Gerogerigegege - Definition and Overview

The Gerogerigegege are a music project of Juntaro Yamanouchi. Over the years, the group has included many members, the most notable and consistent other than Yamanouchi being Gero 30 (also known as Gero 56), an exhibitionist known to masturbate onstage during live performances. This is called "senzuri" and is the group's trademark. Yamanouchi met Gero 30 at an S&M club in 1986. Yamanouchi is a homosexual, which is unusual in the world of Japanese experimental music. His mother is a famous classical pianist.

The name of the group combines the Japanese words for "vomit" (gero) and "diarrhea" (geri) with what is supposed to be the sound of these actions occurring simultaneously (gegege). (It has also been transliterated to mean "barf, diarrhea, ha ha ha".) To describe the group, Yamanouchi has used the term "Japanese ultra shit band." They are known for their releasing extremely limited edition records such as 1989's Showa which juxtaposed the Japanese national anthem behind a recording of people having sex. Similar inane concepts are rampant throughout the band's catalogue, and often the more ridiculous the theme or packaging of a release is, the more sought after it is by collectors. Copies of some Gerogerigegege records go for hundreds of dollars.

Though they are often categorized with Japanese harsh noise acts such as Merzbow and Masonna, the group is best known for their 1990 CD Tokyo Anal Dynamite. This album consists of 75 songs, each under a one minute in duration, which serve as a fusion of the Ramones' punk jams and John Zorn's frantic Naked City project. The group has also released albums of more straightforward rock (Mort Douche Live), noise (45 RPM Performance) and ambient (None Friendly), in addition to several seven inch records mixing these styles with found recordings.

External links

• Gerogerigegege: 56k Performance site (http://www.artnotart.com/gero/)