Winamp Wednesday: No Wonder It's Dark
That's why I'm...
Winamp Wednesday is our continuing feature spotlighting all the MP3s I downloaded in the wild-west days of the early internet. B-Sides, live shows, off-air recordings, classics, and today's track...
The Vapors, "Turning Japanese"
Well, no one ever accused me of having good judgement.
This was the first song I downloaded through Napster. I had received my very own computer for my room, which for a teenager in the waning days of the 90s was like winning the lottery while winning the Super Bowl. My afternoons were filled with searches for songs I had heard in passing or forever ago, choruses and snippets that refused to leave my brain. Most of these were difficult if not impossible to find at HMV or Virgin or Tower, all of which dotted my way home from school. But I needed to hear these songs and I suddenly had a direct pipeline.
So why, of all things, "Turning Japanese"? Even by the end of the Eighties--to say nothing of The Distant Future of the Year Two Thousand--it was known as the most one-hit of one-hit wonders. The only reason you'd know the name of the band was if you bought the album back in 1980 or you were an obsessive Pop Up Video viewer like I was. This wasn't anything to take seriously; the song starts with the East Asian Riff, and that immediately puts you on guard. You are in for a world of stereotypical hurt if you start there. And then it just goes goofy for three minutes and forty-five seconds. If anyone was listening to the lyrics they wouldn't be slapping it on any movie trailer where a white guy meets Japanese people and something wacky happens. You didn't start a new music collection with "Turning Japanese", but I did.
I was more attracted to the rhythms and the turns. This was baby's first New Wave. I knew who Paul Weller and Elvis Costello were but I wasn't obsessed with them yet. I was wading into a style that would become a huge part of my life. And is there any better starting point than a novelty track that plays into absurdities all the genre's best qualities? Nearly everything happens inside this track, from multiple scorching guitar solos to sound effects straight out of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. You can feel The Vapors going for broke, like they knew they only had four minutes to be a band. (They wouldn't last much longer than that, breaking up thirteen months after the release of the single.) My favorite moment comes during the bridge, where lead singer David Fenton stabs at the lyrics like a Musketeer:
"NO sex NO drugs NO wine NO women NO fun NO sin NO you NO wonder it's dark"
This is the kind of wordplay that would draw me to the better-known English bands of the seventies and eighties, the stabbing insistence that drills down from abstract concepts to direct accusation. As a final twist the stabbed "NO" switches to a new construction, turning us around in the lyrics as quickly as the protagonist. It's clever and takes a long time to wear out its novelty. This section alone seems purpose-built for singing along in the car. There's a story that The Vapors tried to push back the release of "Turning Japanese", knowing it would doom them to one-hit wonderdom if they didn't have at least another moderate hit first. It only makes sense; I don't see how you write a section this good and this catchy and not realize what you have.
With the advent of streaming services and a much broader internet I can now look up the rest of The Vapors' output and realize I was looking at the wrong song. These guys wrote songs so pitch black that no light could escape; "Letter from Hiro" in particular could have been a hit if it wasn't seven minutes long and stunningly bleak in its message. The disparity couldn't be larger between hit single and album than if Radiohead had become famous for recording "I'm Henry VIII, I Am". The Vapors next album featured a political assassination as illustrated by the creator of Where's Waldo?. They were never just the band that recorded "Turning Japanese", they just happened to be that band.
The Vapors evaporated almost immediately upon contact with the Hot 100, but you don't write a song like this and disappear forever. Everyone from The Hazies to Skankin' Pickle to Kirsten Dunst has covered the tune. They were still at the top of my mind when I moved to Los Angeles years later, because I sought out the 45 of "Turning Japanese" b/w "Talk Talk" the first time I went to Amoeba Music. It's got me turning up and turning down to this day, even if it was always a little corny. Maybe the best things are.
I'll leave you with the best version of "Turning Japanese" ever recorded, because of course it's by Rick Moranis. From SCTV comes...