I’ve been obsessed with Japanese music for about two years now. When I met Andre he introduced me to Bleach , Naruto and Densha Otoko . The music from these shows knocked me out. It was so different, and the experience came as I grew more and more frustrated with the formulaic music released in the US. Since then I’ve been searching almost daily for new Japanese tunes. Orange Pekoe has been a continuing focus of my obsession.

How I came to hear of them is remarkable. It happened the first time Andre took me to Blue Fin (which is apparently where he takes all his new acquaintances). Since he knows the manager there, we were getting pretty good service. They were playing something I had never heard before: Japanese Jazz. It was the best thing I had heard in a really long time and had to ask the manager what it was. He said he didn’t know, but that he would find out. We continued eating, and we don’t see the manager for a while, I imagined he forgot. But he came back with a burned cd for me right before getting our check . He burned it for me since he wasn’t able to find out who they were playing. That was awesome. Even more awesome: At the end of our meal the manager brought us free ice cream. Score!

I listened to that CD over and over that summer without knowing who the artist was. But I finally found someone in the interweb who could translate the lyrics and find out for me. The group was Orange Pekoe .

It’s hard for me to pin down what I like about them, but their music is very triumphant. They’re unique in that way. And Japanese is a great language for jazz… it has a lot of interesting syllables. The only sad thing is that they don’t tour the US. Boo.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 26th, 2007 at 1:00 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.