart sings "I'm using" which might hint that this is a record about heroin. Then the b-sides, "The Main" (an eerily familiar cross between a Lennon ballad and an old Irish one) and the Love cover, "Signed D.C." will remove any doubts about the role of the junk herein. A mighty, sad and beautiful record
Grant Hart's fall from rock n roll grace was swift and brutal. As we said last time, "it seems that in the divorce settlement that Mould got to keep the cultural cache that Hüsker Dü had built up. Hart's solo career did began with brilliance but he soon stumbled and has never fully re-gained his footing."
While the stories from people I know who've met Hart are usually grisly (it's an eight-hour drive to Minneapolis from Winnipeg but it's still our closest urban neighbour) the comments section here at MRML has been alight with Hart defenders. To those die-hard Hart-ians (I can sympathize despite my Mould fandom) here's one of Hart's other highlights, the glowing, "Shoot Your Way To Freedom". The 1991 CD-EP from his band Nova Mob also contains the fine "Ballad Number 19" and, unfortunately, two more "funky B-sides" which are actually not entirely terrible.
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Re: Re-Ups
MRML does not plan to restore all of the content lost in The Great Mediafire Gutting of 2012. Polite requests may be made in the appropriate section, regular commenters will get priority.
