V01-T14 Ice Cream City

.....Now we go from Radio Tokyo to Tokyo on the radio...

Volume 1:THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 14

• 02:23 "ICE CREAM CITY" (Naoko Yamano)
• performed by Shonen Knife
• original source: BBC Radio 1 broadcast, October 2, 1992
• and my source: CD5 GET THE WOW August CAUG 003 CDL (UK) Jan/1993

.....I don't know if it existed in 1992, but in Tokyo today there is in fact an Ice Cream City restaurant near Ikebukuro Station. Actually, the song was originally recorded for the 1986 album "Pretty Little Baka Guy", but after a growing base of western admirers (principally Sonic Youth) started name dropping them frequently Shonen Knife began rerecording their earlier songs in English in addition to writing new material in order to meet the sudden demand for recordings abroad. This version was recorded for John Peel about a month before broadcast. The 12" vinyl single (really a four song EP) for "Get The Wow" followed closely on August (a division of Creation Records in the UK) but this so-called "Limited Edition" CD5 replaced the last two songs with "Ice Cream City" and "Neon Zebra". I believe the Peel versions also appear on the US Shonen Knife compilation, "The Birds And The B-Sides", from 1996.

.....Both this recording and the earlier Peel session on this volume (Bauhaus' "PARTY OF THE FIRST PART" interstitial) were produced by Dale Griffin. The same Dale Griffin was known as 'Buffin' when he was the drummer for Mott The Hoople.