Part 4

The story of MINX by Bruceminx.

Installment 4, written May 2008, in which MINX are in the wrong place at the right time, but have a laugh anyway.

Oh no, life gets complicated. 1998.

In the first half of 1998, the mixing sessions for the album and filly-shirted gigs turned out to be the end of the brian-steve-bruce-shawn MINX. But a glorious end. Sky Records were taking off, and begged us for some songs for another EP. We agreed to use some of the album recordings which we were going to release anyway, a sneaky thing to do I suppose, but they encouraged us! Before we knew it, SHMINX was released onto an unsuspecting public. I was told 1000 were made, I was told 1000 were bought, within a couple of months. I don’t know if that’s true, but we did get a percentage of our money back in royalties, so I believe it!

In fact, SHMINX is a super-cool MINX rarity, not only because it was ‘deleted’ soon after release (now there’s an out-dated phrase!), but because it contains the second version of BELLY DANCER – which in the end was absent from the album. Also some amusing sound effects, hoo-ha!

SHMINX tracks:

THE PLEASURE SEEKERS
LOVELY GORGEOUS
WHAT FRANK SAYS
BELLY DANCER
LOVE HARDER
CAMERA, CAMERA

Apart from Belly Dancer, none of these songs had been heard in recorded form before. And as they were sonically wonderfully produced (except for the tom-toms – but that was my fault) we were falling over ourselves with excitement when it hit the shops in about May. The mind boggles though, again. Just who did buy it from those “Japanese Punk” racks? All I know is that I’ve just checked the internet (exactly 10 years on) and some Japanese CD-seller is auctioning a copy under the banner “RARE!”. So it must mean something to somebody.

SHMINX was very soon overshadowed, as far as we were concerned, with the album. An accumulation of 2 years’ work, and it has to be said, a proud moment for Brian, he being the brainchild of it all.

MINX’s 1st album: SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND

Tracks:
NOTHING TO LOSE
WHAT FRANK SAYS
THE PLEASURE SEEKERS
SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND
SMILE AGAIN
GET DOWN
LOVELY GORGEOUS
MURDER LOVE
THE WORST I CAN
LOVE HARDER
CAN'T WAKE UP
COME BACK
SAY NO
CAMERA CAMERA
SLEEPYHEAD

Tracks 2, 3, 7, 10 and 14 you might recognise from above; tracks 1, 8 and 13 were vastly improved versions of songs previously ‘released’ (or at least sold) on tapes. Quite a few of these have always been live favourites because of their bouncy quality (oo-er!). NOTHING TO LOSE, GET DOWN and WORST I CAN have been known to put smiles on the faces of the most ardent punk or metal fans, while SMILE AGAIN, CAN’T WAKE UP and SLEEPYHEAD are soppy as you like. The title track is a pop classic, plain and simple. Well it blooming well should have been!! Bop to the infectious beat while the lyric brings images of a date gone wrong and white-eared elephants… I could go on similarly about all these great songs. But I think I should stop or it will sound like I’m blowing Shawn’s trumpet (not a nice thought). It’s about time someone wrote a proper review of SFTW – volunteers please!

Summer 1998, England.

Minx played 2 wedding parties in the UK in 1998 – to this day the only gigs they’ve ever played there!! Of course this was in front of all our mates – but I mean a LOT of mates and mates’ mates – and went down a storm. But, in terms of the band’s career, it was a bit unfortunate that just as the first album was released, most of the band became … absent from the job in hand. Rather than coming too soon, we left too soon. In the summer of 1998 MINX were absent from their ‘homeland’ of Japan, just as the album hit the shops.

Nevertheless, Brian had fervently plotted the next phase of MINX, and by October I’d returned, finding that both Mike and Ali had already been rehearsing new and old songs with Brian and gigs were on the cards.

Mike had been there all along, of course. His only problem up until this point was that he played the guitar…and did MINX want a talented lead guitarist that might refine our sound? Of course not, so we got him to play bass. In retrospect, the fact that he quickly became a virtuoso bass player too, instilled some order into the band (hard stares on stage!), started up the website etc. etc. didn’t do us too much harm, I suppose.

Ali and his skills on the keys had been spotted when he played for a couple of bands around Tokyo, and seemed like just the chap for our ‘gang’. Used to working with pros, it took a little while for him to get used to musical descriptions the MINX way (“like water”, “a bit more rrrrr”, etc.), but before you could say “marvellous!”, MINX were re-born.

It already seems out-of-date, but at the time having your own CD made, holding it in your hands and seeing a whole box full of them was jolly exciting. Ooh, those shiny wrappers! Gigs became harder work, because we had to carry the box and set up the CD stall ourselves. (MINX have always been shy of asking others to help us with the work…)

The slight irony being that there we were, a new line-up playing new songs and no longer playing quite a few that were on the album…now selling the album. But sell that album we did, and I should think so too, because it’s great.


On the edge of your sofa for the next one? Instalment 5 features cheekiness in Osaka, more inappropriate billing, and the return of The Horn!

Part 3

The story of MINX by Bruceminx.

Instalment 3, written August 2007, in which MINX finally get down to a hard day’s work.

One murky night in a murky studio on the 3rd floor of a non-descript building in Ichikawa.

Quite a lot of bands end up recording during the night in their early days. Why? Because it’s cheap! Well perhaps in retrospect MINX could have spent a bit more cash and more than a single night on this recording, but what’s done is done. What became the first MINX EP “MINX” (also known as ‘Debut’) was recorded, packaged in a lovely eco-friendly cardboard sleeve and released onto the world before the end of 1997. Err well, onto a select group of Japanese teenagers.

Tracks:
KFC
WHO YOU WANT TO BE
SAD I SAID
VIRTUALLY
HAPPIEST DAY
TOGETHER

Apart from not being able to hear much, not a bad little EP. KFC – a simple grungy ditty beginning and ending suitably chaotically. Features a drum intro which would have been much more effective were it audible. Who You Want To Be was a taste of things to come – the swingy danceable cheeky sound of MINX superpop. “Just the right amount of ska” quipped one reviewer, quite rightly. Sad I Said is an early MINX classic, begging to be re-recorded ever since. Steve had a lot to do with the camp vocal break and the song’s general bum-wiggling quality. Note also the featured cow-bell, something I insisted on for the added spice, but it still amazes me that at the time I couldn’t see the benefits of treating it as percussion and recording it as an extra track…doh. Virtually continues the bouncy mood despite contrasting lyric, and featuring some nice trumpet-work. this is followed by the second (but not final) recording of Happiest Day, a true MINX classic, mixing chants of happiness with hard guitar and camp bits – on many occasions this song was to lift an evening to a higher plain. Rumours of Captain Sensible inspiration might or might not be true. The closing Together is weighed down with emotion but beautiful musically. Another track pining for super-production.

Before you could say minx-shminx, Sky released ‘Punker Shot’, 21 tracks of budding young bands, and including ‘Happiest Day’. Er yes, a golf/punk joke, that one.

So there they were, SKYR-0001 Nicotine’s debut, SKYR-0002 MINX’s debut, and SKYR-0003 a compilation featuring both. Ready for joint world domination? Not quite – Nicotine had been doing their homework, but not MINX – we didn’t really appreciate the importance of categories in Japanese music. A Japanese label. An indie label. A punk label. So, MINX are Japanese indie punk! Err…hang on…that doesn’t quite work. But to this day you’ll find MINX CDs in “J-punk” racks in Tokyo CD shops. Still, business never was our forte. Nicotine meanwhile quickly became stars on the scene and remain so.

The truth is, Nicotine quickly became genrefied and stayed that way, but at the very beginning saw the whole Sky label with a much wider definition. There were a couple of other ‘pop’ acts on Punker Shot, but by the time ‘Punker Shot 2’ came round, you couldn’t move for loose hi-hat count-ins, machine-gun speed drumming and mid-song ska breaks. Members of MINX chuckled – probably still do – at the thought of an 18-year-old Japanese kid buying a MINX CD on recommendation (and there were quite a few), expecting “WHOOAA!” of the NOFX variety but actually finding the bum-wiggle-inducing Sad I Said or sombre Smile Again. Did they force themselves to like it? Did they flog it at Disc Union in disgust? Or did it convert them into lovers of cheeky idiosyncratic British pop? Should we laugh or should we cry?

2 ironies: The MINX EP is the most expensive MINX CD in Japanese shops. This should not be the case. It has apparently sold more than any other MINX CD in Japan. This should not be the case, either. But hey! If you’ve got a copy, you’ve got a collector’s item.

Anyway…back to the fun. MINX had just about done away with covers by the end of 1997, and the set was boosted with the newer songs Together, The Pleasure Seekers, Lovely Gorgeous, Something For The Weekend, Get Down, The Worst I Can, Smile Again, Come Back, What Frank Says, Love Harder, Formula 4, Can’t Wake Up and Camera Camera. As soon as 1998 came around, it was straight into the studio – this time a proper studio. In the first 6 months of 1998, we demoed 6 songs, recorded 16 songs properly, and 2 more CDs were released – not bad for a (a-hem!) hobby band. Noguchi-san became the first ‘5th member’ of MINX, by being an extraordinarily patient engineer, and putting up with our lack of experience, lack of Japanese and lack of money, and despite this helped us produce the masterpiece that is SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND. Or perhaps Mike was the 5th member? Mike contributed at least 2 significant guitar bits and some vocals to these recordings, as well as being our most ardent supporter.

Gigs around this time were becoming glorious. Frilly shirts, camp ‘ski’ dances and on one occasion high school girls’ skirts were just the start if it. Gigs ranged from playing to 3 mates at a free bar (a memorably snowy night) to full-on punk festival nights, when we were somehow stars but weird misfits at the same time. It’s just as well Japanese punks are polite! It’s hard to describe the feeling of walking out on stage in your best pink shirt, ready to make the audience bounce and smile, only to be confronted by a sea of quizzical Japanese faces topped by multi-coloured mohicans. Even stranger to see them eventually smirk and sort of wiggle – a bit.


Can’t wait for the next one? Instalment4 features euphoria, boxes of beautiful CDs…and a suicidal career turn.

Part 2

Instalment 2, written May 2007, in which MINXness become a reality.

December 1995, London.

Brian has ideas bursting, so he commits to tape what he can in a day, along with a little help from Lee Murphy. The results is an eclectic foursome of kinky-gentle-punk-bitterness – sowing the seeds of Brian’s grand plan for MINX.

Tracks:
BELLY DANCER: As cheeky as you like. Inspired by Right Said Fred.
TO LOVE YOU: A laze in the sun. (Nice ditty only once ever played by the band itself.)
NOTHING: Soon to become NOTHING TO LOSE, and written way before Nicky Wire’s Wattsville Blues.
DID WE: Soon to become MURDER LOVE. The bravado was a bit difficult to recreate live…

The fact that MINX themselves didn’t really record this tape didn’t stop them selling it at gigs. It’s long enough ago to admit that now. Well other songs were rehearsed and entered the early set: Minx, Who You Want To Be, Virtually, TexMex, Sad I Said, You Never Know, Say No, Rokepic, One Of The Family, Night time, KFC, Hideaway, Happiest Day, High. I’m guessing but I’d say most of these were in the set for the first gig in April 1996. Not bad going really. Some of these were abandoned eventually because there were better ones coming…and some because they weren’t very good. Oh, and we had a few covers which I’m not going to admit to.

The First Gig.

Nerves, sweaty bodies, beer, too many photos being taken, some good bits, and lots of embarrassing bits, but a momentous event nonetheless. I do remember Steve’s face as he avoided eye-contact with everyone (only to find me, of course) just before You Never Know, the first time he’d sang lead and played bass at the same time. I also remember putting on make-up to look like Bjork, and Brian wearing nothing but dungarees. What were we thinking?

On the road? Nope, on the train. Minx never stopped their day-jobs and toured anyway, they’d be illegal in Japan if they did. So they have always been an evening-and-weekend band, and Tokyo being Tokyo, we always travelled by train. (Now there’s honesty for you; just think of all those dishonest bios you’ve read…) Of course if this whole story had happened in Britain, the transport would have been a transit van and the equipment stolen 7 times in the first year then we’d have packed it in. Instead, it was a case of taking guitars, sticks and sometimes amps on the train, and if you forgot anything, just pick it up at lost property the next day. Yes, that has happened a few times. And nothing was stolen.

A nice little coincidence. The British pub in Tokyo. That was a new concept in 1996, but thank the lord – they pay you to play! The alternative is a ‘live house’ (venue) where you buy tickets to re-sell – in other words they charge you. Of course there is a reason for that – the proper stage and gear, a sound mixer and lighting engineer – compared to the knackered drumkit and bass amp you have to sometimes thump, sometimes kick, in the pub. The experiences of live houses, with their fanatical Japanese music fans, vs. British pubs, with their drunken ex-pats, are…how do you say?…different, so we did the obvious thing, and got ourselves booked into both. So a balance was quickly achieved – earn £200 at the pub alongside the ‘blues’ band one week, spend it at the live house alongside the ultra-serious teenage electronichiphopgothpunks a week later. The best of both worlds, in the true sense, and a grand time was had by all.

(The three of us experimented with make-up and skirts around this time but…that didn’t last long. Now if you want THAT story, you have to buy the book – and persuade me to write it first.)

It was time to record a few songs. We had to get a bit more honest with what we sold. So, a four-track demo was done in a night or two:
HAPPIEST DAY
MINX
SAY NO
ONE OF THE FAMILY

No Reviews of this first demo exist, so here goes:

The sound of a burgeoning band struggling to find a decent studio, a decent tuning device, and work out the best way of recording – it sounds like each part was recorded in the dark on an empty stage in the middle of the night! BUT, what potential!

Not only did this give us something else to sell, but it showed us what worked and what didn’t. The song ‘Minx’ didn’t, I suppose. The only regret I have about dropping ‘Minx’ was that we were not able to have a track called MINX on an album called MINX, by MINX. Well…never say never.

And then there was Shawn.

Bruce arrives first at practice, a very rare occurrence. Shawn walks in and the dialogue begins:

“Sorry I’m late”

(pause)

“Erm…who are you?”

And so Minx became a four-piece. (Minx aren’t known for their functionality, but don’t worry, they’re good friends now.)

The idea with Shawn was to add a new dimension to the sound – trumpet – but Minx ended up with so much more: a unique sense of the crazy the humorous and the fantastic, and (is this a cliché?) stage presence, evidenced through the magical effect on a certain age of Japanese woman Shawn’s dancing has. Brian’s masterplan was now in place: put the catchy licks on top of the raaaaaaaaack, and an extra voice for harmonies and shouting, and each level of the sound spectrum is accounted for. Well Ali might have something to say about that but you know what I mean.

Minx meet Nicotine

Around the time Shawn materialised, we met a shy young Japanese band who played nice punk but told us they’d only just changed from being techno outfit. Two of them spoke English, they all had very nice shiny equipment, but most impressively of all, by the end of that first conversation they said “We’re starting a label – would you like to release a CD?”. The answer, if I’m not mistaken, was “Yes”. Little did we know that Nicotine would soon be the number 1 Japanese melocore band (which either sounds very impressive or nonsensical, depending on your point of view), and the whole thing would bring us mixed fortune, but the fact that they were in exactly the right place at the right time for us is something we can’t deny them. Thank you Nicotine!

Desperate for more? Instalment 3 features hilarious gigs with Minx doing camp dances in front of Japanese teenagers with mohicans, and acoustic ballads filed under “Japanese hardcore punk”. Hoo-ha!

The story of MINX by Bruceminx.

Instalment 1, written April 2007, in which the band is conceived.

Sometime in the mid-nineties. It is about 1am. An evening, like so many others, following working hours of 2-10pm, in an izakaya in Ichikawa. There’s a larger-than-usual bunch of (mainly) Brits guzzling the local brew and getting rid of stress the best way Poms know best: whinging. There are a couple of birthdays though, and time to celebrate. Through the haze, post wasabi-eating competition, Brian spots a chap called Bruce playing drums with chopsticks and beer glasses. Brian’s met Bruce a couple of times before but this time ideas are sparked. After one too many glasses break and a chorus of “shut the f*ck up”, Brian pops the question: “do you want to be in a band?”. MINX’s seeds are sown quicker than you can say “smash your bicycle into a lamppost on the way home and leave a permanent scar”, which is exactly what Brian did.

Hang on, step back a minute.

Now although some readers may know exactly what I am on about, others will have no idea, so here’s a quick glossary:
izakaya = Japanese pub, more like a drinking establishment with lots of food and bright lighting
wasabi = ground green horse-radish, not designed to be swallowed in lumps
working hours of 2-10pm = the norm for English teachers in Japan, especially the just-arrived variety
Ichikawa = the far western part of Chiba, which in effect is the east of Tokyo, a tightly-packed commuter area which doesn’t have a lot going for it other than the Sobu and Tozai lines, but there are plenty of establishments of all sorts, including English schools demanding native-speakers, and places to drink late, which not so much ‘demand’ but ‘magnetise’ English native-speakers

So what were Brian, Bruce, Stephen, Michael, Ali and Shawn doing in Japan anyway?

It’s the early nineties. The UK is represented to the rest of the world by a crumbling royal family, a prime minister and foreign secretary who were SO bland and sounded like a couple of toads, and music was all baggy and floppy. There wasn’t much for young Brits to be proud about. There was a survey at the time which reported more than half of young Brits wanted to live abroad. Well, we did. Shawn meanwhile, from the good old U S of A, was just so proud of his country invading others. Not. At least he had Grunge.

In our early twenties, in one way or another all of us needed to try something new. Brian had given a few years’ hard work into Family Gotown only to be dropped by Phonogram, we all have our own reasons, but fate took us to Japan. Lots of places are attractive, but not many can offer the mystery AND a job which earns enough money to fund the fun at the same time. And anyway, the place is intriguing to Brits and Americans, because you hear so much about it but actually you know nothing about it until you go there. Then you either love it or hate it, but most love it. You’d be surprised how many ‘native English teachers’ there are there.

Anyway, late 1995.

The thought of forming a band seems impossible to start with: there isn’t enough room for a bed in our flats, never mind drum kits and PAs. And nobody drives. Well, Brian makes a discovery: they do it differently in Japan – studios are fully equipped! So for the cost of a new pair of drumsticks, a pick and some studio time – the guitar came off a rubbish tip – practices begin. After Brian and Bruce’s hiatuses from music, things didn’t sound great at first, but the creative juices soon started flowing. Brian takes a trip home and records some demos with friend Lee Murphy – formerly of Family Gotown and soon to be of Snuff – and the MINX sound is born, though it doesn’t know it yet. Oh by the way, Brian writes songs, sings them and plays the guitar. But you knew that bit, didn’t you? Next: bass player.

Brian’s original grand plan was to have a Japanese band in Japan, a respectable goal, but ironically an impractical one, especially when you don’t speak the lingo or work sensible hours. A chap called Kai did his best for a few months but in the end couldn’t make the practices, and anyway, there was a better idea. Enter: Stephen, talker and wit extraordinaire, and with a background of quirky singing and playing flugelhorn of course he could join on…er…bass. It worked. Within the first few months of 1996, there was a set of songs made just about presentable, with a few less-than-serious covers thrown in.

Early 1996

After practice: a quick beer and noodles in the ‘love shack’ – well, shack – and yes, it was about time we had a name. Votes, discussions – especially about the number of syllables. We were very nearly BUMMER, but I vetoed it – just didn’t work for me. The triple-entendre is good, though. We settled on MINX because of the ambiguity – a running theme – but most of all because it’s ONLY ONE SYLLABLE! A quick check in the dictionary when I got home – “a pert young girl” – perfect!

Gasping for more? Instalment 2 features early songs, first gigs, a trumpet player who just fell out of the sky one day, and how we fell into Sky soon after. Wey-hey!