Double Feature!

ELEKI NO WAKADAISHO (The Young General's Electric Guitar) 1965
JPN film. Also known as CAMPUS A-GO-GO. "Eleki" is the instrumental electric guitar boom that happened in Japan during the early 1960s. The two biggest stars of Eleki were Yuzo Kayama and Takeshi Terauchi, both of whom star in this film as members of the "Young Beats," a surf-beat combo in the tradition of the Ventures, Dick Dale, the Astronauts, etc.

Yuzo Kayama and Takeshi Terauchi are backed by the Launchers. Their sound is heavily reverbed, overdriven and very aggressive, with lots of pull-offs and hammer-ons and wild, extreme bends. If you dig machine-gun fired 16th and 32nd notes, this is it.

Standout scenes include: a battle of the bands competition (the whole movie revolves around the competition) where a wild girl group in mini skirts and go-go boots look and sound teriffic! Also, a Beatle-wig-wearing group who play great but are up to no good.

Look for several fantastic record store scenes that feature tons of cool looking LP covers, Beatles "Help" posters and totally bitchin' electric guitars on display. The top ten at the record store includes "Help" and "The Cruel Sea" (a Dakotas, sans Billy J., instrumental).

Lots of performance scenes including on stage, in a bus, in a back room, at a restaurant, etc. Tons of songs including, "Yozora no Hoshi," "Black Sand Beach," "Kimi to Itsumademo," "Blonde Jennie," "Blues of Wakadaisyo," and several others. Yuzo Kayama, Takeshi Terauchi, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Yuriko Hoshi, Machiko Naka, Kunie Tanaka. [In Japanese. No Subtitles.] Eleki No Wakadaisho.

NOTE: A Japanese person told me the literal translation of "Wakadaisho" means "Young General" but in the 1960's Yuzo Kayama starred a series of movies now referred to in the west as the "Young Guy" series or... Wakadaisho. Maybe in the 1960s Wakadaisho had an altered meaning when used by kids to refer to "leaders" of rock and roll." If you have legitimate information about this, please let us know.

Update: A Japanese-to-English translation application shows the title to be: "Young the Leader of the Electricity."

Plus this bonus selection...

1960s JAPANESE GROUP SOUNDS MOVIE TRAILERS
Wacky and wild movie trailers for several "Spiders" films. The Spiders were a prominent 1960s "GS" group.

ELEKI NO WAKADAISHO (Young General's Electric Guitar) 1965 movie on DVD

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