Anywhere [Import]

Anywhere by Flower Travellin' Band was a bit of a cult oddity known to the lucky few - I am sure their debut LP Anywhere will sell lots more due to the fact it's cover is used on the cover of Julian Cope's riveting book Japrocksampler (a book that is great, but one I have been rationing out as I read Head On & Repossessed too fast!). The cover is one of the great rock & roll images - I guess one good review would be the one that is in Japrocksampler, 'Anywhere' coming in at # 28 in Cope's Top 50 examples of Japrock. I had to buy it for the cover (the inner sleeve has a great pic of a proto punk rock look akin to the MC5 set against a traditional Japanese figure) and the Cope association, though being a debut LP, it's an ideal primer for their later stuff (the following year's 'Satori' is much wilder stuff and is #1 in Cope's personal list - & set for UK issue too!). Anyway, I received 'Anywhere' and whacked it in the car cd player, out on the road - the place where this album certainly makes sense!

Flower Travellin' Band were Hideki Ishima (guitar), Jun Kozuki (bass guitar), Joji Wada (drums) & Joe (vocal, harmonica) and on their debut they record an original album of covers! Apparently people accuse this of being a "covers album", which on one level is true, but I defy people to instantly cite the track being covered. The sleeve of my edition was in Japanese and I was playing it in my car, oblivious to the song titles, and as I was driving the songs seemed on a trip and following the brief 'Anywhere'-prologue on harmonica, the song kicked in and started off sounding like Jack Bruce/Cream (or a less twiddly Led Zep), but then went somewhere else entirely, making me think of certain Krautrock and Television. I'm not sure whether 'Louisiana Blues' is an original, or a cover of a John Lee Hooker song - all I know is that this song is a trip and is the sound of the Flower Travellin' Band! I'd imagine that people who dig the more adventerous side of rock, bands like Comets on Fire, Dead Meadow, Kyuss, Melvins & Thrones should love this - that whole thing found in Japrocksampler of the Japanese taking something Western (American Rock & Roll) and making their own is very evident here. I don't mean to sound like Jeremy Clarkson, but this is great driving music!!

I had also thought a little of the early primal Black Sabbath, from those tracks that featured Ozzy on harmonica to my personal fave Master of Reality (an album more important than Nevermind the Bollocks!)- as I drove along the highways and by-ways of, er, Worcestershire, I thought to myself that track three sounded like Black Sabbath. Joe doesn't quite sound like Ozzy, maybe he's doing a "Damo Suzuki" and delivering a Japanese take on English - it's more likely that the way Flower Travellin' Band have approached the song is the thing that has thrown me. Cope's description as an "ambient metal assault" more than fits (page 270 of Japrocksampler) and it's not hard to think of Earth and Sunn O))).

The latter half of 'Anywhere' is as great, it's hard to believe that a band got away with covering a standard like 'House of the Rising Sun' on their debut (...yes, I know Bob Dylan did!) - but would anyone think that song could be fresh after the Animals and all that over-familiarity? Cope mentions Stairway to Heaven, and it's a bit shocking how this version sounds like Led Zep's signature tune a year before Led Zep IV!!! These Japrockers decide to play it in a folky/acoustic style and deliver one of the great cover versions - almost rude to call these songs covers and you have to concur with Cope's aversion to it being labelled "a covers album."
'Anywhere' goes out on a high, prior to a reprise of the brief title piece (giving that circular feel), there is a 13 minute plus take on King Crimson's '21st Century Schizoid Man' - one that KC fans should be enthralled by and one that might appeal to those who can't take Bruford, Fripp & co and swear that jazz-prog is just too Floyd/Radiohead!!! Flower Travellin' Band deliver this song in a stripped, raw manner sounding like they were setting controls for the core of the world and nothing would stop them.

Anywhere may not be the best album by Flower Travellin' Band or the best example of Japrock, but it's pretty much convinced me and slowly I am expanding my collection to include Cope's tips - Satori is probably the one, but this is a great place to start. & every home should have a copy of an album with naked Japanese bikers on. Oh yes!!!