3/17/2011 Rocket Ship Ska Trip

_3/17/11 in a nutshell..._
Sometimes, we wake up in the morning in a fundamentally different world than the one we went to sleep in the previous night. This time, our world has been irrevocably altered by a triple-threat disaster triggered by the monster 9.0 Quake Of 2011 that struck off the east coast of northern Honshu, Japan the weekend of 3/11. The opening oldies set of this week's RSST was quite Japan-centric, and included a couple of lush, lovely mid-'70s Haruomi Hosono rocksteady orchestrations, with his groups Tin Pan Alley and Bon Voyage Co. Unless I hear evidence to the contrary, I figure the then-future YMO member must be the guy who introduced ska and rocksteady to Japan_ 4 years before 2Tone was launched in the UK!
The highlight of Sherwood's set must be the three Firecrackers he set off consecutively_ those belonging to Martin Denny, Yellow Magic and Senor Coconut, respectively. There were a few of Toho's giant monsters (daikaiju) running around loose, including Mothra, Anguiras and Godzilla's robotic double/nemesis Mechagodzilla. Hammond B-3 monster Akiko Tsuruga also made her Sherwood's Planet debut in high style. The 4@4 was the Air Space Museum of Ska (all-Japan edition). We didn't have the Japanese cover of Monkey Man (trombone legend Rico accompanying Ore Ska Band) so we pulled in Reel Big Fish to do the job, before hi-tailing it back across the Pacific to take us up to The End. Also missing-in-action this week: Madness' Honda ad theme In The City which we hope to get on next week. Vrooooom!