video: Japan - Art of Parties (live)

Well, it has been many a year since the demise of new romantic darlings Japan (which oddly enough was an English band who got famous with songs about China), and in looking at some footage from their heyday (1980-82) they really were an eccentric, but exciting lot.

This video dates from a performance at the Old Grey Whistle Test, and shows a typically distant gloomy crooner of a David Sylvian competing with fretless bassist Mick Karn for the spotlight (a tortured competition that never really ended and led in some part to the disintegration of the outfit). They are both immensely cool and detached (and dressed bloody loudly I might add), but striking that a band that started as a campy glam clone of Ziggy-era Bowie could evolve so rapidly into art-pop wunderkinds.

The sad part of this is that they give more face time to the session guitarist sitting in than to proper members Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri, the latter being almost totally absent from the footage. The annoyance is compunded because this is one of those tracks where Jansen is really going to town on the percussive front, and Richard? Well, he always was the original Nick Rhodes-type (which is to say he is the original imitator of Brian Eno, but this goes without saying).

The song itself is one of their best. Quirky, arty, and anchored by a sense of lopsided funk. Just what was necessary at the tirn of the 80s.