Minna Tanoshiku Shonen KnifeThe entire original holy relic
Minna Tanoshiku Shonen Knife, Shonen Knife – Everybody Happy, the
music cassette album self-released in August 1982, that even Naoko said
she hasn't got a copy of, is up on YouTube as one continuous MP4.
This, purportedly. Photo from Discogs.com, as they all are. A huge convenience although individual tracks have been made into a playlist before.
This playlist sounds the same, but randomly jumping around in one of these is clumsy.
Min'na Tanoshiku playlist at YouTube 2009 SEP 01 by TheUsed1995 (39:03)
Shonen Knife - Minna Tanoshiku [FULL ALBUM]2017 FEB 25 by Angry Scouser (38:52)
The first demo from Shonen Knife, released on cassette.
Be sure to support the artist!00:00 A01. バナナリーフ (Banana Leaf)
02:33 A02. オウムのポリネシア (Parrot Polynesia)
05:52 A03. 人喰いパパイヤ (Cannibal Papaya)
08:54 A04. サボテン (Saboten)
12:30 A05. BURNING FARM
18:52 B01. パラレル ウ・マン (Parallel Woman)
22:20 B02. 天使がやってきた (Live At バハマ) (An Angel Has Come, Live at BAHAMA)
26:13 B03. スパイダ (Live At マントヒヒ) (Spider, Live at MANTOHIHI)
28:36 B04. わたしは現実主義者よ! (I Am A Realist!)
30:50 B05/B06. つるのひとこえ / 亀の子束子のテーマ (Voice of the Crane / Tortoise Brand Pot Cleaner Theme)
32:18 B07. 惑星(プラネット)X (Planet X)
34:06 B08. サマータイム ブギ (Summertime Boogie)
36:27 B09. ミラクルズ (Miracles)
About the tracks: To be like the 1982 MC release, the digitized version should have 14 tracks
in all, not 13. "Voice of the Crane" and "Tortoise Brand Pot Cleaner Theme"
are listed as separate cuts in the original handmade insert sheet.
This insert came with the smaller second run of cassettes, but there was
no change in the information that I see:
From the second production run. Pretty decent photocopy for the time. "Voice of the Crane" is the standard song title in English, but it leaves out the modern
connotation of
tsuru no hitokoe. Literally, that's the first call of the crane — meaning the
big guy, the red-crowned Japanese crane. They have a very substantial honk. A couple of
centuries ago you might hear that at the New Year as a super-auspicious omen. Nowadays,
except for a small population hanging on in Hokkaido, the cranes are all gone from Japan.
People use the phrase ironically to mean the Voice of Authority, or the final word in a debate.
At 38:44 the Tape Lady is instructing you:
"This is the end of the tape. Please remove the last tape. Please listen to the next one."
このテープはこれでおわりです。テープをさいごなります取って下さい。次わを聞け下さい。
Kono TĒPU wa kore de owari desu. TĒPU o saigo narimasu totte kudasai. Tsugiwa o kike kudasai. A super veggie burrito says the girls got this voice sample off an English conversation
instructional cassette from a school language lab.
About the production: スタジオ・ワン (STUDIO ONE, Osaka)
Site of Shonen Knife's first live performance of record, this is called a "club" at Wikipedia.
Since it's where SK practiced, it was more likely a rehearsal space with recording facilities
and some limited ability to stage a show. That package is common. You have no idea how
many Studio Ones there are in Osaka till you try to find a reference to this one. No dice.
YAMANO CLUB
Haha, so risible. The independent production studio where Naoko stashed her futon.
Tracks 7 and 8 were taped live at relatively tame little Osaka venues with eclectic policies
and open-minded clientele. Both have closed, but one reopened; new ownership I'd guess.
MANTOHIHI 1971-198?
Jazz / Rock cafe in Osaka's Abeno Ward
mantohihi.planet515.com/index.html "MANTOHIHI" is "baboon". Hamadryas, particularly.
Livehouse BAHAMA
Another jazz and rock club in Amemura
jammers.osakazine.net/e9617.html It closed in November 2006 for a while, but seems open for business.
〜〜〜〜〜
No lineage for the recording, duh, but it sounds not too bad. "Miracles" on the tail of Side B
is pretty messed up, but that's been painstakingly baked in. There's no way to tell what it
might have sounded like hot off the master tape.
Fun as it might be to download this, it doesn't seem you can.
So just go buy yourself a copy, ahahahahaha.
The
Minna Tanoshiku videos I've found on YouTube show signs of having come from
the same legendary rip posted in 2007 by the blogger styled Trapper Jen, M.D.
(sometimes, Jenn The Benn).
〜〜〜〜〜
Unsourced album writeup at English Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minna_Tanoshiku …the first 50 copies were released by the band themselves, and the insert
features the lip prints of the three band members, although Michie Nakatani
once said that the lip print was by her grandmother. An additional 20 copies,
without the lip inserts, were pressed by Zero Records before the band
requested that further pressings be ceased…There are various hearsay stories about this. Details and quantities vary, nobody
cares enough to check up. Michie was pulling someone's leg about her grandma
(why don't you ask me a real question?).
Let us read from the Book of KnivesWhen the band were testifying on their honor in their 1998 discography
for the
Shonen Knife Land almanac, they said this:
We took the music we recorded and dubbed it one by one onto 40 tapes at home.
We all kissed the insert and left our lipstick mark. It was a romantic strategy that
we hoped would be able to move the tapes off the shelves. I don't have even one
tape, and that makes me sad. But this product has lots of memories. (Naoko)
〜
This cassette combined music that we recorded in the rehearsal studio with things
we overdubbed in Naoko's room. I think it sounds really recent even though we
recorded it so long ago. It evokes the feeling of an early Shonen Knife that was
feared nothing [sic].
A cassette tape where I remember we made both the tapes
and the inserts one by one. (Michie)
〜
It's full of a variety of things like a 10-second long song and a song used a
drum machine [sic]. (Atsuko)
Paint marker on your band's cassette is punk
Contrary to Wikipedia, Zero Records had nothing official to do with
Minna Tanoshiku at all.
Discogs.com
says a second edition of 39 copies was dubbed by the XA RECORD private label
of the J-punk band Die Öwan (production by Seiji Toyota, with help from Masahiro Tsuda and
Koichiro Tsuji). That's the same production info as for the home-assembled first release; except
that the front insert card changed, and it doesn't sound like Shonen Knife duped their own
cassettes or stuffed their own cases in the kitchen on the second round.
By tradition, the band halted production after just 20 copies were made. That might be
a myth, but XA RECORD was a cottage concern so it's easy to think that they could do
20 dubs × 15 minutes each on the first day, and get a sheepish phone call next morning.
Not quite everybody happyIt does seem that the band doesn't want their first baby to be seen in daylight.
Naoko cherishes the memory, but would rather you forgot.
Why be embarrassed? Suppressing this album seems misguided.
If I had my way, it would be cleaned up and re-released instead.
Primordial Shonen Knife, this is it. Creativity, girlish silliness, wobbly performances,
random experiments, perfect accidents, unpredictable outbursts of enthusiasm, ideas
that are just plain weird, invincible belief in sheer possibility, the cherry-blossom-
and-pork-ramen aura of Japan… it's all here.
If this is your idea of Knife Heaven, then all of their later career has been one long
downhill slide. Although, ironically, they have never stopped trying to grow and improve.
Personally, I see it both ways; but one of those ways is a dead end.
Here is a wild-caught example of "First Knife, Best Knife".
I'm not trying to embarrass anybody, it's just representative.
The occasion was the appearance in 2007 of the digital transfer
we probably have here.
…"Genki Shock" had two or three good songs on it.
The rest of the album sounds like Naoko doing a bad
parody of SK… "Minna Tanoshiku" reminds me of why
I loved and still love SK so much and gives me some
renewed hope, however little, for the future…Hope for the future, however little: that it will be just like the past, because
together with Michie, we know what Shonen Knife is and Naoko doesn't.
The May 2007 posting of a digital transfer of
Minna Tanoshiku was at the defunct
blog of trapperjennmd.org. (The blog
moved. There was also a
halfway house.)
Trapper Jen did not produce the transfer. She grabbed it and reposted, possibly
from www◯jmp3◯net.
Don't bother going, those sources are extinct.
The album's out there if you're inclined.
It pains me to think Naoko prefers that you not listen to this. You can't
harmonize a rights-holder's refusal to provide with a fan's imperative to hear.
But if YouTube had had a complaint, you wouldn't be playing these vids.