Friday, December 04, 2009

The Helpful Soul - "A Thousand And One Night" {Japan} [1969]

The career of the Helpful Soul was a real case of wrong place, wrong time - for they hit their blues stride just as heavy blues was becoming hard rock, and graduated to heavy rock too late to capitalise on even that brief fad. However, they recorded one outstanding track, the ten-minutes-plus of "Peace For Fools", which appeared on their otherwise bog-standard blues dirge debut LP. This track in itself separates them from all Japanese blues bands for it is a Kim Fowleyan masterpiece of Jim Morrison mystical doggerel/truly possessed nihilist genius. Unfortunately, leader Junio Nakahara was so inspired by witnessing a performance by Blues Creation, when his band supported them at the Too Much Festival, that he was soon after driven to change his own name to Tstomu Ogawa while his band became known as ... Too Much. http://www.japrocksampler.com/artists/japrock/helpful_soul/




I think this album is a soundtrack of a movie and I'm sorry but I'm not sure it is complete. Maybe I just have the tracks of the band Helpful Soul. Any information or help is welcome. (New link with complete album in comments)

- Junio Nakahara – lead vocalist and slide guitar
- Gene Shoji – lead guitar
- Charles Che - bass
- Eiichi Tsukasa – drums

Discography:
- A Thousand And One Night (Victor, 1969)
- Aladin's Theme 7" EP (Victor, 1969)
- The Helpful Soul First Album (Victor, 1970)

The Dance Of The Bandits...
The Torture...

Link in comments...

17 comments:

isabelbc said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ssimonsimon said...

thank you! i've been looking for this album for years!

MIKE MUSIC LOVER said...

Thanx in advance for this post!+!+
As always , Excellent work here

ROCKLAND said...

Excelent stuff in this blog!

Great work! Thanks for all.

Cheers

Anonymous said...

Hmm... not sure if this is the help you're after, but judging by this picture of the back cover of a "private" cd reissue, it looks like there should be a bit more:

http://bullet.shop-pro.jp/?pid=16731777

The film itself was produced - I think, not sure how much of a hand he had in it - by the great Japanese animator Osamu Tezuka and directed by Eiichi Yamamoto as part of the so-called Animerama series (all of which I think you probably already know!) along with "Cleopatra" and "Belladonna aka Sadness of Belladonna". All quite astounding films in a psych sort of way!

http://columbia.jp/dvd/mushipro/animerama/box.html

The soundtrack composer for Belladonna is Masahiko Sato, but as far as I can work out for "Thousand and One Nights" and "Cleopatra" it was Isao Tomita. Yes, that Tomita!

Anyway, I stand to be corrected on some of this! It;s just internet cross-referencing and some Japanese ability...

isabelbc said...

Hi Anonymous,

when I made this post, I found no information on the album, only on the band that is one of my favorites. The Helpful Soul First Album (Victor, 1970) is amazing!

Then, everything you said is news to me!

Now I'm sure this album is the soundtrack of a movie, I learned about the credits and that is part of the so-called Animerama series

I also discovered that the album is incomplete, the back cover shows 15 tracks, mine is 9 tracks.

Your information was very useful. I hope someday I can hear the complete album.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Isabel :o)

Anonymous said...

cool!

By the way, do you have this:

CENTURY EXPANDED-Concerto for Wah Wah-Perception

thanks

isabelbc said...

New link: http://lix.in/-6a825a

Complete album @320 + covers

Anonymous said...

Me alegra ver que una gran aficionada como tu se ha decidido a postear, bueno por lo menos yo es lo primero que descubro en este blog, y me han gustado mucho, fuerte abrazo y saludazos

Anonymous said...

would love to get a working link to this!

thanks!

isabelbc said...

hi fotoobscura,

link http://lix.in/-6a825a working

Isabel :o)

Anonymous said...

thanks! :) let me know if I can contribute...have lots of rare stuff. :)

isabelbc said...

hi fotoobscura,
yes, you can! rare and good albums always welcome :)
visit our forum http://pnfforum.com
isabel :o)

bugel said...

a lot of time has passed and all links are dead again
could you do another re-up ?
thx in advance

isabelbc said...

new link http://netkups.com/?d=2552c000b53a0

Anonymous said...

Can you please update the links?

Chris Sobieniak said...

Would be nice to get an updated link, though it's already been 7 years by this point.

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