JUDY ONGG, Futari No Kisetsu, 1968

Posted: January 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 60s, Japan, World | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Because there are still a lot of blank spaces in my countries category, here are three records from Japan this week.

Judy Ongg is an actress, singer, author and woodblock-print artist from Taiwan. Born in Taipei in 1950, she graduated from university in Tokyo and after that, changed her nationality into Japanese. Her career has spanned more than four decades.

Judy Ongg is not doing Rock´n´Roll or Beat music on this record but it´s not too soft either. There is some nice guitar work on these tracks that sounds a bit like this song in this video:

Judy Onggs filmography lists a film called  Cyborg 009 from 1967. I don´t know if this animation film of the same name has anything to do with her but I still liked it enough to share it here:

The jacket, though printed on very thin paper, has a lot of inserts: dance instructions, lyrics and a nice inner sleeve. High production values used quite economically. I don´t know what dance the  dance instructions are for but I it might be the Shake, the Surf , the Jerk, the Loco-Motion, the Hitchhike, the Mashed Potato, the Pony or the Monkey.

Maybe not the Monkey, they don´t really monkey around…

JUDY ONGG, Futari No Kisetsu, 1968

JUDY ONGG, My Lonely Summer, 1968

THE WILD ONES, Kaze-Yo-Tsutaete, 1967

Posted: January 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 60s, Beat Records, Japan, World | Tags: , | 4 Comments

I bought this record more than ten years ago in Bangkok together with a whole batch of other 45´s. This was the only Japanese record I found and it didn´t have a sleeve. I will post some of these records from Thailand at a later date.

The Wild Ones were one of the most popular Japanese Group Sounds(GS) groups, though not the wildest. They were more like the Japanese Beatles and they still play dressed in matching Beatle outfits today.

THE WILD ONES, Kaze-Yo-Tsutaete, 1967

THE WILD ONES, My Little Happiness, 1967

( Michael from Milano just sent in the missing sleeve. Mille Grazie!)

ZOFFY, 1984

Posted: January 22, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: 80s, Japan, World | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Just like the Judy Ongg 45 I bought this record in a Berlin second hand record store a while back. I didn´t know what it was and only picked it up because it was cheap. It is the theme song for the Japanese animation series Zoffy. Apart from the video here I´ve never seen it but this sure looks like I would enjoy seeing a whole episode.

Zoffy seems to be one of the characters in the Ultraman series. Here´s Zoffy fighting a couple of monsters in an episode called Zoffy vs. Tyrant:

I bet there could be a lot more to know about Zoffy but for the moment I don´t really feel like exploring the subject. Thankfully there are some people who like to share their knowledge:

ZOFFY, Side 1, 1984

ZOFFY, Side 2, 1984