Search - Sadistic Mika Band :: Black Ship

Awesome band

Fred Gladden | Santa Rosa, CA United States | 07/16/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There are two albums compiled here. The first one sounds like a cross of Wings and the Pretenders, with country, funk, doo-wop, and punk splattered all over it. Yet recorded in 1973! Then you get their masterpiece follow-up, as produced by Chris Thomas. It sounds more like Badfinger meets Pink Floyd. Really fun Japanese sounding music in there, too. A classic, yet to be discovered and hyped as such. Wish I could have seen them as the musicianship is superb. The guitarist is phenomenal."

Japan's first international rock band?

briannicholls | Mount Martha, Victoria Australia | 05/14/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Sadistic Mika Band featured the songwriting of Kazuhiko Kato, already a very successful singer in Japan before the band was formed, and his wife Mika, who he allegedly nicknamed "sadistic" for forcing him to eat her cooking! They split after three studio albums and a live set, possibly because, if my memory is right, Mika became involved with Chris Thomas, the former Procol Harum and Sex Pistols producer who produced Black Ship. They reformed for one album in the 80's, but with a different singer. "Black Ship" is a collection of tight songs with some great playing, particularly by guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka and drummer Yukihiro Takahashi, who later became part of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. It's an album of its time, and can sound a little dated now, but it's still a good listen, and well worth checking out."

Superstar Japanese band

briannicholls | 03/31/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Kazuhiko Kato (a folk guitarist turned rock and roll musician) formed the Sadistic Mika Band in the early '70s with his then wife Mika. His music is hybrid Pink Floyd, Moody Blues, Camel and the Who- In a nutshell you can guess these guys were mostly inspired by British rock groups of that era. The members of the band read like a list of who's who in the Japanese rock hall of fame. Kuro-Fune (Black Ship) was by far the group's most popular album. The album features a story line: It is about the feudal era Japanese who are confronted by Commodore Perry's fleet (black ships) to open Japan to the Western world. The songs are all thematic to what the Japanese saw when they first saw the foreigner's fleet and the ensuing wonders of the west and their new ways. Songs include hearing about time machines, ballroom dancing, Sunday (a day of rest), smoking tobacco, being told of colors that never existed in the Japanese color spectrum, and drinking alcohol made of fruit. OK, so the Japanese did not have beer and wine until the late 1800s. The black ship album ends with a song "typhoon", which ironically did not happen when Perry's black ships arrived. Most of the earlier attempts by foreigners to land in Japan were pre-empted by killer.. you guessed it, typhoons."