I picked this up yesterday in one of Chicago’s finest vinyl sources, Reckless Records. I’m already four chapters into this amazing tome and I must say, Copey is right on the money. I got addicted to his confessional acid-soaked memoirs Head On and Reposessed ; since then Cope has written a slew of books including the vital KrautRockSampler.

Julian Cope has a fascinating brain. He’s not content to look at the music–he examines the cultural forces which shaped Japan’s psychedelic music explosion–including the seeming contradictory anti-drug stance of some of these performers. Acid music without the acid? A stretch for the western mind, to be sure until you understand that Japan has a long-standing cultural association with meditative states and free-form musical expression. Take one part Shinto, one part Zen, and mix in an obsession with death and rebirth and you have a quite fertile breeding ground for the imagination.

Cope hits all this, plus Commodore Perry’s “opening of Japan” and more. I’m a huge fan of this book already and haven’t yet put it down except to write this. All the bands listed in this book are on vinyl, glorious vinyl and I am afraid that I’m about to be drawn into some kind of obsessive tunnel-vision quest for all these and more. Any musical omnivore will love this.

I foolishly paid $30 for this, only to find it JapRockSampler at Amazon for much cheaper. This will teach me to fall in love with hardcover books before doing my research. Still, I don’t begrudge Reckless Records–I never would have found this otherwise until getting clued in by some fellow traveler.