Magic WANDS...

Ohayo! At least to me... ^_^ I'm having breakfast in the early morning and blasting the hell out of the CD I'm posting today. You know, just to get in the right mood to talk to you a bit about WANDS, one of the most successful pop/rock bands of the last decade, and another one of those acts that you HAVE to know. This blog will attempt to cover the essentials of Jpop and anime music of the past years and jump to more recent stuff whenever I feel the whole page is turning too much into a vintage Jpop shrine. In any case, even if some material may sound dated, be sure it is quality music and bare with me... I grew up listening to much of this stuff ! ^_-
So WANDS is a trio formed in 1991 by main vocalist Sho Uesugi, guitarist Hiroshi Shibasaki, and keyboardist Kousuke Oshima (the coolest looking guy behind the keyboards... ever! He looks like he was part of the original lineup of Pizzicato 5). The group disbanded in 2000, so there are no longer among us... but they made sure to leave behind a string of infectious hits to be remembered for.

Sho is a hell of a singer and performer, with a great voice for rock, though -truth be told- some of their songs are more on the pop side, dominated by Kousuke's keyboard rather than by Hiroshi's electric guitar. Just like B'z, they seem to have favored more agressive rock arrangements as years went by... and also as the musical taste of the masses switched to that kind of sound. The album posted below, "Best of WANDS History" is a true testament to the evolution of their music.

Their early material may easily be mistaken for B'z songs. The reason is simple: WANDS and B'z belonged to the same recording company -the BEING studio- who housed as well other immensely popular acts of the 90's in Japan, such as ZARD and DEEN. BEING was the most successful music company of the first half of the 90's in Japan, and counted among their ranks with producer extraordinaire Tetsuro Oda. This man was responsible for many of WANDS and B'z hits, and later devoted the last half of the 90's to model the sound of my girl Nanase Aikawa. Oda, to me, is a true music genius and a great musician himself (a guitarist that has released albums on his own) and I should put up one day a compilation of my favorite tracks produced by him.

Back to WANDS, they debuted on the music charts with their 1991 ballad "Sabishisa wa Aki no Iro", to which followed the single "Furimuite Dakishimete" in May 1992, just before putting out their debut self-titled album one month later. Both singles are mysteriously absent in the compilation you'll find below, but at least I can provide you with the music videos of them, courtesy of aleose 85 & YouTube. And before you start cracking up at their hairstyle and fashion sense, remember this was 15 years ago ! ^_^:


Poppy, right ? Just like a carbon copy of B'z first songs... After listening to the album, you'll let me know if you think they should've been there anyway. The compilation below at least includes all three of their songs contributed to anime series. The album kicks start with, undoubtedly, their most famous song in the fandom: the 2nd ED of the TV adaptation of the manga "Slam Dunk", "Sekai ga Owaru made wa" ("Til' the end of the world"). Such a brilliant song and performance by Sho... another instant classic in the fandom. Here is the clip, courtesy of jomarjerome @ YouTube, and if you didn't enjoy the previous two clips don't worry, the majority of the album below rather sounds like this:

Their other contributions to animation projects are the first ED to the Yuugi Oh TV series (track 11 of the CD below) and an ED as well for Dragon Ball GT. Oh, though not any ED... they had the privilege of recording the song (track 10) to match the very last images that the Japanese saw in the long, long, loooong saga that is the classic TV series of Dragon Ball. Those three tracks are among my favorites of this compilation, together with tracks 3, 4 and the great, amazing "Secret Night" (track 7). Track 12 in the original CD was a live, short version of "Sekaijuu no Dare Yori Kitto" performed with Miho Nakayama. I dared to replace that version in the tracklisting with the actual studio version of that song, for you to fully enjoy it.

After breaking up as a group, Sho continued in music performing solo and his first album ("Blackout in the Galaxy") came out last February. Can't wait to get a copy of that one... Here's "Best of WANDS History", a collection of songs taken from the five albums they released throughout the 90's... as always, I appreciate if you leave any comments on the music.