Biography
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Years Active
1985 – present (39 years)
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Founded In
Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
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Members
- Fumiyoshi Suzuki
- Gero 30
- Shobu Saitoh
- Takeshi Ohmura
- Tohru Maruyama (1985 – 1986)
The Gerogerigegege (ザ・ゲロゲリゲゲゲ) is a music project created in 1985 in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan by Juntaro Yamanouchi, who runs and maintains the Vis A Vis record label in Japan. The name of the group combines the Japanese words for "vomit" (gero) and "diarrhoea" (geri) with what is supposedly the sound of these actions occurring simultaneously (gegege). It has also been transliterated to mean "barf, diarrhoea, ha ha ha," although "ge" is also variously an onomatopoetic word of disgust or exasperation, making the name open to several differing interpretations. To describe the group, Yamanouchi has used the term "Japanese Ultra Shit Band."
Though they are often categorized with Japanese noise acts such as Merzbow and Masonna, The Gerogerigegege has also released albums of more straight-forward rock (Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male), noise (45 RPM Performance), and ambient music (None Friendly, Endless Humiliation), in addition to several seven-inch records mixing these styles with found recordings. The group is best known for their 1990 album Tokyo Anal Dynamite. This album consists of 75 songs, each under a minute in duration, which serve as a fusion of the Ramones' punk jams (replete with Juntaro yelling "1 2 3 4!!" over and over) and John Zorn's frantic Naked City project.
Over the years, The Gerogerigegege has included many members, the most notable and consistent other than Yamanouchi being Gero 30 (also known as Gero 56; real name Tetsuya Endoh), an exhibitionist known to masturbate onstage during live performances. Masturbation is called "senzuri" (lit. "a thousand rubs") in Japan and it has become the group's trademark. Yamanouchi met Gero 30 at an S&M club in 1986. Other members have included Toshinori "Dynamite Gero" Fukuda on drums, Hironao "Dee Dee Gero" Komaki on guitar, Junko "Gero Grace Seijoh" Katoh, their live manager, and Masatoshi "Gero Route 66" Katsuya, the band's driver. Yamanouchi is a homosexual and a cross-dresser, which is unusual in the world of Japanese experimental music. His mother is a famous classical pianist.
The Gerogerigegege is known for their releasing extremely limited edition records such as 1989's (Shōwa), which book-ended a recording of people having sex with "Kimi Ga Yo" (the Japanese national anthem), as well as the Night EP, which features what seems to be a recording of a man defecating into a toilet after the usual "1 2 3 4!!" count. The album Recollections Of Primary Masturbation contains 338 songs, including the entire Tokyo Anal Dynamite album as one track, and ten minutes (spread over two tracks) containing 223 previously-unreleased songs. There are also some non-musical conceptual releases, including this is shaking box music part 2, which is a destroyed cassette copy of the Mother Fellatio EP. Similar dada 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.
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