Yoko Kanno

I don't know if you know what I know, but I do know that I know that Cartoon Network has been at the root of many, many wonderful discoveries in my life. I won't pretend that it's prefect, but darn if they don't set this blue tick to sniffing. And stuff. For instance, there is this one show, Cowboy Bebop, that is just frigging brilliant. Combine friggin' great jazz and blues with tremendous animation and well-written plots (the kind of scifi where the scifi is a distant second to character development and theme development, dig) and bam, you got magic. Well, there I was, at the cabin, everyone else asleep, when the "cable" came up and said, "hey Eric, you bastard, guess what I got for you. I got some Cowboy Bebop. Drink up." And mansakes if I didn't slurp that magic up like a Dairy Queen chocolate shake in mid-August. Amen.

As the credits rolled I was struck by some of that magical "logic" I have sometimes. Crazy, eh? Well, this "logic," it told me to look for the band that did the theme-song. That's right, click on that little blue theme-song link. I'll wait.

Good stuff, eh? I know. I don't make this stuff up. The band listed in the credits is named the Seat Belts. Well, I though, hot dog, lets put'm on the blog. Then I get a hold of a computer and bam, nothing's easy anymore.

The first site I open is this one, which I later find out is an incredibly well-done fansite . . . samples of most of the Seat Belts' music is available for a quick listen. That said, I also find out that the Seat Belts are/were a band created simply to produce music for this show by someone named Yoko Kanno. From what I can tell, she doesn't have her own website, so I will refer you to the following. First, there's the Yoko Kanno Project . . . dig in here for a plethora of samples, and a general overview of her career (including Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade, one of my favorite movies). Second, there's the Yoko Kanno Database, with links to tons of stuff including a great discography, and then I found a Yoko Kanno interview on EX:clusive.

Last, but not least, I dug up some mySpace sites for you: dig 1, 2, and of course, 3. These bits, you should know, lean more towards the electronica/earthy side than the jazz side, and definitely more Japanese/less American than her work on Cowboy Bebop (in general), but they are still worth a listen. See. Er. Yeah.