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Frank Chickens...
Formed in London in 1982 by Kazuko Hohki and Kazumi Taguchi, Frank Chickens were an all girl Japanese band who mingled fantasy and social comment through songs about visa marriage, runaway lesbians, female wrestlers, ninjas and hamburgers...
As out there as some of their lyrical content was, their songs were often about social conditions in Japan, particularly the constrictions for women and life for Japanese people in England. Somehow they managed to balance the earnest social comment with surreal humour but they never diluted their message. Always interactive, Hohki would talk to the audience between songs and invite participation, pioneering Karaoke in the late eighties and early nineties when the band were Edinburgh Festival favourites and Kazuko’s Karaoke Klub became a brief cult TV hit.
The Chickens biggest success came with the single ‘We are Ninja (Not Geisha)’ which was number 42 in John Peel’s Festive Fifty in 1984. A support slot with The Smiths and a nomination for the Perrier Award in Edinburgh that year brought them to wider audiences and they went on to release five albums, touring world wide including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, USA and Canada.
1988 saw the first performances of Club Monkey, their musical performed in London in December 1988. The songs, heavily influenced by the Hong Kong movies that Kazuko was watching a lot of at the time, were about Jackie Chan, eating dogs, dying and going to heaven in Ferrari, the loneliness of English aristocrats and Chinese zombies. Can you guess the story from these ingredients? People found it rather difficult even after seeing the show, but somehow this added to their charm.
In 2000, the Chicken’s Ninja Tune label released a remix collection of 'We Are Ninja' including mixes by Neotropic, Fink and Pizzicato 5. The group also expanded to 7 members and performed and delivered workshops for the National Youth Theatre Summer Festival and "Hause Der Kulturen Der Welt" museum in Berlin. Their live set was as eye-catching as ever, with songs, stories, costume changes, visuals and a cast of thousands (well, they’re maybe not into their thousands but there were plenty more of them).
Although these days they’re not performing as regularly, they still make occasional appearances as Frank Chickens. Kazuko Hohki continues to perform one-woman multimedia shows in Britain, is a writer and theatre director and has collaborated with Mark E Smith and The Fall.
Tin Can recommends Club Monkey (CD: Resurgence -RES137)
Tags: frank chickens kazuko hohki john peel the fall perrier award edinburgh festial karaoke ninja geisha
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