Ted Clark is 37 years old, works in a liquor store, and hates rock n' roll. He fronts the 20th Century Tokyo Princess, and writes songs that take the life lessons he learned while trawling the back catalog of Lou Reed and Jonathan Richman and turns them into loud, violent messes of feedback and cathartic bubblegum hooks. It's like glam rock made for a world where glamour is in short supply. If you were a music blogger, it would be the Modern Velvet Jesus Mary Loverground.
It's LOUD.
I've Never Been Happy & I've Never Had Fun is an ugly album. It contains eight tracks of raging pop music. It was recorded direct to 4 track and mixed in mono back on 05/05/2010, and is presented with no embellishments or overdubs.
Random Old Records & Tapes is proud to announce I've Never Been Happy & I've Never Had Fun as its debut release. ROR #001 is limited to 100 hand-numbered RED cassettes. Each copy comes with a FREE digital download containing two bonus tracks not on the tape.
Don't just take my word for it though, here's some reviews!
20th Century Tokyo Princess is a loud garage rock project out of Cincinnati with a palpable, old school rock & roll energy...Every shrieked vocal, every slamming drum hit, and every buzzing guitar chord feels alive in a way that only on-the-spot recording can achieve. Heck, frontman Ted Clark’s frustrated utterance of “shit!” at the beginning of “That’s What You Are” was in response to a false start. But they kept it. That speaks volumes about the music that these guys are putting out. They don’t feel the need to dress it up, they are just putting it out there. It is what it is, take it or leave it...If you like your garage rock to be loud and sweaty and real, then this is the tape for you.
A rag tag down on his luck bummer pop tunesmith bash and crashes it direct to tape backed by a rhythm section. This shiz is feral raw as fuck distorto pop at its most rudimentary. 20th Century Tokyo Princess' "I've Never Been Happy And I've Never Had Fun" is a lo-fi affair in the vein of Nobunny with less humor and more animosity or some mega lost rehearsal tape from Rocket From The Tombs. Yep, it's recommended.
Lo-fi glam is a blow-your-mind concept, because glamsters, even if they are eating catfood for dinner and killing pigeons to make their boas, always seem to scrape up enough money for heroin and clean guitar production. But this nasty, overmodulated, hook-infected, mumble mouthed garage pop fits the bill. And I’m glad it’s on cassette…anything to make this magnificent mess sound worse!
Click the banner at the top of the page to go to our Big Cartel page and buy a copy today! Less than half of them are left, and they probably won't be repressed, so don't miss out! If you're on the fence, just check out "99 Years"!
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