{"id":12102,"date":"2017-01-24T05:30:59","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T10:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12102"},"modified":"2016-12-12T09:20:39","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T14:20:39","slug":"shonen-knife-sharp-as-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/01\/24\/shonen-knife-sharp-as-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Shonen Knife: Sharp as Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Japanese have long had an odd fascination for specific bits of Western pop culture. Even if confining the discussion to pop music, there are myriad examples. The 1960s garage rock movement in the US gave way to Japan’s own homegrown variant, the so-called GS (\u201cgroup sounds\u201d) movement. A Japanese answer to ’80s \u201chair metal\u201d was popular for quite awhile, too.<\/p>\n

So it shouldn’t come as a major surprise that Japan would have had its own celebrated pop-punk trio. What is perhaps a bit eyebrow-raising is that that group \u2013 Shonen Knife<\/strong> \u2013 has been around for a very, very<\/i> long time. In fact last December marked the 35th<\/sup> anniversary of the group’s founding.<\/p>\n

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In that time, Shonen Knife has released nearly two dozen albums of their spunky, peppy and just slightly off-kilter revved-up pop. Their album titles alone will give the uninitiated a sense of the mindset at work here: Let’s Knife<\/i> (1992), I’m a Supergirl <\/i>(2001), and perhaps most pointedly their 2011 tribute collection, Osaka Ramones<\/i>.<\/p>\n

If further evidence is needed, one need only dig beneath the album covers and take a look at the song titles. Their self-titled 1990 disc was the first to gain wide distribution in the west, and included \u201cTwist Barbie,\u201d with its immortal refrain, \u201cI want to be \/ Twist Barbie.\u201d Other popular lyrical subject matter for Shonen Knife includes tea, robots, shopping, wasabi and cotton candy clouds.<\/p>\n