Search - Mops :: Mops Psychedelic Years

The Mops' excellent debut album, plus a bit and minus a bit

David Goodwin | Westchester, NY United States | 11/29/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I figured I should put this up front: for those looking for the Mops' excellent debut album, "Psychedelic Sounds in Japan"...well, uh, this is it, believe it or not. Retitled and everything. Read on for details...To me, the Mops are the undisputed *kings* of the late sixties/early seventies Japanese rock scene; all of their discs are marked by spectacular singing, playing, arranging, and songwriting. Yet it is their first album, "Psychedelic Sounds in Japan," that gets the most praise, and rightly so; it's a *marked* deviation from most of the other musicmaking that was going on at the time in Japan, with a sharply stripped-down sound and an emphasis on musicianship, songwriting, and atmosphere over production values. As such, it's one of the few Japanese rock albums that has grown an outside-of-Japan following, as it's frequently namechecked in lists of classic obscure albums....this, of course, has always been complicated by the golden rule of obscure albums: how hard they are to find. Original LP copies of this album trade for hilarious amounts! Thankfully, in 1989, Victor Japan started reissuing some of its 60's cachet in its "Vintage Collection" series, which added bonus tracks to several of its catalogue items (irritatingly, though, this album lost "Blind Bird," apparently due to its "offensive" lyrics). In a move similar to that which Capitol US pulled with its Beach Boys catalogue, though, 1995 saw Victor re-reissue the albums with the same sound quality, but no bonus tracks. So you have the backstory. What's this, then? A remastered (it does indeed sound slightly better, but the album always sounded pretty good) version of the first Vintage Collection release...which means that this is the Psychedelc Sounds album, plus two bonus tracks (Atsuku Narenai and Omae No Subete O) and, irritatingly enough, *STILL* missing Blind Bird. Blind Bird can be easily found--it's in great quality from vinyl on Normal Records' "Love, Peace, and Poetry: Asian Psychedelic Music"--but why it's missing on a 2002-vintage reissue of a classic album is beyond me. Oh well.Verdict: I deduct one star for the missing track, but other than that...if you've never heard this album, and you're a fan of tightly written songs, great playing, totally incomprehensible lyrics and a smattering of surprisingly-kickin' covers ("The Letter," "Light My Fire" "Somebody to Love" etc.), this baby's for you. And heck, how can you live without the classic "I Am Just a Mops?""