Tenjo Sajiki

Featuring: J. A. Seazer

The Tenjo Sajiki Company was an avant garde theater troupe formed by Terayama Shuji & was an audience participation street theatre designed to shock along the lines of the Living Theatre. Popular music was always incorporated in their projects, and so lots of rocker runaway teens were quickly attracted. By the early 70s, J.A. Ceazer and Kuni Kawauchi (of the GS group Happenings Four) had joined, and the music got really fucking weird along with the performances. Instead of just staging a version of 'Hair' like everybody else, the troupe wrote original music for a documentary about a hoped-for politically informed drag queen revolution, and of course it was also partly a musical.

Drag queens (who speak & sing all across the record) & their nightclub chansons & pop sleaze get crossed with heavy rock riffs and the result is impressively screwy. Hitler speeches, phantom organ, spare Mosrite guitar with dusted crooning, couple of goofy classical music quotes, no overly effeminate accents unless you speak pretty good Japanese though.