The Pugs were one of the rockingest, and most fun discoveries of the year! This Japanese rock band is cutting edge in every regard - fashion, music, lyrics, attitude and sowmanship.  by Scott Hunter

NEW! ARTICLE FROM THE BOOK NIPPON POP!

JAPANESE BAND LOOKS TOWARD STARDOMARIZONA SUMMER WILDCAT - AUGUST 1997 by Tom Collins & Angie Corsiglia

PUGS LOOK FOR PAT ON THE HEAD FROM U.S. AUDIENCESTHE ORANGE COUNTRY REGISTER - AUGUST 8, 1997 by Mark Woodlief

PUGS BITE LOLLAPALOOZATHE KANSAN - AUGUST 1, 1997 by Andy Williams

PUGS "PUGS BITE THE RED KNEE" by Adam Webb DAILY HERALD FEBRUARY 14, 1997

PUGS PERFORM AT DEER CREEK MUSIC CENTERINDIANA HERALD - JULY 26, 1997
LOLLAPALOOZA'S SECOND STAGE COMPETES FOR ATTENTIONVALLEY MORNING STAR - AUGUST 5, 1997 by Sergio Chapa

COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD, August

ALTERNATIVE PRESS, August1997-"THIS IS JAPAN MAULING"
CHECK THIS OUT!!! COOL NEW PICTURES

RESIDENT997"GODZILLA VS THE SHANGRI-LAS"

BILLBOARD Magazine - June1996 (an extract)

MANHATTAN MIRROR, No. 2, Issue 11, January 1997 Talking with Japan's Most Iconoclastic Band

Jan. 15-22, 1997 Pugs / Hoppy Kamiyama: A Rambling Conversation With Phil Freeman

CHICAGO SUNDAY TIMES, Sunday March 30, 1997 Pugs on parade - Alternative rockers to strut fantasy music, wardrobe

THE WASHINGTON POST - April 4, 1997 Japanese Pugs: Mixed Musical Breed

EAST MEETS WEST AT LOLLAPALOOZAby MICHAEL SEAR/COLUMBIA BASIN HERALD

Lollapalooza '97 might become known as the year the Japanese alternative group Pugs unmercilessly pounded the sensibilities and eardrums of its audiences while building a healthy following of fans. With its high-energy and outlandish style of music, the band occasionally sounds something like Yoko Ono with her finger caught in a door and at other times like Nirvana out of control. But the band makes no apology about its bizarre music and outlandish stage appearance. It's just the kind of attention they are looking for.
"Of course we would like to see the band become very popular and make a lot of money,"
said bassist Hajime Okano of Pugs with a grin while reclining in the group's tour bus. "But so far we're still trying to find an audience in the United States."
The band's American debut CD "Pugs Bite The Red Knee," effectively reflects their wild, weird and crazy style of semi-organized chaos that some critics say has brought the alternative sound back to the Lollapalooza tour. Sounding very much like the Seattle-based grunge music of Alice In Chains, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, the band said they can't say where the influence of their current sound comes from
"A few years ago we might have credited Pearl Jam, but now it's difficult to say since we don't really sound like anyone else," said keyboard player Hoppy Kamiyama. "We just go into the studio and play whatever comes to mind and then we have a CD. We don't do any prep work. It's to make records that way, but it also takes us in several different directions. We just play music."
Lead singer Honey*K is the closest thing rock fans will find to a female Freddy Mercury. Soft spoken and reserved by nature, once on stage, she transforms into a remarkably polished and effective performer. Her campy over-the-top stage persona, coupled with remarkably versatile vocals, draws audiences and wins them over. But because only a couple of band members speak English and the songs have but a few English words in them, most fans don't know what to make of the whole experience. The band said they just have to let the music do the talking
"We know if people will give us a chance and listen, they will like what they hear," said Honey*K.
The band said touring the United States is both fun and difficult. The band enjoys traveling great distances and seeing the country, but the food, they say, is too greasy and sometimes makes them sick. But, they say, the fans are great.
"Fans here are crazy and wild and sometimes they scare us," Okano said. "Fans in Japan are much calmer."
Once the Lollapalooza tour is done the band will head back to Japan and resume what they call more normal lives. Each have separate jobs to pay the bills until their music catches on. But for now they are happy to tour when they can and are making plans for future U.S. tours. And of course, there is always time for making records.
Pugs just finished its second CD to be released in the U.S. and is due out later this year.

LA WEEKLY-April 16,1997 The Pugs at the Roxy

By Adam Bregman
Would-be Japanese stadium rockers the Pugs opened the show to an already crowded Roxy, packed with rock critics scibbling down their notes. The Pugs, who are more like an amusement park ride than a band, include supermodel-looking singer Honey K, who is one wacky, knockout vocalist; keyboardist drag queen Hoppy Kamiyama, who eventually chucked his wig into the audience; a drummer; a percussionist; a bass player with a rigid Mohawk and dressed in some sort of ridiculous gladiator outfit; another bass player with thick, brown dreadlocks that have to be fake; and a guitarist who looks like all of Aerosmith wrapped up in one guy. Musically, they sound like a samurai with some pots and pans, a bunch of children's toys, and a little girl trapped in a washing machine; various sounds blended into each other to form a giant, many-headed dragon with its own dance steps to each song. This is a Godzilla-size band that could probably win over even the lamest of audiences...

The Washington Post - April 4, 1997

Japanese Pugs: Mixed Musical Breed

 

Japanese pop culture has a blithe disregard for the meaning and syntax of English, so it's no great surprise that Japan's Pugs have their album titled "Bite The Red Knee" and penned couplets like "It's a brand new star, nipples just like lead / My head plugged up with orange." It's not just the groups' half-Japanese lyrics that are dizzy, though. This sextet [sic] is equally unconcerned about the rules of Western music genres.

The album opens with "Mari In Love," a neo-surf music track whose intro features a heavy metal arrangement of the theme to Strauss's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." The song finds lead singer Honey*K warbling like the Banshee's Siouxsie, but for "Spock On (Miss Gloria)" she switches to Bjork. Meanwhile, the band shifts from garage rock to Latin jazz to a version of the Champs' 1958 hit "Tequila." And that's just the quickest of surveys of the music pillaged here, all with admirable skill and infectious enthusiasm. As for what it all means, such lines as "Hello, I'm Einstein with big breasts/I am Einstein, it's a counterattack of love" and "I love you, my Divine/I want to lick your ugly nose" suggest that these outlandishly eclectic songs are about sex. Which means "Bite The Red Knee" is actually classic rock.

Mark Jenkins

Chicago Sun-Times, Sunday March 30, 1997

Pugs on parade - Alternative rockers to strut fantasy music, wardrobe

Austin, Texas-Anyone who caught the Pugs at the recent 11th annual South by Southwest Music and Media Conference would concur their bark is as fierce as their bite.

The loud seven-piece, Tokyo-based alternative rock band is led by avant-garde keyboardist Hoppy Kamiyama. He's the guy who will be wearing a platinum wig and aqua mermaid dress when Pugs kick off a splendid April Fool's quadruple bill at Metro. Then there's lead singer Honey K., whose turquoise beads denote that she is "connected to Mars." Maybe that's why the rest of the band forgot to pick her up at her Austin hotel, causing a half-hour delay in the Pugs showcase.

Once the set began, percussionist Steve Eto banged away on long metal pipes, grinders and a chain saw, creating dense industrial rhythms reminiscent of the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Eto is Japan's only metal percussionist.

Pugs played songs from "Bite The Red Knee," their first U.S. release (Casual Tonalities). Honey K. sang "I Am Einstein (With Big Breasts)," in a silver "Jetsons"-era miniskirt and matching cone bra. Pugs closed the set with a rousing version of the Champs' hit "Tequila," which is also on the Knee-CD. This is Walt Disney's worst nightmare.

Pugs will hang around Chicago to record their next CD with Steve Albini (Jesus Lizard, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet). Pugs are profoundly influenced by the noise guitars and spellbinding rhythms of Albini's Big Black and Rapeman (the name came from the hero of a Japanese comic book).

"I like everything about Steve Albini," Kamiyama said in an interview outside the Tropical Isle nightclub, where Pugs performed. "Especially Big Black. We'll be in town for a week; it will only take us that long to do a record. We did our last two albums in one day [each]."

Albini was introduced to Pugs through Chicago experimental guitarist Jim O'Rourke. "The thing about the Japanese experimental rock aesthetic is that by turns it's goofy," Albini said. "Yet its really strait-laced and severe. Depending on which moment you happen to be residing in, you can get both of those."

A self-described "blues-glam" singer, Honey K. found her backing band in 1994 playing around Tokyo, "Five guys, one drag queen," she said through a translator. "First, we wanted to enjoy music from inside. Then it's important people connect with the music. I do that by writing and performing."

Honey K.'s material ranges from the gothic fuzz guitar-driven "Spock On (Miss Gloria)" to "Mari in Love," one of the most ambitious "Bite The Red Knee" tracks with Honey K.'s Bjork-like yodel layered over burning guitars and Eastern chanting (by way of that shook-a-chaka chant in the 1974 Blue Swede cover of "Hooked On A Feeling").

"I write with spirituality in mind," she said. "It's difficult to explain. There's a mind, there's a spirit. Sometimes they are together. Other times they are apart. There aren't many songwriters I listen to, although I love Patti Smith. I make my rhymes and everyone has to respond to it."

Like in "Spock On," where Honey K. writes, "On a rocking boat, floating over the lake/Both of us falling, Venus/It's fine if this is all in fun, a fleeting dream/Kill me Venus..." Of course.

Besides provocative lyrics and biting percussion, Pugs are distinctive in that they employ dual bassists: pop-influenced Hajime Okano and Atsushi Tsuyama, who is also a member of the Boredoms, a popular Sonic Youth-inspired Japanese band withwhich Albini has worked. "I've done small-scale work with the Boredoms and UFO or Die [a Boredoms offshoot]," Albini said. "In total, I've worked with 30 or 40 Japanese bands. About four or five years ago I was in Japan for three weeks, and I did one or two band sessions a day."

Kamiyama said, "The Tokyo music scene is boring [as it resists Western influences]. Even Shonen Knife only draws a couple of hundred people in Tokyo. Japanese people don't understand us. They feel sorry for us. They think it is 'bad' music. They like music that is creamy [as in sweet]. The underground scene is better."

Pugs spice up their show with theatrics that pay homage to George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic. Kamiyama, 37, began dressing in drag in 1990 after he sat in with Clinton and former James Brown sideman Maceo Parker when P-funk came to Tokyo.

"I interviewed Georgy for a Japanese music magazine," said Kamiyama, who also runs his own Japanese label, which has released CDs by John Zorn, Marc Ribot and other noise experimentalists. "We had a very fun time, and he ended up liking our music. The same night, he invited me to the show and we played 'Tear The Roof Off The Sucker (Give Up The Funk).' My friends hated it the first time I decided to dress up. They said, 'Oooh, scary!' I must say, it was a gorgeous, deep purple dress." Kamiyama said his costuming has nothing to do with Kabuki, where men often play women.

Albini attempted to put things into perspective. He said, "Pugs tend to be theatrical. And more genre-specific. The P-Funk thing probably voices itself more in the troupe mentality, people interacting at once rather than set compositions that are executed on the spot."

Dave Hoekstra

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