les rallizes denudes was a japanese rock band, formed in '67, in kyoto. band members were often apart of political factions, most notably the japanese red army (organization). band members included :
- singer, guitar & band leader : takashi mizutani
- drummer : takashi kato
- bass : moriaki wakabayashi (remember this name)
members got replaced and new instruments were added and removed. the list above only includes the ORIGINAL makeup of the band.
les rallizes denudes preformed at local bars and colleges, aswell in some cases, rallies. due to the band mainly preforming instead of releasing the songs, many bootlegs of the band made their way around during the band's latest years : such as heavier than a death in the family, december's black children, etc. no produced copies of songs that were released were made, and so most of the songs that were released were recordings of concerts.
this also means little is known about the band itself due to reasons we'll get into soon. the band's members are even more mysterious with little to no information about them aswell.
now, lets get into the songs and music of the band. the band mostly made rock music, however for a short time, made more acoustic sounding songs. out of all their songs, the song "night, assasins night" is my favorite. you can FEEL the emptiness and depression the song gives off. this is the case for a lot of their other songs. overall, my favorite album is '77 live. i love the buzzing sounds that are included in the guitar. the oz tapes are another great album, and the songs are slower and less aggressive than '77 live. one disclaimer before you check them out - since the albums are recordings of concerts they made, alot of the albums contain the same song, just different preformances of said song.
on march 31st, 1970, japan air lines flight 351 took off from tokyo international on its way to fukuoka. onboard was moriaki wakabayashi, the band's bassist, along with other members of the "second bund" a communist organization within the doshisha university in kyoto. this group began calling themselves the "japanese red army" and devised a plan to hijack this specific flight. 20 minutes after take off, and the hijacking ensued. and one of these hijackers, was moriaki wakabayashi.
i don't want to get in too deep but there's a wikipedia article on it if you want to read further into it. basically, the plane was tricked into landing in seoul instead of pyongyang, where they wanted to be. they were allowed to go to the DPRK if they released the passengers (which were now hostages) back to safety. wakabayashi landed and sook asylum in the DPRK, along with the 8 other members.
this caused the main singer, mizutani, to go reclusive as he himself had ties to the "second bund". he was only seen doing preformances for his band and rarely taking interviews. mizutani died in 2019.
