(Disclaimer: I only speak fangirl Japanese, so I'm essentially making stuff up as I go along. Also, I swear I'm a real person and not just some loser who pops up whenever Seazer's mentioned. I'd lurk less, but you people scare me a bit.)
(Oh, and this post will likely be very tl;dr, please don't take it as an asshole-ish BLINDING U WITH KNOWLEDGE kind of thing, I'm just doing that in the hopes that it'll be useful to SOMEONE, even if just a fellow lurker.)

On the more musical vs theatrical: That album Gio's talking about and the Lemming one are 100% music, with a lot of instrumental-only pieces. Kokkyou Junreika is also music-only. (It's also the best of the bunch, IMO. Listening to the last 2 tracks outside, at night, while watching the city from a high ground might as well be a religious experience. /end rambling) Of the actual plays, I found Shintokumaru to be the easiest to follow, even if it does have a few lengthy spoken parts. Jashumon and Ahobune are definitely lost on poor foreign ears.

Seazer hasn't done a whole lot with that group aside from SKU stuff.

Technically, they did release a number of tapes... granted, we're not likely to ever get our hands on them, so they might as well not exist.
(Random fact: they also did non-musical stuff like working on the cursed tape part in Ringu, and on PVs for Dir en Grey. Or so sayeth this eyebleed-inducing, 5-page wall of text.)

Other stuff... a tracklist. Heh, I don't have that, but I have lyrics for that album and a few more of the aforementioned tapes. (A lot of duel songs in there.)
For more visual what-the-fuckery, have these two pages (same site) of posters.

I'd love to see scripts or something of the older material though; just from a cultural history nerd standpoint it was such a big deal back then.

There's an English-language book about Terayama which I heard contains translations of 3 plays, one of which may or may not be Jashumon. My sources differ on that. I find the guy fascinating, so I'd buy the damn thing anyway, if only this stupid nanny state didn't prevent me from getting a credit card. Not sure anyone would drop $50+ on it just to check, though.
And in vaguely related news, somewhere on the intertubes is a translation of the play Nuhikun / Directions to Servants, and a very bad quality video of the same to go with it. Also, a random clip of a Tenjou Sajiki street performance in... the Netherlands, I think? I think Seazer himself is seen somewhere in there. He wasn't too bad-looking in his youth...

Ahem. I think I've veered sufficiently off-topic.

And in response to the above, I'm completely in favor of people posting the stuff they found on Japanese pages. Even an imperfect translation is much better than nothing at all. Besides, I doubt those titles even make sense in Japanese. (Feed the fangirls, please.)

Ooh, I heard about that book. I thought it was supposed to come out later, though. And I agree, I'd give a few limbs and/or nonessential organs for an early Missing Link. (And the rest of the tapes, and those CD reissues with the extra material and pretty picture books.)

Also:
Look, everyone! Hippies! And a 22-year-old Seazer! (Or possibly a giant sentient mass of hair that looks like him.) And apples! And a topless girl! And a guy with a box on his head! This probably NSFW youtube link brought to you by the letters W, T and F.
(That's the Tenjou Sajiki street performance bit I mentioned earlier. No crazy music or stage action there, but... educative? It's only 10 minutes long, so you might as well watch it. You know, for science. Dutch commentary with Japanese subtitles. I'd love to know where THAT came from.)

Oh, um, forget my dramatics! Thank God for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www … tape_2.txt

I would have just edited that into my previous post, but I actually have something to add.  Apparently some cover band did some live renditions of the duel choruses.  These songs obviously lend themselves well to a classic 4-piece rock setup.  Unfortunately the girl they got to do the vocals is frequently out of tune.  If it is just a cover band, well, I suppose they do a good job, but if they are professionals then maybe they were having a bad day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdnF03eJtr8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCj7bF7LEmA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMFjaakxvBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQyyoDkXdK8

Reviviscat!

As mentioned earlier in this thread Seazer worked extensively with Terayama before he joined Banyuu Inryoku (at Terayama's death I assume) which then followed into the use of Banyuu Inryoku's stuff in Utena.

Okay, so this website hosts a bunch of old Shuji Terayama films.

http://www.ubu.com/film/terayama.html

These films definitely have the same sort of feeling as Terayama's theatre did if everything I read about those productions is correct.  If you only want to watch one, then watch Volume 7's The Emperor Tomato Ketchup, since I believe that this was his first full film and is regarded highly in the psychedelic film genre.  I could be wrong, but I'm fairly certain that The Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Volume 1's The Cage (Ori) are composed by Seazer.  If they are not, then it is certainly within the same musical tradition within which Seazer was working.  The other films may possibly have also been composed by him, but I have not done the sufficient research to find out.

EDIT:  I should say that although they are definitely not pornographic, these contain nudity and sexual content.

Last edited by mazoboom (02-23-2008 10:34:47 PM)