PUBLIC ORGANIZATION!!! PEOPLE
Destroy, Freedom, and Chaos from Oita!
"Sorry, I have no message. PEOPLE is mysterious hahaha" – Shingo, PEOPLE.
Author: Tony More Noize
To match Connor’s epic CONTROL article, I wanted to write something about my favourite Japanese punk band PEOPLE.
My first meeting with the wonderfully named Japanese punk rock band PEOPLE was upon hearing the “Noizenation” CD-R back in 2006. I am not sure how I got hold of it, but I think it was through a trade with a Japanese pen pal. A few weeks of nonstop play convinced me that I had to start a fanzine just so I could interview this great band. That zine eventually turned out to be Distort Hackney, the predecessor to More Noize, which ultimately never got properly printed and distributed on paper. As for the PEOPLE interview, I tried. But I did not have any luck finding a contact for the band—in fact, it was impossible to find out anything about the band!!! But I did figure out that the band was from Onomichi, which I understand is close to Hiroshima.
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| From the unpublished final issue of More Noize. Artwork by Tony More Noize. |
Then one day I got talking to a kid called Fabian who was starting a new label. His first release would be a reissue of the PEOPLE CD-R on EP. “I’ll be releasing their debut 7" titled Fetish EP and it will contain all the songs you have up for download (Plus 3 others and an outro). It just got sent to be mastered and it should all be done within a month or 2. I’d like for this to sell out as soon as possible to fund future projects, after the PEOPLE 7" I will release new stuff by D-Clone and Stagnation.” I told Fabian of my plan to start a zine and he promised to hook me up with the band. But nothing happened…
About a year later I got a bunch of records from Fabian in the post, including the amazing PEOPLE EP. Just like the CD-R, the debut vinyl turned out to be a great amateurish shit SWANKYS CHILDREN styled band. That it was not at all old songs like Fabian had said before was great news, of course, instead having 5 new PEOPLE originals (hey, have you read the Control piece yet? If so, knowing now about the rejected Control test-press variations I wonder if there are not also PEOPLE test presses with the CD-R songs!!!!!!?? Fabian, hook me up yo!) Anyway, around the time of the EP release, Maximumrocknroll asked me to interview PEOPLE so I started trying to get shit off the ground once more… but I still did not have any luck in tracking down the band.
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| PEOPLE (Hiroshima line-up) live. Photo by Shinji (SKIZOPHRENIA!) |
In the autumn of 2008, the legendary Fairy Tale mini-album was released (and mysteriously leaked onto the internet the very same day of its domestic release (ltd ed 60 copies), which helped ensure the album spread like wildfire around the world). The mini-album starts with a screeching hard distortion noise punk rock song and continues to show a mature noisecore punk band that musically sits somewhere in the middle of Very Best of Hero and Never Can Eat Swank Dinner, but with a more amateurish modern angle. In other words, Fairy Tale is absolutely amazing and the very best punk record to be released in decades!
Sometime after Fairy Tale came out, now also available as a cassette tape that was not too hard to get hold of, Fabian dropped the news that he’d re-release the mini-album on a LP on his Damaging Noise Records. This was first announced in March 2010 (‘Up next: PEOPLE - Fairy Tale 12"’) and in April 2010: “At about the same time there will be the 1st full length for PEOPLE titled Fairy Tale which will consist of the Fairy Tale recording released earlier this year on the bands very own Feminist Records, and a newly recorded B Side. LP will be limited to 500 copies.” But in the end, the goddamn thing only came out in spring 2012... as I am sure a lot of people will be painfully aware of…
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Hearing this I kind of figured the band had split up. But the next I heard from PEOPLE was from my friends in the Wankys who toured Japan in January/February 2010. The Wankys are big fans of PEOPLE, and Mark wanted to release a new volume of his Downtown Noise Punker omnibus and had told me he wanted PEOPLE on the comp. As it happened, Shingo came to see The Wankys at one of their shows, holding a bag packed with PEOPLE tapes (what a noise punk wet dream!) and he told Mark the same thing—the band had split up, that he was moving back to Kyushu where he’d reform the band with new members. Fabian confirmed this as well: “Yeah Shingo moved for work or something and the band is on hiatus ‘til he settles down and finds new members that’s the last I heard. Hopefully, we get a couple more records out of these guys before they call it quits ha ha”. Either way, sometime later in the spring Mark released the third volume of his compilation, and PEOPLE were on it! Although it was just two songs off Fairy Tale.
By around this time, I sold my soul to the devil, and in my new monthly MRR column I wrote excitedly about the forthcoming PEOPLE LP. But as I already implied, that LP ended up being delayed as fuck, but being the person hyping this shit in the world’s largest punk magazine the result was two years of regular emails from people asking me about the PEOPLE LP! But before the LP finally rolled off the plant, a PEOPLE tape called Meltdown appeared in Japanese punk shops (yes, oh, I remember it… it was one fine sunny day), but it sold out immediately. As in 10 minutes flat. Shingo described it as a “guerilla demonstration", in other words, a bootleg demo or undercover demo. As I said, Meltdown was impossible to find but eventually, I scored a copy off Remi from Honda/Honda who got it in trade with someone in Japan. Meltdown is a four live song tape of poor particularly recording quality—to suggest it was recorded on a mobile phone is not an insult. But more importantly, Meltdown featuring the relocated and resurrected PEOPLE with a new line-up, presents for the first time the band’s new direction, which is much less hardcore and much less noisy, instead being more of a Swanky punk rock style!!! The tape’s got four songs, the first of which (Categorize) suggests an homage to underrated free-form Kyushu punk legends CUT (whose only album is entitled the same), a song called Meltdown and one called Bollocks Brother, as well as an instantly recognisable hit single in the ambiguous sexual song “Your Romeo, I am Juliet”.
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| PEOPLE live in Fukuoka. Photographer unknown. |
In 2011, this line-up of PEOPLE played a lot of gigs. To support the live band, a number of new t-shirt designs appeared–that like the PEOPLE EP, the tapes, and the CDs, featuring art and photos stolen from SEX SHOP—one of the t-shirts having a massive Seditionaries style swastika all over the front, making it impossible to wear for any foreign punk (although those shirts were only available in size Small anyway, I know because I asked!). In the autumn, PEOPLE are on the Vox Pop Earthquake charity omnibus CD with the previously mentioned hit song Romeo. Any fears that the band had given up the ghost had by now totally gone away. But where was the Fairy Tale LP??
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| PEOPLE t-shirt. Artwork by Shingo. |
The first sign for years that the album was (still) actually happening was when during the winter of 2011 PEOPLE posted a photo of the test presses on the internet. While some nerds were speculating big questions about the record—Would it be re-recorded? Or would it be Fairy Tale on side A with a new demo/recording on side B?—it seemed more likely that in his desperation Fabian had sent a photo of a random blank press LP to the band to pacify any anger for it being delayed for so long, than actually proof that it was finally being released. In fact, by this time Fabian’s reputation as a definitely unreliable business partner had already gone worldwide and most people had given up on the LP ever being released.
But come February 2012, Fabian returned from the wilderness and announced that the LP would now hit in just 3 weeks! This was at least four months after he received the test presses…
Shingo announced the record bitterly on the PEOPLE website: “Fairy Tale will be released from Damaging Noise Records in America, originally released on professional copy cassette from the label feminist record now comes the vinyl version of the album which was produced by the original line-up of PEOPLE in Hiroshima. It still has the Snow White sleeve, but I told him to take the wisdom of my friend Miss Hihokan and change colour scheme. Half of the LP was recorded by PEOPLE at a different time and members left the band after just two weeks. Thank you, but this is becoming the past!”
In any event, the record was released in late spring and was picked up by distros worldwide. A mail-order version on blue vinyl and with a badge was also available to those who ordered directly from the label—which I did, paid in April 2012, but as of November 2012, I am still waiting on my copy!!!—but I knew I’d have to wait a lifetime for it so I already grabbed a standard black vinyl version of La Vida Es Un Mus. And it’s fucking great. I mean, I have the tape version of Fairy Tale, as well as the second edition CD-R version (I still need the first ltd 60 ex version, so please get in contact if you have a copy to spare/trade) so I know what I am talking about. The A-side is Fairy Tale. The B-side is a live recording of the Hiroshima line-up, two weeks before the band split up (or something). The sound on the B-side is shit! And reminds me very much of the Meltdown tape. Someone said "the A-side is the best punk rock for decades while the B-side is the worst punk rock for decades" hahaha. But it was definitely worth waiting for! But rumour has it, distros aren’t exactly selling the LPs like wildfire… But who cares? [It's worth noting that the studio recording on the A side coupled with a poor quality live recording on the B side is a nod to The Swankys - Last Punk Live LP, which features a particularly bad quality live recording on the A side, and 2 fantastic studio tracks on the B side - Connor]
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| Fairy Tale collection. Photo by Tony More Noize. |
By all accounts, the band has been gigging very regularly since last summer, and over the course of the year the band began writing new songs that the band tested live. “We want to create too much time with our 2nd album”. The announcement of the new album finally came through after the summer: “PEOPLE『Authentic Oral Communication』2nd album 2012 September”.
This album was—like all other PEOPLE releases—released by the band’s own label feminist record on CD (although it will get vinyl treatment later on). My expectations for this second album were inevitably very high—based on Meltdown I knew it would be a Swank Dinner-type affair—and all I can say is that I was not let down!
It’s rare these days that you get excited about a new record, partly because there are so many new punk and hardcore records that come out almost all the time, but partly also because a lot of new records just sound like old records. But even when you do get truly excited about a new punk record, the excitement typically dies after a few plays, and inevitably you place the record next to the other 5,000 new releases you acquired in the last month and then promptly you forget about the fucking record. I am not a cynic; I am a realist. The point here is that Authentic Oral Communication is not just another punk record in 2012.
To begin with, as stated by the band, this album is an almost entirely different band to the one made world-famous by the Very Best of Hero noisecore of the first album Fairy Tale. This is in fact, PEOPLE Part 2, and the album is very different to Fairy Tale.
The starting point would always be Never Can Eat Swank Dinner, which is the mark when the Swankys moved away from noisecore to punk rock, but equally important is the still criminally underrated Kyushu punk band CUT and their only album Categorize and a few other less known Kyushu punk rock influences. It is of course entirely appropriate that Comic, who is the main guy in CUT, designed the cover art for PEOPLE’s second album. Of course, one of the defining characteristics of PEOPLE has been the singer’s style of singing that mimics that of Watch from the Swankys—before you judge, stop and consider the importance of Johnny Rotten’s singing style on all subsequent punk bands—and predictably you’re excused for immediately thinking that PEOPLE’s creative destiny will follow that of the Swankys: from noisy hardcore (Gai) to melodic punk rock (Never Can Eat Swank dinner). And it’s only inevitable that a lot of people will consider the new PEOPLE album as their Never Can Eat Swank Dinner moment. But for all that, there is more to Authentic Oral Communication than looking backward and giving homage to old heroes. The album is nothing less than the invention of a new genre: Pop-Noise.
Secondly, I said above that a lot of new punk records sound like rehashed old records. The problem with that is not that new bands fail in trying to stay within the narrow boundaries of how punk should sound by copying the past or assimilating old fashions, but in failing to write great songs (to equate the greatness of the old bands, old bands who invented the various styles of punk that today is so heavily over-shadowing every new punk record). I’ll have to repeat what Mark Wankys said about Disorder, which was something along the lines that early Disorder songs are fucking classic great songs, and unfortunately, very few new bands are able to write classic songs like early Disorder. Instead, new bands seem happy to just emulate the sound or style of these old bands, and somewhere forget about writing truly great songs.
And here’s the crunch, out of the 8 songs on the new PEOPLE album, almost all of them are sure-fire classic punk rock songs, and punk rock songs that sound nothing like any other band, new or old. The songs sound contemporary to a point where there is no point comparing PEOPLE to old bands, yet at the same time, there’s enough spit and vomit in these songs that it would be remiss to call the style anything else than punk.
Authentic Oral Communication is at turns melodic in a rockabilly way—true rockabilly as opposed to retro rockabilly—with tangy rock’n’roll guitars, yet noisy, with harsh transistor radio fuzz coming from the second guitar (which is credited on the sleeve simply as “transistor”). You can predictably point your finger at PEOPLE for breaking with noise-core on this second album, and this is where the Never Can Eat Swank Dinner reference does actually make sense, but at the same time to do so is to ignore everything the band has done so far! For the seed of this new album can totally be found in everything the band has released so far. And while the new album is in some ways “pop”, it is very far from acceptable mainstream pop. I don’t think any radio channel will be playing PEOPLE any day soon. I don’t think teenage girls will do a Beatlesmania on PEOPLE!
Anyway, you’ll have to find out for yourself. I guess most people who are nerdy enough to want to listen to PEOPLE may quickly decide that Fairy Tale is better since it is (ironically) more easy-listening to those who love noisy hardcore punk. As for me, after almost two months since I got the record, I continue to play the CD daily. It is easily my favourite record of 2012 and perhaps one of the best records I have heard in many years.
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| PEOPLE live in Oita. Photo by Jun Hashimoto. |
What’s next? As I mentioned, there will be a vinyl release of the CD, perhaps sometime in 2013. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that PEOPLE will ever tour outside of Japan–“we have many shit jobs”—and whether there are enough people into the band abroad to support a tour is questionable, particularly as the band has now shaken off the cloak of obscure noisecore that most foreign punx look for in Japanese punk bands. But for those planning on going to Japan, like most Japanese bands, PEOPLE play live regularly, albeit mostly locally, meaning it’ll be away from Tokyo or Osaka where most foreign punx head first, often arranging gigs for touring bands, such as the "Public Organization" gig earlier this year that had featured Oledickfoggy, Captain Idol (Fukuoka) and Control (Fukuoka).
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| Public Organization flyer. Artwork by Shingo. |
“On this day, Confuse’s ghost CONTROL will play classic bastard noise punk !!!!!” - Shingo, PEOPLE
As of April 2013, PEOPLE CD continues to be largely overlooked, despite being an obvious masterpiece of punk rock. The band continues to play fairly regularly, coming out with new t-shirts and organising gigs for touring bands. The latest news is that the band is keen to come to England on a small tourism/tour mix, and Noise Punk Records are still hoping to receive the master of the album for LP release. I for one would not be surprised if a new PEOPLE release comes soon…
PEOPLE Update 2024
Since this article was written in 2012, PEOPLE toured the UK. They came over just after Christmas 2013 and toured over the New Year period. Tony booked one of their London gigs where DISORDER opened for them, and I DJ’d. Tony also released a limited edition tour-only CD, featuring the tracks from the Meltdown tape and an unreleased cover of Bodies by the Sex Pistols. I saw them twice on this tour, in London and Leeds. Honestly, I don’t know if they went down particularly well with the UK crowd, I think people in the UK were hoping for something a bit noisier ala Fairy Tale but by the time they toured PEOPLE were in full punk rock mode. If you’d like to read more about this tour, the driver, a comedian called Roland Gent wrote a full tour report on his blog.
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| Flyer for the PEOPLE gig at Power Lunches, London. Artwork by me. |
Noise Punk Records, ran by none other than Mr.Wanky of The Wankys, did press their incredible 2nd album on vinyl which is still available for a few quid and well worth every penny.
PEOPLE continued to lean into their more left-field influences, no doubt taking inspiration from CUT. They recorded a 1 track demo titled Public Organization Part.1 in 2014 which they released on CDR in an edition of 9 copies. I did re-release this track on the Pit Bar Benefit CD in 2020 in the hope more people would hear it.
Their latest release was the Perv Recreation 7” on Kings World Records, who also released a remixed edition of the Fairy Tale album on CD, both of which sadly suffered from poor distribution outside of Japan, so I don’t think many people outside of Japan bought them. A shame, as the 7" is brilliant, and if they didn’t release anything else would be a perfect final release. There was a secret track on the B-side of a Kings World Records tape released in 2019 featuring THE TITS, The Roxy, and N.O.S.E. which I’ve never heard.
The band continues to play occasionally, however, vocalist, Shingo, has since relocated to Tokyo. Their latest gig at the time of writing was in October 2022 at Shinjuku Antiknock at a Violent Party gig organised by Stagnation. They played the gig as a 3 piece with Shingo playing drums and singing.
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| Violent Party flyer. Artwork by Shingo. |
"We're dormant" - Shingo, on PEOPLE, January 2024
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