Having been introduced to The 5.6.7.8’s through their Ah-So single, Peel continued his immersion into their music by getting his hands on their I Was a Teenage Cave Woman EP, which he described as “pretty difficult to get hold of unless you live in Tokyo. And it’s my understanding that it’s pretty darned difficult to get hold of even if you’re in Tokyo”. What I can gleam from having heard it, and you can hear the bulk of it by listening to the last five tracks of this, is that Peel preferred them when they were unleashing their inner Dick Dale rather than when they were trying to be Piss. He gave Pinball Party a couple of plays through June 1992, but a look through some admittedly incomplete tracklistings over June/July 1992 doesn’t show any plays for the sludgy, harder edged tracks on the EP. If this was the case, I think it’s a shame and that his audience, which would in all likelihood have been the only one that their music would have been exposed to on Radio 1, were shortchanged if they were led to believe that The 5.6.7.8’s were nothing more than a bunch of Shindig/Hullabaloo recreators, instead of what they were: the most exciting band to have come out of Japan in a long time. They scorch off the grooves of their records with a sonic assault that is truly breathless to listen to. They make the wonderful Shonen Knife sound pedestrian, while being capable of matching disturbing aural chaos with the likes of the aforementioned Piss. Edie is a Sweet Candy is a fine example of a track simultaneously terrifying and invigorating in the classic 5.6.7.8’s mould. Indeed, it’s their ability to switch from dark to light and sound like an unstoppable hurricane in either setting that makes them so good.
For all that, Pinball Party is slightly conservative compared to some of the tracks on the EP, but the verve and brio of the performance are typically life-affirming and smile inducing. The growl of “Victory!” at the 1:50 mark seems thoroughly justified here.
Video courtesy of CakouGa
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