Far Out There character soundtrack: Dr. Jarre (Patreon)

Last time we did one of these, it was for Mariska, and I was joking about how now we were digging into the really obscure and rarely seen characters. But in the time since I posted that soundtrack and this one, Mariska finally completed her YEARS LONG trip and actually showed up in the same room as Ichabod, so she just had a MAJOR upgrade in relevance. This time, though, THIS time we’re dealing with a true Side Character, a real “Oh yeah, that person exists” person: Dr. Delia Jarre. You know, that mad scientist with the skull top hat who always wears shades and flip-flops. The one who thought Avatar was really Princess Rheiko in that one story, then only appeared in Voting Incentives and Christmas comics ever since. Yep, SHE’S got a character soundtrack. Does my sharing it here mean she’s in line for a new storyline push just like Mariska’s getting? No. No it does not. But it’s still one of my favorite soundtracks of the bunch, one of the ones I’m most prone to listening to just for its own sake, like Mariska’s. And just like Mariska’s soundtrack, this one is also built around a “genre” that doesn’t seem to exist outside of my own head.

When I hear the phrase “Prog Rock,” the thing that immediately springs to mind is musical complexity. There’s ambitious scope and narrative concepts and a general pompous atmosphere too, obviously, but my first thought is always that Progressive Rock is going to be really, really complicated. I think of Rick Wakeman somehow playing eight keyboards at the same time, Robert Fripp getting a guitar to make sounds human beings can’t hear, and Frank Zappa writing in time signatures that operate on Lovecraftian geometry. But of course, there are plenty of breeds of Prog that reach their ambitious endpoints via far less convoluted melodic structures, songs that are downright conventional in their musical composition, some might even say “traditional.” Japan in particular seems to have a healthy strand of artists who wed lofty artistic concepts and operatic tone with deliberately simplistic performances and almost folksy melodies. The best I’ve ever been able to describe this not-genre is “Garage Prog,” though even that doesn’t fully capture how hold fashioned and traditional the stereotypically “Japanese” melodies are. I’m sure that part doesn’t sound anywhere near as exotic to actual Japanese people as it does to my Western ears, but then again, maybe people who can actually understand the lyrics think it’s even WEIRDER than I do. And that’s the main thing, right there: whatever you call this strand of music, it’s WEEEIIIRD, and the weirdness cuts a lot deeper when it’s delivered with such a direct and forceful guitar attack than some florid, twenty-minute storm of synthesizer solos. And, as if it even needed to be said, of COURSE a mad scientist like Dr. Jarre would listen to music that really pompous and weird and resistant to obvious classification. Mad scientists are all about big, dramatic musical cues for when they throw their arms up in the air and declare that it is they, THEY who are mad! And then the lightning crashes amid diabolical laughter and all that stuff. Just imagine a scene like that and you’ve got the basic spirit of this playlist.

I think the best single example of what I’m talking about is the band eX-Girl, represented on this soundtrack by “Hettakorii no Ottokotu” off the Endangered Species album. Producer Hoppy Kamiyama assembled eX-Girl out of women with absolutely no musical training whatsoever, instructing them to start composing music WHILE figuring out how to play some instruments on the theory that their inexperienced naiveté would allow them to tap into a kind of primal creativity that experienced musicians who “knew better” would never stumble upon. So, basically The Shaggs, but on purpose. Endangered Species was recorded several years (and lineup changes) after that point, but the distinctive sound endured, combining lush scifi operatic with almost tribal rhythms and melodies. It’s a brain-bending concoction of weirdness that perfectly encapsulates what Dr. Jarre would be into (and, as an aside, was actually on ICHABOD’S soundtrack for quite a while before I swapped it out with another eX-Girl track: “The Tofu Song”)

For all that gushing about eX-Girl, they only contribute that one song to Dr. Jarre’s soundtrack. The actual MVP, with a whopping FOUR tracks, is composer J.A. Seazer.  Classy, sophisticated types know him best for his fusion of Japanese traditional music and Rock & Roll in soundtracks for experimental theater troupe Tenjo Sajiki, as represented here by “Jigoku no Orufe” from 1978’s Shintokumaru. To us geeks, however, he is forever The Guy Who Made All Those Crazy Songs From Revolutionary Girl Utena. That’s where the other three Seazer tracks come from: “DUELIST ~ Yomigaere! Mukyuu no Rekishi ‘Chuusei’ yo” from the Adolescence of Utena movie soundtrack, “Kaigetsu Ai Ni Shisu” from the spinoff/tie-in/bonus/whatever 7th album, and of course "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku" from the stock footage segment of every single episode. In all cases, these songs manage to evoke a sense theatrical, disorienting strangeness while somehow also having a recognizably Classic Rock foundation. All the better for declaring that your creation is alive! ALIVE!

SLIGHTLY less theatrical and more straightforward, but only slightly, we have garage-y stuff like “Saraba Jinrui” by Mowmow Lulu Gyaban, “Umeboshu Plums – Bib Seeds” by TsuShiMaMiRe, and “Ukifune” by Go!Go!7188. That sentence almost set my spellcheck on fire. I also threw in the very New Wave-y “Atom-Siberia” by Devo disciples turned Polysics idols P-Model. Bizarrely, though, probably the single strangest track on Dr. Jarre’s soundtrack is technically the most mainstream: “Pompara Pekoluna Papiyotta” by Go Go Nana Ni San Ni Rei. Despite looking like the a bunch of pretentious theater kids (the group had three, THREE drummers), this was actually a side project of pop idol conglomerate Shiritsu Ebisu Chuugaku, I guess in an attempt to cash in on the whole BabyMetal “Idol Metal” fad. And while “Pompara Pekoluna Papiyotta” looks to all the world like what would have happened if Queen had scored Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune, it was actually composed for a cracker advertising campaign, with one of the co-authors being no less than the great Yoko Kanno. That last one sums up one of my favorite things about Japanese music in general, their concept of “mainstream pop” encompasses SOOOO much more weirdness than most of the Western world’s. And as if I haven’t stressed this point enough already, a mad scientist would DEFINITELY love music that’s weird.

And yet, for all my gushing about the simplified, straightforward breed of kinda sorta Prog from Japan, it only managed to take up two-thirds of Dr. Jarre’s soundtrack. The final third is Progressive Rock of the good old-fashioned European variety, although still a bit more hard-edged than, say, Yes. In fact, despite having tossed shade at one of Yes’ most iconic keyboardists Rick Wakeman earlier (who I don’t even dislike, honestly), we’ve got a pair of tracks featuring England’s OTHER mad keyboard genius: Keith Emerson. “The Barbarian” and “Knife Edge” are both off of Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s first album, and while they both feature liberal doses of organ and piano insanity, it’s all flourish atop Greg Lake laying down some of the most Black Sabbath-esque riffs he ever conceived. Similarly, Robert Fripp makes an appearance via King Crimson’s “Red,” which sounds a bit like twenty straightforward, riff-based heavy metal songs all mashed together into a web that’s somehow intricate while also monolithic. I also threw in “Pazuzu (Theme from The Exorcist II)” from Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack to… well, I think that’s pretty obvious. Again, these songs are build around a single, prominent riff that SEEMS like it’s playing out in a straightforward fashion, only to go on for juuuust a beat or two farther than it seems like it should, just enough to be more disorienting the closer you pay attention to it.

Last of all… actually no, this is “last” it’s the second most prominent presence on this playlist after J.A. Seazer. Anyway, there’s three tracks by seminal space rockers Hawkwind, who are possibly the best example of yet of “prog but not too fancy” seeing as how they somehow manage to be a Progressive band who also managed to be pioneers of both Punk AND Rave music. Not that you’d know it from the oddball choices I threw in here, though. “Sonic Attack,” “Black Corridor,” and “10 Seconds of Forever” aren’t really “songs” in the traditional sense, but rather spoken word pieces written by author Michael Moorcock and vocalist Robert Calvert, who recites them on the Space Ritual live album in his best Dalek impression. Aside from being good transitional pieces where I didn’t really have an obvious segue between tracks (basically what they were doing on Space Ritual in the first place), these songs are the most blatantly Science Fiction moments on the whole playlist, which is kind of a key factor in a Mad Scientist’s soundtrack, don’t ya think?

Also, the thought just occurs to me that, amid all these warped riffs and thudding, singular hooks, Dr. Jarre’s playlist actually has a lot of similarities to Tabitha’s. Sure, Tabitha’s old school Stoner Rock isn’t anywhere near as pretentious as Dr. Jarre’s stuff, but there’s still a lot of spiritual crossover in tone. Maybe it’ll turn out that the singular common thread connecting all Mad Science is thunderous bass riffs? …naw, if I ever do playlists for characters like Dr. Vanderslice or Madam Ventricle & Kiki, there’s no way they’d ALL turn out to be classic rock fans. There’s no WAY someone could wear as many go-go boots as Kiki and not be into swinging 60s pop.

(This was one of the odder playlists to put together on YouTube, largely in the ways that it defied the expectations I’d built up from making the previous playlists. Obviously, this one has the highest percentage of Japanese tracks since Avatar’s playlist, and that was far and away the most troublesome from a region-locked standpoint. I was all prepared for this one to be a similar problem, and while there were SOME songs I had trouble finding, it wasn’t anywhere near what I’d expected. Somehow, both “Saraba Jinrui” and “Pompara Pekoluna Papiyotta” had their official, actual music videos available worldwide, which fills me with tremendous joy since they both gain SO much from seeing the visuals. Seriously, I first encounter both these songs while doing Awesomely Bad Japanese Music Videos, so you can imagine that they’ll be quite the spectacle. Also, I was all set to be frustrated while trying to find the older J.A. Seazer stuff, figuring that the vintage stage stuff would be a lot harder to track down than the anime soundtracks. Nope! I managed to find “Jigoku no Orufe” right away, it was "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku" that I had trouble tracking down, despite being the most recognizable of the bunch. I know, I know, Japanese labels and all, but still. Oh, and speaking of which, I believe this is the first time since “The Tofu Song” back on Ichabod’s soundtrack that I’ve had to substitute a live video due to the studio recording not being posted, in this case for “Ukifune” by GO!GO!7188. This was extra unsurprising in principle, as the “being on a Japanese label” factor is magnified by the band having broken up AND being juuuust recent enough that the nostalgia/preservationist urge to post everything they did hasn’t kicked in yet. They were extremely technically proficient, though, and the video is a professional TV appearance, so it honestly doesn’t sound all that different from the album version. But here’s the thing: the official music video for the studio version WAS posted on YouTube. I added it to my faves ages ago and it was still there. I just couldn’t watch it anymore because it’s since been blocked… IN EVERY COUNTRY ON THE PLANET. Seriously, I tested the video URL and literally the entire world map went red, it’s not available to be viewed from any location on planet Earth, not even Japan. It’s not set to private, and it’s not DELETED from YouTube, it still exists publicly and takes up space on their servers, you just can’t watch it. I have NEVER seen this before, anc can’t for the life of me imagine how blocking it but leaving it up could be anything but MORE trouble than just getting the video taken down. I know, something happening on YouTube that doesn’t make sense. I’m shocked too.)

Dr. Jarre's YouTube playlist