NOT suitable for sales promotion #3: IT'S ALL RIGHT
"This song is meant to poke fun at cheap, raw punk*. I recently remembered that Tetsu wrote most of the lyrics." - Hidde
Kiichi: It says that Tetsu, the bassist of NOT, wrote the lyrics for this one. Did Tetsu write most of NOT's lyrics or just this song?
Hidde: Tetsu wrote the lyrics for this song only. I wrote the lyrics for everything else.
Kiichi: Oh, so you can write lyrics too! That's pretty impressive!
Hidde: Yeah... Well, when I say lyrics, I mean I just look up English sentences in a junior high school English dictionary and then write them...
Kiichi: Of course I know that (laughs).
Hidde: Because Tetsu wrote the lyrics, I think these lyrics are the most grammatically-sound of all the songs in NOT.
Kiichi: Oh yeah? I mean, it's in English, so I don't know (laughs). Did you ask Tetsu to write the lyrics?
Hidde: No, I brought him the song and Tetsu was inspired, and before I knew it, he was writing the lyrics.
Kiichi: I see.
Hidde: That's why the nuance is a little different from the lyrics I write. Tetsu's lyrics are a little aggressive, like "Don't touch me!"(From the opening chorus). I don't really write lyrics like that.
Kiichi: I see. But it's not "Don't touch me!", it's "I don't care!"
Hidde: It doesn't really matter (laughs).
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| Tetsu. |
Kiichi: You said it's poking fun at raw punk, but I think people who hear NOT for the first time will hear the influence of the Registrators, for example, and bands from the Chloroform** scene.
Hidde: I get that, I really liked the Registrators so of course they influenced me.
Kiichi: I don't know much about bands related to the Chloroform scene, but I could feel the atmosphere of the punk scene changing before and after the Chloroform compilation was released.
Hidde: Every band was influenced by Chloroform. Us too, of course. But after a few years, that style became almost like a template, and every band started to sound the same. I got tired of it.
I admit, I had spiteful feelings towards bands that just copied that style, like, "If you do it like this, it's Chloroform style, right?"
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| Hidde. |
Kiichi: So because you were influenced by them, it's almost a bit self-deprecating.
Hidde: Exactly! Like "You like this kind of stuff, right? I love it, too!" It's a sarcastic way of saying that.
Kiichi: I'm sure there's other intentions behind this...If I dig too deep, I'm afraid someone will end up making comments that can be misconstrued, so let's leave it at that. (laughs)
Hidde: OK! It's all right!
* Nowadays, "raw punk" is typically used to described bands like The Last Survivors and Skizophrenia who are influenced by 80's European Hardcore Punk, in this context it's used to describe bands who play stripped-back 70's style Punk Rock, bands like Registrators, Teengenerate, The Knocks etc, who were influenced by the bands on the label Raw Records.
**Chloroform is a seminal 1996 compilation released by Mangrove Records which features bands like Registrators, The Knocks, Cock Scratch, First Alert etc and was highly influential within Japan as it showcased the current crop of bands playing 70's inspired Punk Rock.
This track was previously released on the Pit Bar Benefit compilation CD (Private Scandal Productions PSCDR004) released in 2020, and is available on the Private Scandal YouTube channel.
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