Hello everybody,
A little while ago I stumbled on this discussion forum. Much to my surprise I noted that my name was mentioned on these pages in connection to Gerogerigegege bootlegs.
Time for me to join the fun then and shed some light on this story.
I got in touch with Juntaro in the late 80s. His releases, the debut album and Showa, were completely against the grain of what 'noise' music was supposed to be – I always loved that anarchistic spirit. And still do. So Juntaro and I started corresponding and exchanging music over the mail. Not e-mail mind you, but the slow variant before the days of the internet. I still have his letters and the stuff he sent me. He was a great letter writer: enthusiastic, not too good on his English (but then again my Japanese was even worse) but always fun letters with plenty of exclamation marks in wildly decorated envelopes. Great mail art stuff!
Then, all of a sudden and without any warning, Juntaro disappeared. There were no more replies to my letters, no more releases, no nothing. After a while, rumours started to spread: Juntaro was seriously ill, hospitalized and quite possibly even dead. A sad time as I appreciated his works and our contact.
I started thinking about doing some sort of tribute to Juntaro. Maybe record some noise? Hmmm, too obvious – plus I've never been good at sheer noise as it is. What about a Gero release? Do something wild and anarchic, like Juntaro used to do, limited, handmade packaging, slightly illegal. I owned an original copy of his ZSF cassette which was never released on vinyl. And I love vinyl, so I decided to do just that: release the ZSF cassette on vinyl. In an edition of 10 copies (plus a test copy). I ordered ten heavy carton gatefold covers from the USA, made a high quality Wave-file of the cassette (did no mastering, no noise reduction, no compression, just digitalized the cassette) and worked on a high quality glossy insert based on the original design. The inner gatefold featured images from a Japanese porn magazine. In all, the whole thing came up looking and sounding great.
Of the 10 copies, I sold most. The price was set to compensate the costs I had made plus make a small profit. I also traded some copies for records I really wanted. I contacted Juntaro about the album, but received no reply. End of story. You'd think.
Last year Juntaro resurfaced with Moenai Hai, his best album in ages. I was really happy to hear he was alive and had found the energy to record such a great album. Unfortunately, I also heard Juntaro was mad at me for releasing the ZSF tape, calling me a bootlegger in public. I contacted Juntaro via the email address listed on Moenai Hai telling him why I had released the album, and he sent me a one line reply: a link to a cassette I was selling on Discogs. The cassette was a cheap copy of the ZSF tape, which I had bought from a guy in the UK hoping it would be an original. It wasn't, so I listed it for sale as a non-original on Discogs. I withdrew the sale from Discogs after Juntaro's brief message and sent him a long mail explaining about this sale and the LP I had made. Unfortunately, I received no reply.
Of course, it is Juntaro's perfect right not to approve of the release of the ZSF tape.Nor is this message intended to claim justice for releasing the vinyl. I actually stand by that as a well-intended 'tribute' to Juntaro, made in a time when I thought he was no long with us.
This message is intended as a reply to questions raised by people, including on this forum. So this is just that. Thank you for reading.
Freek
