TURNING... OLD
I was driving Emmett to Woodbridge Park in Studio City yesterday, where the bus picks him up to take him to Sierra Canyon Day Camp in lovely Chatsworth, and casually flipping through the radio stations along the way. I froze at 93.1, the sort-of good, sort-of shit JACK FM, when I heard some old fashioned corn syrup for the ears: It was the Vapors' "Turning Japanese." Immediately, I began singing along - verse, chorus, it didn't matter. I hit the chorus hard and turned toward Emmett in the backseat. He was amused by the lines "Turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so." Since he's only 6, I opted against explaining the meaning of the songs, which, of course, is an ode to masturbation.
And's not even the best song about masturbation. It's not even close. That would be "Orgasm Addict" by the Buzzcocks. It's funny about "Turning Japanese," though. Even though I knew every friggin' word (I can't believe that's the kind of thing that's sticking to the insides of my brain like a piece of gum I can't extract from my shoe), I never really liked the song. It's catchy, but I was a bit of a snob when it came out. KROQ in L.A. played it to death in 1981 (82? I'm too lazy to look it up), and, to me it signaled the beginning of the end of the station. Suddenly, KROQ was all about hyped-up novelty songs rather than just good music. So everything had to be about sex -- "I Know What Boys Like," "Violent Love," "Good Girls Don't," "Are You Ready For the Sex Girls," and, my favorite, "Too Young To Date," by D-Day. It was the Sparks-ification of KROQ and I really hated it. Thank god I was about to go of to college, where I could listen to forward-looking music like The Grateful Dead (that was a joke, kind of).
But I guess "Turning Japanese" succeeded to the degree that it's survived for 25 years, getting airplay on nostalgia-driven radio formats and forcing me to sing along, even though it wouldn't make my list of Top 1,000,000 songs of all time. Damn it all to hell.
posted by Erik Himmelsbach at 11:45 AM
5 Comments:
I never really liked that song, either, though every word and note of it are thoroughly burned into my brain. I've heard from many trustworthy sources that the band's OTHER songs were actually pretty good, more clanging mod-punk than new wave novelty, but I've never been able to suspend my disbelief (or my own snobbery) long enough to investigate further.
Hey Erik,
Beleive it or not I think I saw the Vapors at the Florentine Gardens at some Frazier Smith "Too Hip" concert that was free to all those with their "Too Hip" card....Guess I wasn't too hip.
Hey Erik,
Stewart (Hit Me Baby) here. In the early 80s I was living in Sweden with a woman who was (for a very short time, thank God) to become my wife. Her folks talked no English whatsoever. It was a difficult relationship. I was working for her dad in his sawmill and I came back from work one day and went into the kitchen to have some coffee with him and his wife while waiting for my girl to come home from her job in the nearby town. We're listening to the radio when Turning Japanese comes on. I'm smiling as I know it is about man's most pleasurable past time. I think about using the dictionary to tell my parents in law to be what the song is about but I get cold feet. But guess what? The very next song to some on was I'm A Wanker! Well, I THINK it was called I'm A Wanker (it goes, I'm a Wanker, I'm A Wanker and I'm doing/going very well) My mum in law to be is humming along to this, tapping her leg on the floor but has no idea what it means. Now, the two songs go together and I can't listen to either without thinking of a 65-year-old Swedish woman humming along and completely ignorant of the song's vulgarity.
Hey Ho! - Coming out on 11th of September so see you then!
I might like you better if we slept together
What about 'Blister in the Sun'? I can't really stand that group anymore, but I have memory of being in sixth or seventh grade - for some reason we were allowed to play music in science class, while working on group projects. I put the Femmes album on, and my science teacher pulled me aside and said "you know what this song is about, right?" And I said, "yeah, but I don't really see what's wrong with that." And, as I remember he agreed, so it seemed that he had just pulled me aside to inform me that the song was about masturbation, just to let me know.
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