Speed, Glue & Shinki

Speed, Glue & Shinki was a Japanese progressive/psychedelic rock power trio formed in late 1970 by guitarist Shinki Chen and his mentor Ikuzo Orita, Japanese label boss of Polydor Records. Speed, Glue & Shinki were: Joey "Speed" Smith (ex-Zero History, Juan de la Cruz) - vocal/drums, Masayoshi "Glue" Kabe (ex-Food Brain, ex-The Golden Cups) - bass and Shinki Chen (ex-Food Brain, ex-Bebes and Hiro Yanagida collaborator) - guitars. With Kabe's crunching atonal bass runs and Smith's stop-start rhythms creating a unique foundation for Shinki Chen's euphoric blues, combined with Smith's dangerous outlaw lyrics and caustic Iggy Pop-like vocal asides, gave the band an edge that no other Japanese band could (or would have wished to) achieve. They took their name from Kabe's love of sniffing Marusan Pro Band glue and Joey Smith's obsession with amphetamines, as evidenced by the lyrics of many Speed, Glue & Shinki songs (all lyrics being written and sung by Smith). Speed, Glue & Shinki made two albums of hard/psychedelic rock mayhem (with elements that we can call nowadays as "proto-stoner") in the early seventies. Drummer Joey Smith also sang the lead vocals and wrote most of their druggy lyrics. Joey Smith was a Filipino musician born to a Filipina mother and an American father serving in the military. He was discovered by Shinki Chen playing in a Japanese shopping mall with his first band Zero History, and Chen then suggested that they join with Japanese bassist Masayoshi Kabe (whom Chen knew from Food Brain and earlier because they had the same manager) to form Speed, Glue & Shinki. By album two, however, Kabe had left the band and a new "Glue" was brought in--future Juan de la Cruz member and Joey Smith's friend Michael Hanopol. Hanopol replaced Kabe on bass and co-wrote several of the songs on their s/t sophomore album -including the ending synth suite- with Smith. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.