These lassies made me laugh when I went to see them play. Called, Frank Chickens, I caught them live at Fat Sams in 1986. Two Japanese girls - Kazuko Hohki & Kazumi Taguchi, and although both are singers/musicians, I think you could also add "performance artistes" as well, because they kind of acted out each song on stage, usually in a comical manner. They wore matching white dungarees (or was it boiler suits), and they had a great rapport with the crowd...plenty witty banter flying around all night.I got handed this cassette from them in Fatties, containing a few live tracks recorded that year, so thought I'd let you hear a track to give you an idea of how they sounded on stage. This particular track below, "Blue Canary", always brings a smile to my face every time I recall them performing it. During the "jungle noises" part of the song, the pair whipped out 2 shopping bags, as if they'd just raided John Menzies toy dept, then proceeded to play with squeaky ducks, whistles, wind-up animals etc, much to the amusement of the crowd.
There is a band line-up listed on the cassette cover but I'm fairly sure they just used backing tapes on the night.
2 of the musicians mentioned I recognise though - Steve Beresford & David Toop, a couple of music heavyweights, both serious music critics/journalists (Wire mag etc) as well as recording artists in their own right.
Blue Canary was also one of John Peels faves.
I remember seeing them support someone at the Uni around about 1984. Might have been the Kane Gang.
ReplyDeleteThey supported Billy Bragg & Hank Wangford at DUSA. It must have been around 84. I remember they all did an encore of Route 66, but changed it to something like M56. 'We Are Frank Chickens' is worth a listen. It certainly got played a good bit in the shop when it came out.
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