I know it’s tempting to take the lyrics of songs by Japanese girl groups at face value, and goodness knows the chorus of Banana is so sparklingly effervescent as to sound like it had been recorded specifically for a commercial promoting the importance of having your 5 a day, but I’m calling it here and now. This is an ode to fellatio. The fruit of choice for the title clearly gives that away even before Jun Kurihara starts singing telltale lines about dreaming of bananas and eating them gently. She even mentions a friend who she appears to be sharing the banana with, and how watching her eat the banana slowly and gently makes them “feel fine.” Yes, I bet it does...
Now, at this point, I’m sure regular readers (evening, Webbie) may be saying, “For God’s sake, David! In recent posts, your thought processes and selections have taken us from exhibitionism to masturbation and now you’re forcing fellatio down our throats. You’re in danger of getting a one track mind about this kind of thing. Don’t you have any other observations?” Well, if you don’t agree that it’s a sex song, I maintain that this is a knowingly, subversive song because it may also be related to drugs. Either through the urban myth about being able to get high from smoking banana peels or via the reference to mellow yellow banana in the choruses, which suggests that the Nelorie girls may have been fans of hippy par excellence, Donovan and wasn’t Mellow Yellow about getting high from smoking banana skins? Well, no, it was actually about a vibrator, according to Donovan, so subversion begat subversion and Banana remains a sex song, as charged.
Whatever the track was about, it clearly excited the band who put in a performance of such spirit and energy that the accordion solo mentioned by Peel as he read the notes provided by Nelories’s UK label, Sugarfrost doesn’t sound like a novelty instrument, but instead fizzes and sparkles with the suggestion of lust and rampant hormones running wild. It all builds up to a suitably thrilled climax which sounds as though Nelories had been listening to some of Pulp’s recent songs. It’s a most heady brew and arguably the second best track by a Japanese band that I heard Peel play in these 1992 recordings after White Kam Kam, who were also distributed through Sugarfost.
Video courtesy of Webbie who I am most grateful to for providing the track directly from Peel’s BFBS show as broadcast on 29/11/92.
You are very welcome old friend. I should have paid more attention when extracting the audio, but then again it is better to read about it here later!
ReplyDelete