Benzie goes solo

So, I've had that video up for a few days now; seems I have a little splainin' to do. Most of what follows comes as a result of some conversations with Pacchan and Gimlet in P's ongoing battle to counter "the jazzy," as she puts it.

Asai Kenichi, the titular Benzie, recently went solo after years of drifting around his and other people's bands. It's difficult to get across exactly what kind of rock god he is here (and why he has gone mostly unnoticed by the whitey expats who call this "land" home). One part of my brain says he's like a Japanese Bowie, but his music is nothing like Bowie's, another part of my noodle would characterize him as the musician all the critically acclaimed artists adore.

I'm something of a recent convert to the cult of Benzie and his best known band, Blankey Jet City, but one of my favorite artists, Shiina Ringo, has long been an acolyte in his church.

Imagine me, a wide-eyed undergrad, impossibly thick Greek text in hand, walking across what, from the benefit of hindsight, was in fact a beautiful brick laden quad in the "center" of the University of Missouri campus. In my other hand, I'm carrying a dispenser of my then semi-secret love, an electric blue CD player. The Innocence Mission's "Snow," a song that to this day I can listen to on repeat for hours because it immediately takes me back to those cross campus treks to my Geology class (another secret love), is coming to an end, and AJICO's "Hadou" fades in. I'd downloaded it, because one of my favorite jazz/r&b singers UA had recently joined the band and released this single. It's the kind of song that I stop everything for and listen to in its entirety.

Both Karen Peris and UA have the kind of voice that grates on some peoples' nerves, but I get hypnotized every time.  It's almost as if their voice is a mood, independent of happiness or sadness or hate or love, a mood that always carries with it a kind of poignant melancholia.  Theirs is the kind of music the youngins ignore, because their brains are used to being overloaded on the sugary pop or speedy death metal whose only virtue is how the excessively distorted chords hide how god awful the lyrics are.  The urgency that UA and Karen have is what Benzie has too.  Whether you like it or not, you can't help but listen.

In my recent spat of paying obeisance to Benzie, I discovered he was part of AJICO and had written "Hadou."

It seems I've been a fan for a long time.