Plucking A Few Pizzicato Five Videos From The Archives

I spent a few hours this week digging through the boxes of CDs that haven’t quite made it to shelves since my move in January; from them I compiled aplaylist of music that I purchased in the late ’90s, back when I probably should have been investing in tech stocks or something that I haven’t really listened to since. At one point, I ran into a somewhat embarrassingly large collection of Pizzicato 5 discs.

Somehow, owning Japan-only CD singles of rare Shibuya-kei tracks seems less useful now than it seemed then, but pulling out the act’s American full-length debut Made in USA is a nice flashback to a time when reimagined versions of ’60s stereophonic sounds seemed like the next big thing. Although I guess I stopped following the band around 1996 or 1997, they continued on until 2002. As far as I can tell, the mastermind behind the group now does remixes of songs from cartoons or something. I was a bit confused by the translation. Anyhow, selections from the album I consider their finest moment, below.

“Sweet Soul Revue”:

“Baby Love Child”:

“Magic Carpet Ride (live)” (if you believe the tags on YouTube clips, this was their last TV appearance):

“Go Go Dancer”:

Pizzicato Five [Official site]