George Bernard Shaw asserted that the secret to success was to offend the greatest number of people possible. And though this goes a long way to explain the notoriety of, say, The Sex Pistols, or even Madonna, it is way off the mark when you consider the career of f Lori Fine, an ex-Nagoyan who has been courting success with her Japanese partner, Watusi, in their duo COLDFEET.
During a very laid-back interview in a cafe in Tokyo�s trendy Omotesando, it became apparent to me that Fine, a native of Portland, Ore., and a resident of Nagoya in the early 1990s, was simply a nice, down-to-earth woman who just wanted to make music.
As she poured translucent herb tea from a small glass pot into a matching cup, she explained in a resonate voice how her collaboration with Watusi grew feet.
"When we were introduced, we really hit it off,� Fine recalls. "We had a common interest in musics and the movies of Sam Raimi and David Lynch, so we decided we would try something, just for fun." ("The Evil Dead" and "Blue Velvet"? Perhaps it's Fine who wants to be offended �)
That "something" was Fine scatting and writing melodies over a backing track Watusi put down on tape. The bassist/programmer sampled the bits he liked, then, as Fine put it, "glued them together into a song." This first collaboration led to a three-track demo tape, which Watusi played for somebody at SonyMusic Entertainment (Japan). The rest, as they say ...
COLDFEET released their second full-length album, "Lucid Dream, " in February. Lucid dreaming, a term coined by Dutch psychologist Frederik van Eeden, is dreaming while you know you are dreaming. You are an active participant inside your dream, aware that your environs lie within the confines of your mind, yet able to move about of your own free will.
"I trained myself to lucid dream," Fine says with genuine excitement in her voice. "I wrote a huge journal of a months' worth of dreams and was writing songs at the same time. Then I started this story incorporating different childhood experiences Watusi and I had had and the different dreams that I'd had."
The record, subtitled "Original E-Motion Picture Soundtrack," is meant to accompany Fine's "movie," which is divided into "containers," each a vignette rife with dark, spooky and trippy imagery.
There is, Fine assures me, a method to her madness. She doesn�t merely conjure songs in dreams. Inspired by the sights and sounds of Tokyo, she is a devoted musician who is of a single-minded purpose.
"I love writing," she says. "If I suddenly have a free day, that's exciting to me because I know I that I can spend the whole day trying to write music. And that's what I love to do. I want to write a great song -- that makes me feel good."
Just how to describe COLDFEET's music is another matter. Fine said that she and Watusi were big fans of New Wave: Devo and The B-52's, Blondie and INXS, Roxy Music and Talking Heads. Their music also "has trip- hop, drum-and-bass, jazz, rock, techno, all sorts of different sounds," she explains.
When we met, I readily confessed to Fine that I had never listened to COLDFEET. Interviewing a musician without prior knowledge of his/her music might certainly sound like journalistic sacrilege; but hearing the duo's music after meeting one of its makers afforded me a view from the inside out, so to speak.
For me, parts of "Lucid Dream" were reminiscent of Sade's "Love Deluxe." It's an assortment of silky grooves, moody sounds, solid drum beats. Horns and guitar round off the album's overall sound, which does include a smattering of everything from '80s-sounding synth to rap (by a Korean, no less). Fine's voice is able to do pretty much anything she wants it to: It can be sexy and soft ("Spoon"), cheerful ("In My Lucid Dream") or aggressive ("When I'm The Man"). At times, her throat gets so big and powerful that it sounds a bit Broadway, reminiscent of Liza Minnelli. P>
It's clear Fine is happy in her job. When I ask if she takes vacations, she cocks her head, narrows her eyes as if the thought had never occurred to her then answers, "I suppose if I wanted to I could. I don't want it to sound like it's fake or I'm trying to liven it up, but every day is absolutely a riot. Just hanging out with a bunch of people you like hanging out with, doing what you love doing. Getting wrapped up in gauze and ketchup to look like a mummy [for a video shoot] -- it's just a lot of fun. I don't feel like I have to get away from that."
And the friendly Fine has no compelling reason to get away. Despite her English lyrics, Japan has warmed to COLDFEET. "In My Lucid Dream" reached No. 9 on the charts here, and now the partners are working to get their music out to audiences in Europe and Australia.
All this just goes to show that the secret of success is often hard work and a likeable personality. Shaw may have been on to something in a more philosophical sense, but he never had occasion to meet Lori Fine.
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