LADY FLASH
Toraba-Yu
Today we’re listening to “Toraba-Yu” by LADY FLASH.
This morning we’re enjoying a guest post from Nikhil Rajagopalan. Many of you know Nikhil from his What’s Curation? Newsletter. Nikhil’s love for music started in his native India, where he’d find bootleg CDs for sale at street markets near his home. His tastes broadened further while he was at university in England.
Later, music helped him cope with having immigrated to Canada alone, just as the world shut down due to COVID. Today he is a creative copywriter looking for freelance or full-time roles, trying to help people find the right words to express their product, service, or brand.
Nikhil started his newsletter for the same reason many of us have; he wanted to share the music he loved with people he hoped would feel the same way.
In addition to writing his newsletter, he is a tireless supporter of the Substack community and can be regularly found helping newer writers navigate their way through the platform.
Give What’s Curation? a read— you never know what you’ll find!
Good morning, folks. Thanks, Kevin, for having me as today’s guest!
Today we’ll be listening to Toraba-Yu performed by a little-known Japanese-Indie band from Osaka named LADY FLASH. There isn’t a lot of information about them on the English pages of Google.
There's an official Instagram handle, but not much luck there either. It’s so sparse that I discovered the band members’ names through Tom Meadowcroft’s Tumblr page.
The band members are Nicoflash (Guitar/Vocals), Sanae Suzuki (Guitar/Synth/Vocals), Hanami Kaneshima (Bass/Vocals), and Happy (Drums).
The song has a memorable guitar hook, and the theme reminds me of playful summertime shenanigans when we were high school kids. The lyrics incorporate clever wordplay: the title of the song, “Toraba-yu,” is a play on the word “Travail”—a weekly job-seeking magazine in 1980s Japan.
As the song begins, NicoFlash sings that she wants to be a delivery person, and then she says that she wants to work as a paramedic so that she can protect the love of her life. This is accompanied by her hilarious attempt to administer CPR in the video. Later, she pines to be a regular office worker with a 9-to-5, going to Starbucks at the end of the day.
In the music video, we see this trope of Nicoflash’s suitors hitting the wall with their hands. I did a bit of digging, and turns out there’s a name for it: kabedon.
Kabe means wall, and don is the sound that Japanese manga authors used as a sound effect for a loud slam. It’s popular in Japanese media as the cool tough guy showing how much he likes the girl.
LADY FLASH continues to play live gigs in 2022 around Osaka and Kyoto, and I think they’re making a new music video featuring the pimply red mascot, Choboman.
Hope you enjoyed this little indie gem.
Take care!
-Nikhil
Good one, Nikhil! (I’ve got to say, the kabedon thing speaks volumes: “BAM! I’m in your personal space, looming over you possessively and making it difficult for you to move away.”) Thanks for digging up all that info and sharing.
What a delightful sound. I like this track.