Customer Reviews

Adolescent Sex (Dig)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most people will land on this album by way of researching David Sylvian, Japan, et al. If you are interested in that vein, this is probably not your wisest first shot. If however, you have a craving for long-neglected, trashy, mascara-drippin' rock (guitars that cross Sly Stone with Sticky Fingers-era Stones, sneering heroin vocals, androgyny and alienation) you won't find a better album. This is L.A. gutter rock at its finest.

The contradiction (for this IS the band Japan and the singer IS David Sylvian) is that Japan started out as a bunch of 15-year old south London boys fixated on Bowie, T-Rex and Motown. They recorded two "hard rock" albums (this and "Obscure Alternatives") before discovering Roxy Music and their true, sublime calling with "Quiet Life." They disowned those first two albums as the shady manipulation of producers and managers, but the fact is that "Adolescent Sex" in particular is greasy, sleazy and brimming with furious talent. The album bombed, despite enormous record company hype. It was released just as punk was peaking and nobody had time for this kind of loud, tacky glamour anymore. Nobody namechecks the album, but you can hear it in LA Guns, GunsNRoses, Suede, and others.

The best tracks on the album (the wicked blaxploitation funk of "The Unconventional", the hammy soul of "Wish You Were Black" and the georgous synthesizers on "Television" and "Suburban Love") can make you wish that the 70s never ended, that life should be one long cocaine-fueled sex party. The arrangements are watertight, the playing verges on brilliant, and the whole collection is encased in a humid, throroughly-analog mix. It is a true guilty pleasure for those of us who think we've outgrown such things.

While of course this is an increadible album by an increadible group that where and still are ahead of thier time, this is one of those "remastered"
CD's that you wish to God that someone else would have done the job!! It sounds to me like the remastering tech/eng has a case of high frequency burn out as the highs (esp in the area of 4 to 8 khz) are insanely boosted, the stereo image is poor and the much too heavy compression is just plain old WRONG! The drums are non existant. This is one of those Remasters where you would be better off to get either the 1980's CD release or get the CD called "The Other Side of Japan" as it has most of the best tracks from this album. Plus you should get the CD titled Assemblage- that version of the title track Adolescent Sex is the much better version anyways. I only hope that the remastering of Quiet Life and Gentlemen Take Polaroids are much better.....

i worked my way chronologically backwards through the japan catalog in high school and each earlier album i reached i liked better. tin drum is about as fun as a dental cleaning, but adolescent sex rocks. it is what it's called. sexy, adolescent, sleazy and fun. a little glam, a little disco and a healthy dose of teenage attitude. still one of my fave guilty pleasures.

Being started off with Gentlemen Take Polaroids, then Tin Drum, this was my next purchase. Wow. David Sylvian's voice was completely different in the beginning, sounding like a mix between Robert Smith of the Cure and Johnny Rotten. Not really bad though...as many have stated before me, this is sleazy glam at its best.
I simply put on "Transmission" and loved the sound immediately. Who woulda thought that David Sylvian had an incredibly sexual side to his voice as well (besides how nice his voice sounds now, much deeper than in '78). "Television" is quickly becoming my fave track, clocking in over 9 minutes, and continually builds high and falls back down, only to continue to build until the explosive ending. But probably the most entertaining song on here is the cover of the Barbra Streisand classic "Don't Rain on my Parade". Hilarious to hear a glam rock/punkish cover of the showtune. Though I really can understand why David doesn't really look fondly back on this album, considering how much more sophisicated he is now...but hey, it was the 70's, and we may be able to relate it to other glam/metal groups of late, but Japan already had a totally different sound.

This album is either five years too late, or ten years too early, depending on your point of view.

"Adolescent Sex" is not-half-bad funk-tinged trash/glam-rock which would turn heads and make booties shake in 1972-- but it was released in 1976, right when Punk was catching a full head of steam and was breaking out of various garages and rehearsal spaces in Soho (NYC, USA) and, erm, Soho (London, UK).

Also, "Adolescent Sex" is top-rate radio-friendly funk-tinged hiardresser-friendly glam rock which was so popular in the pre-grunge radio landscape of the mid to late '80s-- when Japan, by this time, was but a memory, and its solo members were making ambient/new-agey soundscapes that had about as much in common with glam rock as Frank Sinatra.

This album, on its own, completely taken out of its context, is not a half-bad slab o' theatrical-minded hard rock. There are definately a few gems here-- "Suburban Love" has been a favorite of mine for nearly two decades now. "The Unconventional" is infectiously groovy, and not a bad effort at all when you consider most of its creators weren't even legal when it was created.

And, like the other reviewers here, I'd like to add in a word of warning for fans of solo Silvian or post-"Quiet Life" Japan/Rain Tree Crow-- this is probably not what you're looking for. But if you like taking a risk or listening to something outside of your normal tastes, give it a try. Who knows, it may just grow on you!

This album is really bad, but ironically and enjoyably so (hence 4 stars). If you have some sense of humor you might enjoy it. The band can only play simple, square sounding lines on their instruments. It has a trashy 70s R&B feel (mixed with some glam) and David Sylvian whines both nasally and raunchily through most songs. If you're looking for slick, polished, serious stuff get their later albums. Do not buy it unless you like having a bit of a laugh at Japan and their their immature, posturing, trying-to-shock antics.

The songs are trying very hard to be raunchy and shocking, have very little profanity, but lots of gratuitous sexual innuendo mixed with scornful mocking of the would-be sexual partners. You feel as though you might come away with a disease afterwards.

Someone needs to make some degrading (and scratchy) movie print to be shown in a dilapidated theatre with unknown disgusting slime and trash litering the floor. They need to make that movie and then play this album along with it. A perfect raunchy fit.

This album is great for fun and irony but I can't imagine that it will be seriously liked by many of the more serious Japan fans. Enjoy it's excesses if you can.

Japan's 1978 debut is brash, funky(The Unconventional)/punky (Don't Rain on My Parade)shameless snapshot of the UK post punk era. Transmission is worth the record alone...dark and driving..Lovers on Main Street has a great funky riff as does Adolescent Sex to name a few....too bad they left off Stateline, a b-side. Any fan of Magazine, Gary Numan, early Simple Minds will love this record. BTW, a one star review? Are you kidding? Japan's debut should not be compared to David Sylvian's solo work...you're comparing a pair of Levi Jeans to a Boss suit....both great, totally different....This is the fun David Sylvian, not the pretentious guy we all grew to love.

This isn't Japan's best album, but it's still a good album and it's definitely worth listening to so you can hear the full journey of Japan. You may not want to get it first, but I definitely wouldn't discount it altogether and I definitely wouldn't rate it just 1 star.

Japan may have emerged into the public eye at the same time as supremely talentless bands who were inflicting their limited musical ability on the listening public, but don't ever think that Japan were punks too. Where punk music was extremely unmelodic and crass, David Sylvian and the boys could actually play. The music on this album is very accessible: some of the tracks could even be described as funky, such as 'Performance' and 'Suburban Love', and each track has a melody to it. This was an early offering from the band, and on subsequent albums their musical style changed enormously, but their ability to play and sing was clearly shown. Japan never achieved the greatness that I think they deserved, probably because their image was never quite right, but in purely musical terms they were up there with the best, and this album is a perfect introduction to the band for people who may be tempted. My advice is: take a bold step and buy this album. I'll bet it's not the first Japan album you buy.

I suppose that this CD can be written off as just another bunch of gay British boys trying to imitate early David Bowie or Iggy Pop. And after "Obscure Alternatives" (JAPAN's American debut album), it was certainly tempting to take bets on how fast these guys were going to vanish into obscurity.

This CD (JAPAN's 2nd U.S. release, but actually their first, worldwide) is far more developed and interesting musically (and the playing is much more intense) than that on "Obscure Alternatives". But neither album was commercially successful. "Obscure Alternatives" generated a lot of interest within the American music biz mainly due to David Sylvian's extremely good looks (amply displayed on the cover). This --naturally-- led to charges that they were just another bunch of ''Queens'' trying to make it on looks, but with little musical talent to back them up (comments referring to that old TRAFFIC song about high heeled boys with a low spark, and calling the lead singer "David So-Vain" were common charges hurled at JAPAN).

The visages are toned down (David Sylvain's especially) for "Adolescent Sex", as the band attempted to sell themselves on their musical ability. While this bid for artistic legitimacy was bold and risky, it was a huge marketing mistake -- the album bombed. COmercially, JAPAN were "way too gay" for mainstream radio, and not queeny enough to appeal to the gay crowd (who at the time were mainly into disco). Another problem of course, was that the band's name suggested that perhaps the lyrics would be in Japanese, and therefore incomprehensible to American or British audiences (the only real markets for punk at that time).

As a 1970's punk CD, this shows the roots of the band JAPAN eventually became (a year after this release in fact). Unlike "Obscure Alternatives" which seemed to mirror JAPAN's complete disillusionament with the music industry, "Adolescent Sex" is highly experimental and focused.

"The Unconventional" and "Suburban Love" are the best rock tunes here. But tother songs, including the title cut, "Performance", and "Don't Rain on My Parade" are accessible. The biggest reason this was not a bigger hit with the punk crowd is that the Punks were mostly alienated low-income city urchins, while JAPAN wer all from wealthy suburbs. There seems to be a longing in some song lyrics ("Love on Main Street" and "Television") for an acceptance of gay boys, but the realization that --in the 1970's-- this was not to be, yields "Wish You Were Black" which can be taken on 2 levels; a funky black-sounding song, or a somewhat naive suburban belief that whatever problems they might have in life, urban blacks get to have lots of hot sex. Before you scold these guys for being ''racist'', place the music in context: the 1970's, white teenage boys, and the all-white neigborhoods they lived in.

While JAPAN never again made a hard rock/punk albums after this and "Alternatives", and they changed into a more upscale Roxy Music style band for subsequent CD's, this features them at the end of their innocence.

JAPAN claims that "Adolescent Sex" and "Obscure Alternatives" are the product of manipulative or explotative producers and managers, but they sure seemed to be willing to "play their buns off" here (or maybe they were just bratty but talented teenege boys "etting their rocks off").

Anyhow, while I like later JAPAN CD's such as "Quiet Life" and "Tin Drum", this one should not be overlooked.

I will however caution fans of the later material, that this is very much a hard rock/punk CD that may not comport with your preferences. Sadly, the boys in JAPAN (now no longer boys) seem to be content to chalk ot up to "adolescence" and the loud sparky sound of White Punks on Dope... oh, wait, that's from another band.