Takeshi Terauchi. Let's Go Terry Rare Surf GS Garage NM LP. Japanese Import

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Takeshi Terauchi and The Bunnys. Let's Go Terry!. King Records(SKK 285). Japan Import. 

Rare Japanese Surf, Group Sounds(GS) Freakbeat album.

The world of GS (Group Sounds) music in Japan is a funny one. And I mean that literally. The Spiders, the Mops, the Golden Cups – listening to those bands’ demented takes on British and American 60’s music is funnier than watching someone dip Pauly Shore headfirst into a vat of boiling acid. I mean, seriously, having a bunch of Japanese teenagers lauch into English-as-a-fourteenth-language covers of “In the Midnight Hour” or “Woolly Bully” is not something we really need, now is it? But I gotta admit, it’s funny s**t, especially when you hear ‘em sing something like “Rooey Rooey” or “Ruv, Ruv Me Do.” But that’s gotta be the only reason anyone would buy this stuff today. Right?

Well, there are exceptions to everything. Just like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a good Jim Carrey movie. And in the world of Japanese GS bands, Terry and the Bunnys is that exception. Because these guys didn’t concentrate on emulating the sounds they weren’t built for – like Motown, or Beatles beat. These cats stuck to what they knew – the guitar. Terry (real name – Takeshi Terauchi) was already in his late Twenties when garage music took over, and he’d spent his formative years playing surf music in the Bluejeans, laying down whammy-bar instrumentals with his genuine Mosrite guitar, and even supporting the Ventures and the Astronauts when they toured Japan. Charlie don’t surf, but Terry sure knew how. And when he formed vocal group the Bunnys in 1966, he brought his Mosrite and his love of the surf guitar into the world of garage pop.

Despite their cute and cuddly name, the Bunnys weren’t a band to be messed with. You can see that right there on the cover of their debut LP from 1966, Let’s Go Terry, with the Bunnys lined up all snotty and full of attitude, in their matching jet-black punk outfits, the older Terry standing out in the middle like a lumberjack fronting the Music Machine. And they’re all lined up like they’re ready to rumble or something, arms crossed, in front of a big brick warehouse, where you can just tell they’ve either got some sort of underground Fight Club going on, or hundreds of naked geisha girls just waiting to service the band when they’re finished with the photo shoot. Hey, they’re Bunnys, which means they f*** like Bunnys too.

Now, inside this formidable jacket, where lesser albums might break down, well, that’s where Let’s Go Terry gets even better. You ever see those Spiders albums, or Golden Cups records? Decked out in their psychedelic finery, with Fillmore West fonts and day-glo colors – yet when you actually get to spinning the record – y’know, the reason you actually buy these things – it’s nothing but lame Motown covers in irreparably broken English. Well, thank God, I’m happy to report that Let’s Go Terry is the same inside as it is outside. This little licorice pizza is the very essence of garage surf madness. This is Quentin Tarantino’s wet dream, a Kill Bill-like collision of 60’s punk recklessness and more twangy whammy bar hotwired electric guitar than a half dozen Ventures albums hopped up on sake. The brilliant “Black Carnation” shoulda been playing during O-Ren Ishii’s big fight scene, no offense to the 5.6.7.8s of course. But this is, after all, the real deal, the genuine article – 100% authentic Japanese garage surf with Terry’s shudder guitar ripping out Crazy 88 entrails with each new riff, while a reedy teen combo band organ mops up the blood left on the floor from Sofie Fatale’s severed arm. I can’t imagine any other GS group willing to actually follow these guys on stage. Or clean up their mess.

“Burning, Burning” is a pretty good way to describe their sound, and this twangy garage punk rave-up really picks up midway when someone in the band starts shouting out orders. “Come on Rico! Terry! Aaaarrrrgggggggghhh!” as he lets loose a deafening guttural scream that means either a) he’s trying to kick start these kids into high gear, or b) Uma Thurman’s just plunged a Hanso sword into the base of his spine. Either way, the band lurches forward into another crazed slab of Japanese surf punk, and it leaves you wondering just who in the band is named “Rico”?

But of course, Terry’s mantra – his legendary masterpiece and the B-side of his first single with the Bunnys – is the absolutely incendiary mindf**k “Test Driver,” which appears on Let’s Go Terry in all its hotwired, string-bending, skull-crushing majesty. If the rest of Let’s Go Terry is where surf and garage music get married, then “Test Driver” is where they finally f***, and do so in every position, in every room, and on every countertop and sink in the house. Over a cool rumbling Peter Gunn like bassline, Terry lets loose with great tsunamis of bendy-note freakbeat surf guitar, like hanging ten off Godzilla’s wake. This is a rave-up for the ages, the pinnacle of Japanese surf punk, not that that was a high mountain anyway but you get the point. Julian Cope called “Test Driver” a “legendary mind death riffothon,” and he’s insane. Great minds think alike.

As for Terry, Rico and O-Ren Ishii, they followed up Let’s Go Terry with tamer pop records, which garnered them huge chart success but they never ever matched the feral ferocity of this 1966 statement of purpose again. Eventually, as the Sixties came to a close, even Terry succumbed to the typical GS Sounds, releasing an album of popular cover songs he had no right covering, then an instrumental version of Hair that no one had the right releasing, and finally an album of old Japanese World War II songs that no one had the intestinal fortitude to even listen to. Let’s Go Terry was the first and last great Bunnys album, a landmark that no one, not even themselves, ever got near again. It’s the exception to the rule. Get it now, before you bring great shame to your family.

Condition Cover 9 or NM high gloss gatefold, no ring wear, sharp corners/Record 9 or NM black and shiny, heavy vinyl.

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