Super Junky Monkey were a gutsy innovative band of four young women, active between 1991 and 1999. Singer Mutsumi “623” Takahashi, guitarist Keiko, Shinobu Kawai, and drummer Matsudaaahh!!, released the first Super Junky Monkey album, the all live indie album
Cabbage in 1993. The album showed their unique furious yet fun brand of jazz, funk and hip-hop spiced grunge rock, which some compared to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine. The band had serious chops as musicians, often played intricate and sometimes odd musical parts, and had a dynamic front person in Mutsumi. The band and the album gained critical acclaim, which resulted in their second album, 1994’s
Screw Up being released by Sony, which did not in any way tame the band’s adventurous character or provocative lyrics, often in English. In 1993 Super Junky Monkey played CMJ’s Music Marathon in New York and went over quite well. In 1994 the then leading English language magazine in Japan, Tokyo Journal named them “band of the year”. In 1995 the band released the EP
AIETOH, and played the Foundation Forum, a “hard music” convention held in LA, where they were perhaps the most talked about band of the event. They also had their first American release in 1995. The band continued with Sony for two more albums
Parasitic People and
Super Junky Alien, which were progressively weird and wild. The band continued to split their time between the US and Japan,...
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Super Junky Monkey were a gutsy innovative band of four young women, active between 1991 and 1999. Singer Mutsumi “623” Takahashi, guitarist Keiko, Shinobu Kawai, and drummer Matsudaaahh!!, released the first Super Junky Monkey album, the all live indie album
Cabbage in 1993. The album showed their unique furious yet fun brand of jazz, funk and hip-hop spiced grunge rock, which some compared to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine. The band had serious chops as musicians, often played intricate and sometimes odd musical parts, and had a dynamic front person in Mutsumi. The band and the album gained critical acclaim, which resulted in their second album, 1994’s
Screw Up being released by Sony, which did not in any way tame the band’s adventurous character or provocative lyrics, often in English. In 1993 Super Junky Monkey played CMJ’s Music Marathon in New York and went over quite well. In 1994 the then leading English language magazine in Japan, Tokyo Journal named them “band of the year”. In 1995 the band released the EP
AIETOH, and played the Foundation Forum, a “hard music” convention held in LA, where they were perhaps the most talked about band of the event. They also had their first American release in 1995. The band continued with Sony for two more albums
Parasitic People and
Super Junky Alien, which were progressively weird and wild. The band continued to split their time between the US and Japan, and in 1996 again played in New York. The band’s future became unsure when Mutsumi became pregnant and took time to have her child, and in 1997 the band was basically inactive. However things started to pick up again in 1998, including playing dates in Japan with American all-woman punk band L7, and the band again began recording demos. On Dec. 24, 1998 the band was to play their last show with the original line-up. To the shock and sadness of many, esp. within the indie music community, Mutsumi’s body was found outside her apartment building on Feb. 5, 1999. It was unclear whether she had jumped or fallen, but in any case this was to be the end of Super Junky Monkey. On May 9, 1999 there was a “Mutsumi Tribute” event, and since there been a SJM retrospective album called
Songs Are Our Universe.
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