Bad guitars

Japanese rockers turn folly to genius

by Carly Carioli

They can't quite play their instruments, they barely speak English, and their albums are so poorly recorded that they make most American lo-fi sound like Phil Spector productions. But Japan's newest punk-rock ambassadors, Guitar Wolf and the Registrators, speak the international language of rock-and-roll rebellion. And their command of punk's visual and sonic vocabulary is as riotously funny as it is transcendent.

Guitar Wolf's Matador debut, Missile Me!, sounds for all the world like a blurry, cruddy, fourth-generation bootleg cassette tape of some long-forgotten live show. At times, as on the instrumental "Devil Stomp," it's completely unlistenable, drowning in static and bass lumber. But when you can make out what's going on, you're caught up in the feeling that you're listening to a lost, secret chapter of rock-and-roll history. Decked out in black leather motorcycle jackets and white T-shirts and jeans, their eyes hidden behind black sunglasses, their black hair slicked back in duck-ass 'dos, Seiji Anno (Guitar Wolf), Billy (Bass Wolf), and Toru (Drum Wolf) plow through 40 years of rock and roll as if it were their birthright. Seiji plays fractured Chuck Berry solos, with slashing Link Wray rumble reverb cranked up to needle-in-the-red fuzz, and he screams like Darby Crash on a Gene Vincent kick -- the whole mess egged on into crash-and-burn moonshine-blitzed stupor. Missile Me! suggests Johnny Thunders at his frazzled junk-addled nastiest, the Ramones suffering a post-apocalyptic nervous breakdown, and a third-generation copy of a badly dubbed Asian remake of Jailhouse Rock all blaring simultaneously in some dank Tokyo basement.

All of which makes Guitar Wolf Japan's reigning bad-asses, if only in their own minds. In truth, though punk has entered the mainstream pop lexicon in Japan, tastes there tend toward the precision-power-chord thrash rumble of metallic hardcore, or the sharply pressed pop-inflected punk of Epitaph-inspired bands like Hi-Standard, who are signed to Fat Wreck Chords in the United States.

Guitar Wolf, like the Registrators and like-minded trash punks the Jet Boys and the 5,6,7,8's, remain obscure in their homeland. But that didn't stop them from writing a song called "Guitar Star" or transforming themselves into the ultimate rock-and-roll animé, stumbling through "Link Wray Man" and "Midnight Violence Rock 'n' Roll" as if they were manifestos of teenage insurrection, and irony be damned. Sucking doesn't seem to bother them, either -- in fact they revel in it. Seiji's riffing may start out as merely haphazard, but it quickly degenerates into violent errant stabs, like a greasy switchblade hood jacking up some unfaithful bombshell. He's saved only by his resolute rhythm section, which at least keeps the songs maniacally propulsive. Yet none of this, apparently, compares to their performances, which moved even the stuffy Tokyo Journal to declare them "so bad they're brilliant."

"All we try to do," Seiji told Maximum Rock 'n Roll, "is re-create the images we have of great rock-and-rollers. All we want to do is jump around with the guitar playing." Which may be an oversimplification (oversimplification being essentially what they're best at), but not by much.

Neither is it much of an oversimplification to say that the Registrators, on the basis of their debut album, Terminal Boredom (Rip Off Records), have the late-'70s LA punk scene down cold. It's all there -- from smart, garagified killer-jangle-trash guitars to scurrilous anthems like "I Hate You," "Trouble Generation," and "Chainsaw Love." It's also there in the Japanese-slurred American English pronunciation, delivered with a tart, snide Anglo sneer, in the "Thanks to no one" of the liner notes, in the matching white starched collars, skinny ties, studded bracelets, and art deco sunglasses they're wearing on the cover. If you look past the recording dates, the production will have you thinking that you're listening to the best band to get left out of The Decline of Western Civilization. As it is, you can only kick yourself for thinking the Japanese would stop at manufacturing cheap VCRs and resign yourself to the fact that the trade deficit just got a little deeper.