Shonen Knife
Shonen Knife formed in December 1981 with sisters Naoko Yamano (vocals and guitar) and Atsuko Yamano (drums) and their friend Michie Nakatani (vocals, bass and keyboards). They performed their first gig on March 14, 1982 at Studio One, a club in Osaka, in front of an audience of thirty-six who paid one hundred yen each.[2] Michie Nakatani left the band in December 1999, with Atsuko Yamano moving to bass. Mana Nishiura took over on drums, but never officially joined the band. Nishiura played her first live show with the band in May 2001; she left in 2004. She died in a New Jersey highway accident November 4, 2005 while touring the U.S. with DMBQ.[3]
While Mana was on an earlier tour with DMBQ in 2003, the group used drummer Etsuko "Ettchan" Nakanishi, who was eventually named the official, permanent drummer. On July 8, 2006 bassist Atsuko announced that, due to her marriage and subsequent move to Los Angeles, she had retired from Shonen Knife. [4] However, Atsuko joined in the band's late-2007 tour.[5] In October 2008, Shonen Knife announced that Ritsuko Taneda, who had been the band's touring bass player for two years, had been promoted to full member. Ritsuko was a member of the group Denki Candy along with her female cousin. [6]
Many alternative rock groups have cited Shonen Knife as a favorite of theirs, and the resulting word-of-mouth gained significant exposure for the band. They were also featured on CNN's This Week in Japan. In 1989, Gasatanka Records released a double-album tribute entitled Every Band Has a Shonen Knife Who Loves Them, which featured renditions of the group's songs by a number of contributing bands, including Redd Kross, Sonic Youth, L7, The Mr. T Experience, and Babes in Toyland (the last two on non-CD formats only). The tribute album's success led to Shonen Knife's first American tour in 1990, and group later signed with Virgin Records in 1992.
The group had a song called "Buttercup (I'm a Supergirl)" that appeared on a Powerpuff Girls soundtrack. A Shonen Knife cover of The Carpenters' hit "Top of the World" was used in the 1998 remake of "The Parent Trap", a US television commercial for Microsoft, the credits music for the documentary Double Dare, as the ending song for the movie "The Last Supper" and in summer 2006 by the BBC in UK TV trailers for a season of nature programmes. It was also featured on the album "If I were a Carpenter" along with Carpenter covers by American Music Club, Babes in Toyland, Matthew Sweet, Red Kross and others.
Shonen Knife's most recent album fun! fun! fun! was released in Japan on July 6, 2007 to coincide with the band's 25th anniversary. A new Album entitled Super Group was released in Japan on November 7, 2008.
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