Satori (Flower Travellin' Band, 1971)

It would make sense to assume that if you know and like everything on a list except for one thing which you've never heard of, you'll probably like that as well. That would be the case here. Earlier this year, Ian Christe listed a number of essential hard rock albums. I'm looking over it now and here were the bands cited alongside Flower Travellin' Band as the creators of landmark hard rock: Alice Cooper, Blue Cheer, Blue Oyster Cult, Cream, Deep Purple, Hawkwind, Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Rush, The Stooges, The MC5.

With company like that, how could I ignore FTB? And furthermore, who were these guys? It seems terribly insensitive to say this, but they were working under the stigma of being Japanese. This is not to single out Japan, but, except for maybe ABBA, bands from non-English speaking countries, and especially non-white countries generally never received the recognition they deserved. Even a "diverse" box set like Nuggets II is probably 85% English-speaking countries and very few of the remaining 15% are from non-white countries (and out of 100-something tracks, there is exactly one song from Japan). Of course there is the matter of a non-English speaking group singing in English and playing western-style music, which illustrates what an incredible sway rock and roll was holding over the entire planet.

Anyway, back to FTB. They began life as a 1960's cover band called the Flowers, with an almost entirely different lineup (I think FTB and the Flowers shared a drummer). Early FTB was a primarily covers-driven outfit, ranging from hard rock standards like "White Room" to more surprising selections like Big Brother & the Holding Company's "Combination of the Two". With the demise of the hippie scene and the distortion of the British blues boom around 1970, FTB wisely saw which way the wind was blowing and adopted a very Black Sabbath approach to their music, both in vocals and instrumentation. Satori, consisting of five songs all named "Satori", is the first fruits of the new FTB. It is impossible to deny that FTB had absorbed a ton of Tony Iommi guitar and Ozzy Osbourne vocal influence. However, you if pay close attention, you will hear a Cream/Clapton-style fuzz guitar in places that defies the "all-Sabbath" theory.

Generally I don't like bonus tracks that just graft on stuff from other albums, but in this case they were helpful for indicating the direction the band would take on future albums. "Anywhere" and "Make Up" are almost entirely different then the "Satori" tracks, with the former being a very short acoustic blues piece and the latter being primarily keyboard-driven. The song "Hiroshima" is actually the vocal version of "Satori, Part III" with a tighter arrangement that cuts the running time in half. As for the fate of the band, they kind of tapered off around mid-decade due to their inability to develop a popular fan base, but thanks to their good relationship with critics and other musicians, they remained in one form or another until just a few years ago, when Joe Yamanaka died of cancer.