Like its predecessor
GS I Love You
, this compiles unheard-in-the-West cuts by 1960s Japanese garage-psych bands. All 27 songs were released on
Philips
in Japan between 1966-69; the "GS" of the title is an abbreviation of "Group Sounds," as this genre was termed in Japan. Sure, you'd be challenged to find many (any?) collectors outside of Japan who had all of this stuff. This does not mean, though, that this is any less generic than many a standard '60s garage/psych/punk compilation from the U.S. or Europe, though the fidelity is certainly way better than the standard. In most respects these Japanese bands were the same as those from other lands in their catalog of fuzz riffs and basic variations of R&B-influenced rock patterns. It's a little strange to English-reared ears because of the accents, frequent mangling of English phrases, and off-kilter, bizarrely energetic transmutations of American and British rock cliches. The truth is, the songwriting and instrumentation aren't too imaginative, and attention tends to wander often during the course of the lengthy disc. Yes, you can pick out odd touches to numerous arrangements -- the television drama horns that mix with fuzz guitars on
the Carnabeats
'
"Chu! Chu! Chu!,"
the verbatim quote of the guitar riff from
the Byrds
"Here Without You"
that opens
the Tempters
"Himitsu No Rikotoba"
(after which it goes right into a totally unrelated, basic garage-psych tune), the quasi-San Francisco blues-rock groove of
"Tell Me More,"
the D'Swooners
' eccentric translation of
"Stone Free,"
and
the Shadows
-meet-
Joe Meek
instrumental
"Space Express"
by
the Savage
. But, to trot out a reviewer cliche to match the musical ones, little sticks in the memory. The most entertaining cuts actually tend to be the ones in which raunchy '60s rock meets incongruously poppy, brassy production (as in
Lind & the Linders
"Koi Ni Shiberete"
), if only for the novel admixture. ~ Richie Unterberger