{"id":592,"date":"2007-05-31T22:51:38","date_gmt":"2007-06-01T02:51:38","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-12-10T22:41:42","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T22:41:42","slug":"the-greatest-prock-artist-you-ve-never-h","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-greatest-prock-artist-you-ve-never-h\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Prock Artist You’ve Never Heard: Tamio Okuda"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Feeling somewhat humbled by the lack of novelty in my last Thrifty Music<\/strong> installment, I was very pleased to have made a major score on my last 80-cent LP purchase: the album Crache Ton Venin<\/em>, by French punk\/hard rockers Telephone<\/strong>. I’d certainly never heard these guys before, and I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer rockin’ excellence of this disc.<\/p>\n

But then my guilt got to me. See, I’ve been meaning to introduce you folks to another non-Anglophone rocker for months now, and I keep putting it off. But no longer! In the interest of clearing the decks for a Telephone post yet to come, today is the day I finally share my enthusiasm for Japanese procker Tamio Okuda<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I was introduced to Okuda second-hand, by reputation, back when I was going through a bit of a Jellyfish<\/strong> phase a number of years ago. While searching for the whereabouts of main Jellyfisher Andy Sturmer, I kept reading that he had teamed up with some Japanese pop star, writing music for the guy. I found this curious; most J-pop I knew was awful, treacly stuff — though it had been many, many years since I really followed it much. <\/p>\n

This was back in the early days of the InterWeb, and these tantalizing name-drops were all I had — until I took a trip to Japan to visit my brother in 2001. Armed only with a name, I took my pidgin Japanese to the local wrecka stow<\/em> and asked the clerk if he had any Tamio on the shelves. He looked at me in the same way an American clerk might stare down a Japanese tourist who asked if please there might be any Rolling Stones for purchase in your fine music disc shop please — i.e., like I was mildly retarded. He then guided me back to the T.O. section and let me go hog wild. I bought everything I could get my hands on, knowing there was no way to get this stuff back home.<\/p>\n

When I got back to the hotel, I popped open my discman and plopped Tamio’s album 30<\/em> in it, cueing up the one song I knew Sturmer had co-written: “Coffee”<\/a><\/strong>. It satisfied all my deepest, darkest prock urges, delivering a song that sounded like Badfinger<\/strong>, Wings, XTC<\/strong>, and all the best Jeff Lynne hook-craft one could wish for. There was a part of me that felt somewhat ashamed by the music’s total lack of novelty, but the excellence of songcraft was undeniable, and, well, you get the idea.<\/p>\n


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\nAs I plowed through the album, however, it became clear to me that Sturmer was actually a bit of a stylistic albatross around Tamio’s neck. The Okuda-penned material was frequently quirky and featured novel production touches I’d never heard the likes of before. Here’s an Okuda original entitled “103”<\/a><\/strong> that’ll give you an idea what I’m talking about. Check out those nausea-inducing, herky-jerky stops in the rhythm track. How cool is that!<\/p>\n

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A more recent album in the stack I bought, Goldblend<\/em>, was even stronger — in fact, near-flawless from one end to the other. Here’s a track from that album, entitled “Aho”<\/a><\/strong> (meaning “idiot” or “crazy” in Japanese) that also showcases Tamio’s novel approach to production. Listen carefully! Hear that track, buried deep in the background? It’s an entire band, going ape-shit, distorto-bashing crazy, Nirvana-stylee or something. Nifty!<\/p>\n

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But, look, despite these flourishes, the truth of the matter is that Tamio is a total, out-and-out prockist<\/strong>. And, sadly, these straight-ahead, not-bad-but-not-necessarily-good-either tendencies have really come to the fore in his recent albums. The fact that he hangs out with Steve Jordan<\/strong> and Waddy Wachtel<\/strong> ought to tell you something. Here’s a winning song and video entitled “Marshmallow”<\/strong> from his Goldblend<\/em> album that just barely<\/em> skirts the edges of plagiarism (name that tune!) in the name of quality prock. This is as close as I ever want my prock to get to its source material; still, the guy’s winning, everyman personality gets him past the rock misdemeanours hearing, as far as I’m concerned — if only barely.<\/p>