The Baidis Years

The Baidis Years Artist: Collectors
Label: Teichiku
Category: Music



Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Format: Import
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2
EAN: 4988004083167
ASIN: B00005MG0H


Release Date: 2001-08-22

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Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars One of Japan's best-kept secrets........2003-01-14

Oddly enough, despite a general trend towards Japan-o-philism in American music tastes of late, The Collectors remain curiously unknown to Western audiences. I personally attribute this to their running afoul of easy definition, as they are far too much of a real band to fall into the popular (and marketable!) category of Jpop, yet aren't angsty, dark, and serious/ridiculous enough to fall into the X-Japan-alike crowd of Jrock.

Whatever the case, The Collectors are an *excellent* band, and this is an excellent anthology of their early work. As Amazon provides few details, a quick history of the band and this compilation are in order. The Collectors started out in the eraly eighties as a "Neo-mod" group; huge fans of The Who, their music is startlingly free of 80's new-wave sensibilities. They released their first four albums on the independent "Baidis" label, before changing labels, replacing their bassist and drummer, and adopting a more straightforward style for their debut on Columbia.

This compilation (itself originally released in 1995...it has a few bonus tracks here) purports to contain the "best" of their limited tenure on Baidis, and while I can't really attest to the "hit" status of any of these tracks, it's a very decent sampler from the four Baidis albums and related singles. Even better, many of the tracks here are *very* noticably remixed, and many benefit from this treatment.

So why just four stars? Rather simply, I don't think the Baidis era is necessarily the best period of the band. The songs are solid--there's very rarely anything that dips below good--but they aren't necessarily exceptional, and on the whole the band sounds a bit too conscious of their debts to styles from the past, as well as a bit too eager to please. It also doesn't help that the band undergoes a *startling* transition into a more rock-oriented (but also, in my opinion, better written, produced, and played) vehicle when they switch labels and members around 1990, which means that this "best of" is somewhat inadequate as a career overview.

Music CD:

  1. Interferences: Hungarian Folksong Variants ~ Kati Szvorak
  2. Sueno de Amor ~ Manzanita
  3. Pygmy Attitudes ~ Toups Bebey & Paris Africans
  4. North Karnataka Rhythms & Songs ~ Various Artists
  5. Music of the Sahara ~ Various Artists
  6. Burkina Faso-Mali: Music of Today ~ Lassina Coulibaly & Yan Kadi Faso
  7. Ma Cabane Au Canada ~ Line Renaud
  8. Rythmes de Bagan and Mandalay ~ Various Artists
  9. Songs from the Attic, Vol. 6: Comical Duets ~ Various Artists
  10. Terra Africa ~ Bruno Moury and Christophe Mad'Dene

Music CD

Music CD

Music CD

Another Land Made of Water

Bareback at Big Sky ~ Poco

Black Is Black

Astronauts ~ The Lilac Time

Walk Don't Run: The Very Best of the Ventures ~ The Ventures

Natural Magic

Nurses Song with Elephants ~ David Bedford

R&R I'm Betty Boo ~ Betty Boo

Radiata Stories ~ Original Game Soundtrack

Thump'n Disco Quick Mixx, Vol. 1 ~ Various Artists