GS We Love You

"Strangely, though, Cope doesn't make much of the parallels between Krautrock and Japrock: two Axis powers whose postwar youth revolted against their nations' tarnished pasts and embraced Anglo-American pop culture in its most undisciplined and 'decadently' anti-fascist form. One larger idea he does grapple with is the Japanese talent for mimesis. Most of the individual bands Cope writes about have a specific Western precursor/model. Often it's a distinctly unpromising looking one, like those proto-metal one-trick ponies Blue Cheer (with Les Rallizes Denudes) or the bleedin' Moody Blues (with the Far East Family Band). Cope argues that the West-to-East translation process creates 'a peculiar copy of the original,' a wrongness that in some instances allows the Japanese version to surpass its inspiration."

In The Guardian, Simon Reynolds reviews Julian Cope's Japrocksampler: How the Post-War Japanese Blew Their Minds on Rock 'n' Roll.