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achuma wrote: Please report back! I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for years. Mainly what I want to know is which one is the gem, 'Returning Golden Bat' or the 1971 'Golden Bat' (I've heard the 1977 version and agree with the sentiments others have posted above!). Or are they both gems? I'm currently suspecting that when people have recommended 'Golden Bat' they are really talking about 'Returning Golden Bat' which is curiously named because it seems to be the earlier one.
Here's phallus' review of Returning Golden Bat on RYM. I may give it another listen now, as I definitely liked it more than him, but it's Saiyuki - The Moon Is East the Sun Is West that I think is the real successor to Throw Away the Books.
achuma wrote: For years I read about this album on a certain website that specializes in esoteric releases from the Japanese underground, and I'd always be intrigued by its description as "mind-meltingly psychedelic" or something of that ilk, but yet the record's asking price of several hundred Euro meant that it was perpetually out of reach. Perhaps it was better that way.
I suppose parts of this live recording of a stage performance could qualify as vaguely psychedelic, albeit in a decidedly "disorienting" way, as in "What the heck's going on?" Alas, the two years of Japanese I took in grad school isn't much help. Most of this consists of people shouting over inconsequential keyboard noodling and rudimentary drumming / chanting. Occasionally some English-speaking people will show up, saying how much they love Japan and that Americans are fat and dying, etc.
If you're fluent in Japanese, have a working knowledge of Critical and Post-Colonial Theory, and possess a deep love for the global 60s-70s counterculture, this just might be the album for you. Otherwise, I suggest you leave Returning Golden Bat to your imagination. Trust me, it sounds better that way.
Saiyuki is so melodic and pretty and fun. Perhaps this time having the spoken parts being in jokey Engrish about contemporaneous hippie touchstones dissipates the cloud of illusion that are bands like Tokyo Kid Brothers' stock in trade in the west, but I was for them. It's so vivacious, and a panacea for all the vacuum-sealed studio rock music turning ears at the time. That album reminds me a bit of the more recent communal Japanese toy orchestra naifs, Pascals (no one can watch this clip of Pascals without wanting to join a commune, NO ONE!- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSnFa-QOUHA). I live for this stuff!
I suspect there must be hours and hours of Tokyo Kid Brothers recordings just put aside somewhere, when they could be adding years and happy tears to my life, gottdamnit! May just retreat into my Magical Power Mako Hapmoniym box set for solace.
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