Live at Doshisha University (May 1970)

Thank the YouTube channel "RALLIZES 70S ARCHIVE", which has a good playlist of their early works. Playlists like theirs are part of the reason why this project isn't impossible to make.

Two songs from this performance originally appeared on the 2011 Rivista Archives bootleg, while the last appeared on the 1991 official release MIZUTANI / Les Rallizes Dénudés.

"A Distant Memory" has a beautiful rendition here and "Fragment 2", which I believe is a nickname since the song isn't officially released, is even more so beautiful. More interesting is the version of "The Last One" present here. This is the so-called "The Last One_70" version, which has more of a folky vibe compared to the blown-out, noisy version that the Rallizes are more known for... at least for most of the song. After a couple of minutes, the distortion is turned on, and you get perhaps the first look at what the song would become. It still has its folk vibe, but now you really get to hear Mizutani go nuts on guitar. Lastly, in the version on YouTube, there's an untitled improvisation track that's definitely different. It's more sparse, more loose. Very interesting. 

Overall, this is a nice performance. I think my favorite song is the version of "Distant Memory" here.

A Note

The original idea of this blog was to review, in order of performance, every publicly available Les Rallizes Dénudés live performance. Now, I've listened to a lot of their work, but I haven't been very active on here. Haven't had the time to just sit down and listen to it. Mainly life has been busy. Same reason I haven't posted on my other blog or on my YouTube channel much. I'm not giving up on the concept - of course not - but I wanted to just say that it can be a while between posts. Not like anyone's reading them or anything, but... that's not important.