I picked up some ’80s band button badges at AliExpress recently: Siouxsie & the Banshees, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Smiths.
Some UK Alternative/Modern Rock buttons I recently bought
More Sega love from Shimamura, plus other game-related stuff for home
These are plush tissue covers I bought on discount at Shimamura, the Mega Drive and Dreamcast. There was also an SG-1000 tissue cover, but I passed on that because I have no emotional attachment to that old console.
One more Mega Drive bath towel!
This is a blanket of a pixelated Neo Kobe skyline from Konami’s game Snatcher I bought on Ali Express. My wife is holding it up for me to take this picture. It is so soft that Ulan got jealous. So, I got her a Dragon Quest Slime blanket from Ali Express for her as a Christmas present. Snuggly girl is snuggly.
Strawberry Switchblade
You may not have ever heard of these two girls from Scotland, but Strawberry Switchblade made a HUGE impact on Japanese pop music and culture in the ’80s. Resembling something like dime store doll versions of Siouxsie, these two girls harmonized wonderfully to make cheerful New Wave pop music, infusing bubblegum sweet melodies with lyrics of melancholy. That android from Robot Carnival immediately comes to mind when I see their clothes. When you watch them, you can see their impact on ’80s J-pop and Harajuku fashion echoes their cute, punk rock doll aesthetic to this day. I see where Strawberry Switchblade heavily influenced the J-pop singing duo Wink in the ’80s. I can definitely see how their fashion aesthetic was a precursor to the “goth loli” fashion which sprang out of Osaka 20+ years ago.
While I was building the KUKQ playlist I mentioned in my previous post, their video for “Since Yesterday” kept showing up in my recommendations on YouTube. I finally clicked on it and loved what I heard. Then the more I thought about it, I unlocked a forgotten memory. I remember hearing a song by them on KUKQ when I was in high school, which was probably this same song. I remember hearing the name of the band and thought that they were so cool, but since I didn’t write it down and I never heard them again on the radio, I forgot all about them.
Their song “Since Yesterday”:
“Poor Hearts” (I particularly love the chiming guitar in this song, and it reminds me of a cross between Siouxsie & the Banshees and Kitchens of Distinction.
A brief history on Strawberry Switchblade:
Interviews on Japanese TV:
Super neat stuff. I bought their CD, and hopefully it will arrive sometime this week. You can see how deeply they inspired the J-Pop band, Wink.
A playlist to re-create the KUKQ 1060AM experience
I’ve been on a retro music odyssey for the past month and a half, going back to so much of the music I loved in high school. I’ve bought CDs from R.E.M., The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Tears for Fears, and Echo & The Bunnymen. I’ve already gushed about my love for this old radio station and its impact on my teen years in my various Greg’s Life essays, so I won’t reiterate all that here. But these are the bands that were played on this legendary AM radio station. I found a few KUKQ playlists on YouTube. One was good, while two others were very short and limited (apparently one was a huge Cranberries fan). I was inspired to make my own playlist. At this moment, I am just short of 400 songs. Of course, there are no songs by Pearl Jam or Nine Inch Nails.
I snagged the KUKQ bumper audio from a file provided on the KUKQ fan page.