From: Wesley (wesleyhongkong@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 21:29:15 CET
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Interview :: Coldfeet/The Japan Times
Interview :: Coldfeet/The Japan Times
source: The Japan Times
Coldfeet raise pop to a higher plane
By ROLAND KELTS
Special to The Japan Times
"Sure, we want to be famous," Coldfeet's chanteuse, Lori Fine, says a
little defensively in the faux tavern environs of Shibuya's TGIFridays,
stabbing at a half-eaten pizza quesadilla. Fine is a former model and
has the effortless poise and posture of one -- minus the myopic egotism.
[Image]
Coldfeet's Lori Fine and Atsushi "Watusi" Tsunoda are shaking
off preprogrammed studio sounds with artful melodies and
teasing lyrics.
Fiery, slinky and seductive onstage and on record, her offstage persona
is disarmingly simple and humble. She takes a sip of her favorite
beverage: lukewarm water.
"But we really want to mix things up, jazz and pop, house and hip hop,
East and West, male and female. We're not willing to be authorial about
marketing. Even if sometimes," she admits, flashing wide, Audrey Hepburn
eyes, "there's a conflict."
Musical duo Coldfeet may be the odd couple of Tokyo's pop scene. While
so many of this city's performers are self-conscious imitators with lots
of color, pseudo-punk stances and hip-hop romps (but little depth),
Coldfeet tap into more archetypal pleasures: artful melodies, a teasing
lyric, a finely tuned phrase or riff. More urbane than urban.
Fine is the daughter of a Jewish-American clinical psychologist from New
York and a Japanese mother, and was raised on dad's jazz records and
mom's koto-playing in rural Oregon. The producer, bassist and musical
polymath is Japanese Atsushi Tsunoda, or "Watusi" as he calls himself
(after the African-inspired '60s dance craze). He was raised in rural
Gunma Prefecture.
They've been making CDs and performing club dates in Tokyo for five
years, evoking what few other of the city's otherwise progressive pop
practitioners seem to care about: sophistication.
After several nationwide tours, David Lynch-style videos on MTV Japan
and Europe, a Top 10 single, "In My Lucid Dream," and major label
support from Sony Japan, Coldfeet are now reaching back to Fine's
homeland across the Pacific. This spring they signed with Mick Inagawa,
a veteran music biz impresario who spent 10 years in New York and helped
sell DJ Krush.
They're blanketing the lucrative U.S. AOR market with demo CDs this
fall, and they're planning to play Austin, Texas' South-by-Southwest
festival and the newly anointed Tokyo-New York festival in Manhattan,
both next spring. Their new CD, "JazzFeet," due out in two months, will
be split between original Afro-Cuban-inspired songs and jazz standards.
One single is a spirited, bilingual rendering of Rosemary Clooney's
"Come On A' My House," a tribute to the late singer, who died in June.
Coldfeet may not be authorial about marketing, but they are starting to
get aggressive.
"We want to focus on the live show now," a clearly exhilarated Watusi
tells me as we drive the sterile streets of Tokyo's western suburbs well
after midnight. Hours earlier, at the end of the duo's three-night
engagement this summer at the swank Yokohama Blue Note, a packed room of
20-year-olds sat entranced, bobbing their heads and grinning to the
infectious rhythms.
Backed by horns, percussion and vibes, Fine and Watusi stirred the kind
of heat you expect from a rock show. The Japanese kids, with one table
of energetic gaijin, took it in enthusiastically. Fine sang her
hyped-up, rhythmically forceful "Come On A' My House," switching into
Japanese for the verses, and the place was screaming for more.
Coldfeet rock up their jazz, and they're best when strong. "We want more
spontaneity, more energy," Watusi continues, referring to his
preprogrammed studio sounds that hamper live improvisation. Another
conflict: How to create aurally complex tracks in the studio that can
come alive extemporaneously onstage.
Some songs sound like a jazzier, wittier Everything But the Girl; others
blend scat rhythms and discordant horns with gender-bending lyrics:
"Woman be a man for me/Hold your baby tight/Woman be a man for me/Show
me how it's done tonight." The interplay of conflicting musical and
sexual identities seems an accurate portrait of today's confused Tokyo.
Fine's life in Japan has been schizophrenic. Hired as a model, then as a
lead actress in "Hide to Rosanna Ai No Kiseki (Hide and Rosanna Love
Miracle)," a TV drama about a real-life Japanese male and Italian female
singing duo that won nationwide attention, the suddenly sought-after
gaijin stubbornly stuck to music over acting. "It was fun," she says now
of her television stardom, "but I only wanted to make music. When I
heard Watusi's work, I knew we'd make the right pair."
In 1996, Watusi was a part of drum 'n' bass pioneers Mushroom Head. He
was also producing and making commercial jingles for just about everyone
who could book him. He wanted out.
"Lori sent me back a demo tape of a song I sent her. She was just
scatting 'cold feet, cold feet,' I loved it. Her voice and humor were
perfect," says Watusi. Lori was working with another musical partner,
but she felt electrified by Watusi's musical vocabulary, which draws
upon the soft and hard ends of the funk-jazz-pop spectrum -- Sade and
Grace Jones.
Sony sent the duo to Morocco last winter to shoot some videos ("We got
so many good vibes," Watusi says). They returned to Tokyo and recorded a
brilliantly diverse set of songs that Sony refused to release overseas,
owing to contractual conflicts. The duo left Sony during another
corporate ristura (restructuring). Like so much in Japan, Sony Japan is
Sony Japan, internationalism be damned.
With America now beckoning, I ask them if they'd leave their Tokyo
haunts for the lure of fame overseas. They shake their heads. "Tokyo's
focused on the underground," Watusi says. "You can get exactly what you
want here, because the mainstream is not so loud. The offbeat is for
everyone."
Lori Fine will tour as vocalist with Sugizo & The Spank Your Juice.
Coldfeet tracks will be covered. For tour information, check out
www.sugizo.com
The Japan Times: Oct. 27, 2002
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