The Rabbits are one of the great punk bands of the early ’80s, but their leader Syoichi Miyazawa (a Dylan and Beatles fan) had no interest in the punk scene and always thought he was making “normal” music. They rubbed shoulders with notable groups of the era such as Les Rallizes Desnudes and G.I.S.M., and Miyazawa was best friends with Endo Michiro, front man of Japanese punk icons The Stalin,but Miyazawa shunned fraternization and purposefully distanced himself from his peers. 

 

Miyazawa wrote the tunes, and had a clear vision for the group, but struggled to get the sound he wanted from the other members. The group quickly went through multiple line-up changes. Even at their most aggressive, The Rabbits had strong pop sensibilities, complete with cooing backing vocals and the occasional harmonica solo. Miyazawa delivers his borderline nonsensical lyrics with equal amounts of menace and gaiety, consistently riding that fine line as only a natural oddball can. At times, the band sounds like a distant cousin of PiL, Chrome or The Homosexuals, but beamed in from a parallel dimension and filtered through Miyazawa’s warped lens. 

 

So few underground music fans are familiar with the group, and they seem to have been written out of the official history of Japanese punk. Mesh-Key hopes to remedy this travesty by offering this compilation, the first-ever official LP by The Rabbits, to a new generation of punk and psychedelic music connoisseurs.