Various Artists - Sélection URC compilée par Keiichi Sokabe

URC Selection Compiled by Keiichi Sokabe is a love letter from a generation of Japanese underground music to the one that started it, and all eleven tracks are exclusive to this vinyl pressing.

URC began in 1969 as a mail-order subscription club, a workaround dreamed up by former activist Masaaki Hata to evade the ethics committees to which major labels responded, and it became Japan's first truly independent label almost by accident. Everyone who was important in the birth of Japanese folk and rock was there, Takada Wataru, Endo Kenji, Okabayashi Nobuyasu, and a young backing group called Happy End who cut their teeth behind Okabayashi before becoming legends themselves. Keiichi Sokabe, long-time Sunny Day Service frontman and obsessive URC historian, chose each song and also handled the cover art and liner notes.

Koroshiteshimaou opens things up with Itsutsu no Akai Fusen at the height of their spontaneity, and Zeni ga Nakerya allows Takada Wataru to turn poverty into something to hum along to. Salvia no Hana is Hayakawa Yoshio at his gentlest, closer to a lullaby than a protest song, and Yume wa Yoru Hiraku's live track captures Mikami Kan in full performance, rawer and stranger than any studio version could manage.

Eleven songs, one obsessive curator, and none of them anywhere else on vinyl.

List of titles 

SIDE A 

1. Koroshiteshimaou / Itsutsu no Akai Fusen
2. Talking Jidousha Race Blues / Tomobe Masato
3. Ameagari no Build gay 'Boku wa Machisugite Totemo Tsukarete Shimatta' / Endo Kenji
4. Sora wa Fukigen / Kanenobu Sachiko
5. Yume wa Yoru Hiraku (Live) / Mikami Kan

SIDE B 

1. Agemasu / Rokumonsen
2. Sonoki ni Nareba / Nakagawa Isato
3. Salvia no Hana / Hayakawa Yoshio
4. Hirakata no Akichan / Kagawa Ryo
5. Zeni ga Nakerya / Takada Wataru
6. Rashinban of Hoshiuranai wa Dekinai / Furukawa Go