Little Japanese guy, big drum set
Does anyone know who Akira Jimbo is? Or Casiopea? Of course not. Nor should you. But, I do. Why? Because I’m a musician, silly.
Akira Jimbo (神保 彰) is a jazz-fusion drummer from Japan. He played in a band called Casiopea in the 80s (with another superhuman named Tetsuo Sakurai). The band played music that would probably be considered “cheesy-sounding” to lay audiences today but the truth is they were incredibly proficient and technically capable performers. They typically played jazz-funk songs and wore horrible pastel muscle shirts and parachute pants (think OP [and if you get that reference think "I'm old"]).
Well, Akira eventually went solo and became famous for being a human machine. He is, quite simply, one of the greatest drummers alive. He is the closest you can get to metronomic perfection in a human being. You can go on YouTube and type in his name and see a myriad of examples. He pioneered the use of MIDI triggers on his set to allow him to perform a fully orchestrated one-man show. It’s quite revolutionary.
Being as I am a person who greatly appreciates statistical density in music, I am naturally a fan of Akira-san (or should I say sensei) and his music. Recently I cam across a video from, like, 92 or something that came from an obscure instructional video he released. It’s a performance of a song called “Aerobics of Alien” written and sequenced by a guy called Akira Ishiguro (石黒彰) who I believe went on to do some video game soundtracks or something. To me, it’s one of the coolest songs I’ve ever heard and I wanted to share it with you guys so that you can ostracize me for being a total Nintendo music dork. So here it is:
