China 5 Interview Unearthed

Y'know some people out there are cool enough to dig where China 5's coming from and to ask us questions about our music. With that, here's the cleaned-up-and-properly-punctuated transcript of a Japanese dude called DOUBLE*YAY (remember that name, he'll pop up again) talking to me and Pete online. Enjoy!

DOUBLE*YAY: Will you eventually get tired of band name?

Lychee: Probably. People read all sorts of things into band names, but it's just a word, y'know? Just a word with a number tacked on to the end of it. It don't mean nothin'. It's got nothing to do with the music.

D*Y: How hard it is to write songs?

Lychee: Well, writing a pop song, as in a "pop"ular song, as in a song that people can hum or sing to themselves, with a tune that remains in your mind, and lyrics not too banal or not too deep, you know, anything that doesn't freak out the listener and make them think the sky is going to fall in tomorrow, all that stuff, it is pretty difficult. That's not to say we don't have fun trying to do it, but it's a challenge to write a decent song that people might like as opposed to, say, a song that only we like. Because that's pretty much what we've done all along.

D*Y: What do you mean?

Lychee: Well you look at all our oldest songs. Who would they appeal to apart from the two of us and one or two of our friends? Not many people I would think. They're songs for us, by us, to borrow a naff slogan from the nineteen forties. Which is why they don't follow the same staid, weatherbeaten, cliched paradigms of songwriting formats of yore.

D*Y: My English is not good, could you explain last sentence please.

Lychee: No.

D*Y: Very well, I have been given a CD of you. It has 9 songs on it in poor quality. Still, the melodies are nice. Those songs are just my feeling. I wonder what will happen to those songs of yours.

Lychee: That's the Friends Of China 5 disc you've got there my friend! Keep it in a sacred place. Dip it in mayonnaise and bake it in your next lasagna. That CD is a true pop artefact.

Pete: Yeah.

Lychee: That disc was made before we had the technology to make audio files in high quality. Hence the crappy sound on that CD. The first three CDs we did were all recorded on cassette, you know. We're such dinosaurs we can even remember what it was like to dub off copies of cassettes on high-speed, and multi-track them. How about you? What year were you born?

D*Y: 1978.

Pete: Okay, same year as me. So, you know how you could double-track cassette dubbing, and triple-track it. That'd be pushing it. If you did it four times, it would start to distort the sound.

Lychee: Yeah, your vocals would go all chipmunky. Hence the first Lounge Act tape.

Pete: Give me a break man, it was 1994.

Lychee: Cassettes! We are ancient! I can't even mosh at concerts anymore. Crreeeeeeeeeak!

D*Y: So you have embraced new technology?

Lychee: Pretty new. But hey you're from Japan, so compared to your new technology, our new technology would seem primitive.

D*Y: Obviously.

Lychee: Smartarse. But getting back to that 9 track CD, we put our best songs on it, and then we realized that they aren't really pop songs at all. I mean there's instrumental waltzes on it for gawd's sake. Whoever heard of an instrumental waltz in the Top 10?

Pete: I like our instrumentals, but most people find them boring.

Lychee: Exactly. They want lyrics. Not anything special, they don't wanna understand and feel and be moved by the lyrics, they just wanna know that there were lyrics. Something to shout along to in a seedy nightclub after 88 shots of gin. Hence the banal, vapid pap that passes for songwriting these days.

Pete: But you're saying that like everyone loves mindless, moronic radio-playlist filler that can be sped up by 20% without cokeheads noticing. But surprisingly there are people out there who do love fine songcraft.

Lychee: Bull. Every time I turn on the radio it's the same old R&B/hip-hop crap.

D*Y: So why do you rap then Lychee?

Pete: Scorch.

Lychee: Yeah, I rap. You're right. But not all that blingy pimps n' ho's shit. If I write a rap, it's gonna be about something topical, political or maybe humorous to mix it up a little. I don't write tunes about how I was in the club and saw some hot chick and wanted to do her. 99% of all songs are about that. You can write songs like that while watching television. You don't even have to think. You just wave your pen in front of the paper and let the vacuous cliches pour out.

D*Y: One more question, can someone else join China 5 if they want?

Lychee: Sure. Just bring over salt & vinegar chips, some MAD magazines and imported Grape Fanta and we'll see you right.