Keeping Mod Alive: The Absolude

The Absolude

It’s one of the greatest rock cameos in the history of motion pictures. Michelangelo Antonioni’s Swinging London classic, Blow Up, features a Jimmy Page-led Yardbirds through a pulsating version of “Stroll On.” It’s not just the audience in the movie that’s stunned – it’s anyone sitting in a movie theater seat seeing it for the first time.

For those of us too young and too far away to actually have seen the Yardbirds at that time, we can only wistfully wonder if we would ever get a whiff of that intensity, that ferocity, that much grooviness.  Actually, the answer is yes if you can get yourself to Nagoya and check out the Absolude.

 

These days, Mod seems to have found one of its biggest strongholds on the other side of the Eurasian landmass. Bands like the Absolude – part of an active neo-Mod scene in Japan -- perfectly capture pummeling beats and gritty but mesmerizing hooks of those fabled ‘60s British bands.

Led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Dai Usui, the Absolude is a Mod band’s Mod band, whose music has been favorably compared to the Who and the Small Faces. Recently, the band’s song “I Wanna Talk To You” helped the group bulldoze its way into the rotation on Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

Rounding out the band is Shigeki Higuchi (bass), Gel Matsuishi (drums, back-up vocals) and Hitoshi Kodan (guitar, back-up vocals).

For those not in the know, Mod was a British style of rock, born in London but strongly influenced by Chicago – specifically blues, be bop and hard bop. The bands that came out of the Mod scene in the ‘60s became some of rock’s most iconic: The Who, the Yardbirds and the Small Faces, to name just a few. In subsequent decades, revivals of Mod produced yet more great bands, such as the Jam.

Mod wasn’t just music. It was fashion, it was style, it was filmmaking. In Britain, it still reverberates in all of those areas. And far beyond the UK, it still gets people’s attention. Mod spoke as loudly to Usui in Japan as it did to anyone in the English-speaking world.

“I still think the 60’s is the coolest era, not only music but also fashion, culture and so on,” said Usui, responding to our questions via e-mail. “I personally think the 60’s culture is one of the most complete and perfect forms of all youth culture, therefore it still attracts much younger people all over the world, including me.”

But Absolude doesn’t just stay in its own little box. While Usui doesn’t shrink from the “Mod”

designation, the band stylistically covers all the territory we love to explore here at Garagerocktopia.

The band’s most recent CD is The Silence Between Two Steps, which runs the gamut of styles one may have caught while tromping down Carnaby Street on a Saturday night in 1965.

There are other Mod songs on the album, like the “where She’s Gone” and the instrumental “Stomp and Stroll.” But “Nothing Without You” is straight-up Beatles for Sale fare;  “I’m Not Going to Take It” and “Sunshine” harken back to the Hollies at their finest, while other songs like “Put a Little Color” are what garage rock was just before it stepped aside for Psychedelia. But like so many other artists we have profiled here, it all starts with the Beatles.

“I reckon all of us have been more influenced by The Beatles since childhood,” Usui admits. “We just can’t stop chatting about their music, their instruments, their recordings and themselves when in a car, in a dressing room or in everywhere. The Beatles are still FAB. But we all love those mod giants, too. The 60’s mod/garage/freakbeat music is also the perfect form of band music. We do still regard ourselves as a mod band.” 

But like the mods of old, the Jazz of Miles Davis, Kenny Burrell and other Be Bop/Hard Bop greats is what really talks to them.

“I still listen to The Beatles a lot,” explained Usui, who actually did spend a year in London. “But I love jazz more. I love mid-50’s hard-bop that I listen to everyday.”

The Absolude was born in 2003, united by a love of Mod, both the original music of the ‘60s and its modern-day descendant performed today by bands in Japan and elsewhere.

“I’d been in another mod band and had been playing in the mod scene there just before The Absolude was formed,” Usui recalled. “I loved the mod scene in Japan and wanted to keep playing for that audience. And, as a songwriter, I simply loved that style of music, I still do, and it was natural, almost unconscious to write that sort of music.” 

While Mod commands a following in Japan, it is an aging one. But Usui says this isn’t a huge problem. The Absolude keeps its older audience but gets to see younger fans in the clubs as well.

“I feel it’s getting older and older -- including us, but not a sad way though,” Usui reports. “I am always happy to see younger audience dancing or singing to our music when playing. I do hope more kids come to see us.”

“We seldom have a large audience. It’s very much underground, at smaller clubs. But there are quite a few mod/garage/freakbeat fans here, though not as many as hip hop guys.”

Those of us ancient enough to have actually lived in the pre-internet world remember all too well how so many bands from all over the world, because of the stranglehold major labels had in the music biz, never caught on the way they might have.

Today, the World Wide Web hasn’t exactly solved that particular problem. What it has done is to magnificently broaden our horizons. Today, when decide we need a break from commercial radio, we can enjoy punk rock from South Africa, garage rock from Brazil – or Mod from Japan. That the Absolude can have a fan base outside of Japan is testament to that.

 

“For a band like us, the internet is one of the best ways to let people know we’re out there and we’re doing fine,” said Usui. “People can still listen to our music or see our performances. Then, some can come to actually see us, and see that our live shows are much better in person than on a small PC screen.”

Having a “Coolest Song in the World” on Little Steven’s Underground Garage is a nice little honor for a band, particularly one not quite as well-known as, say, a U2 or the Rolling Stones. Still, as other bands have told Garagerocktopia, it doesn’t exactly change careers or add up to bigger sales. It does, though, gain a band just a little bit more of a following.

“Because of the language barrier, Underground Garage has very few listeners here,” said Usui.  “However, I realized how big the show was. It was a big surprise for us. Though it doesn’t directly connect to our sales, I do feel the show helped us, and we did suddenly get more fans from the US.”

At this point, the Absolude remains focused on its audience in Japan. Three of the four members still have day jobs, and while they have a loyal following in Japan, at this point it’s not enough to keep the lights on.

“At the moment, even though I write and sing in English, our focus is playing here in Japan,” Usui said. “It is almost impossible to tour in the US or in Europe at this time.  I am thinking, though, it would be nice to tour in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia or other Asian countries. It’s closer to Japan, and I know there are quite a few Mods there, too.”