Taking their name from the iconic American automobile marque that will cease production this winter after 84 years, Pontiacs have plenty of heritage under the hood. The band reunites guitar-vocalist Kenichi Asai and bassist Toshiyuki Terui of quintessential Japanese garage-rock band Blankey Jet City, exactly 10 years after they went their separate ways.
Exploding out of the Nagoya underground in 1990, just as postbubble Japan was descending into financial meltdown, Blankey Jet City made motorcycle-grade music that provided an alternative to processed pop and gave a voice to a generation of futureless youths. They were one of the most subversive rock acts of the decade, commenting on the decline of Japanese society via major record labels Toshiba EMI and Polydor.
The problem was that the band's constituent members were never comfortable with the major-label system and its attendant culture of artistic compromise. In 2000, the group disbanded. And that's when their creative juices really started to flow.
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