Japan | Swing | Extended Promo | 1980

Japan • Swing • Extended Promo • 1980

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The promo video for Swing, cleaned up, extended and synced to the remastered audio from the 2003 reissue of the 1980 Gentlemen Take Polaroids album.

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In a 1982 interview, David Sylvian commented that by the time of this album, he had become a „paranoid perfectionist“ and that he had come to dominate the band’s recording sessions, forcing the other members to comply with his vision which ultimately led to the band’s break up – a situation he took some responsibility for.

Whatever the situation was at the recording sessions, Polaroids is a strong album. It was the bands first for Virgin Records, I remember it seeming like quite a big deal at the time. And yet apparently there wasn’t a lot of promotion done for the album. For instance, the Polariods tour was merely one U.K. date at the Hammersmith Odeon on the 7th of February 1981 (I was there!) and then half a dozen dates in Japan.

Swing is possibly the stand-out track from Polaroid’s. However it was not released as a single, and I don’t recall seeing this promo video at the time. If there were plans to release Swing as a single, perhaps they were abandoned when the album title track failed to do well in the U.K. charts (reaching only No. 60). A single version of Swing seems to have been cut, since the original promo video contains an edit of Swing, but was never released. The edit omits one verse, and it lops about two minutes off the end of the track.

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I haven’t listened to Japan much since the Eighties. But chatting recently with a music pal about them, on returning to their music I find that much of it still founds great to me. I investigated the Japan video situation, and pretty much as per usual with artists from the 70’s and 80’s, I found that their online video legacy is not in great shape.

There is an official upload of the Swing promo on the Japan YouTube channel. The quality of the Swing video is not as bad as the official Quiet Life one (that I recently restored, and extended ) but it’s not great.

The version of the Swing promo I have created here removes a lot of glitches and generally brightens and sharpens the picture. It also corrects the running speed, which was playing about 4% slow and thus sounding quite flat. Also I’ve replaced the poor quality audio track with the one from the 2003 reissue of Polaroids.

As with my extended Quiet Life promo, I also re-edited the promo footage to improve on the original wildly inaccurate syncing. Furthermore, as I did with Quiet Life, I extended the promo, reusing some scenes to create a version that is more or less the full length of the song. The original video fades at around 3:45. Now with this new version, the missing verse is restored, as is the great ending with the drums and bass to the fore.

Thanks for watching, hope you dig it!

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Credits

Video Source:
Japan • Swing music video • 1980 • Owned by Sony Music

Music Source:
Japan • Swing • From the album Gentlemen Take Polaroids •
Recorded August 1980 • Released 7th of November 1980

Musicians:
David Sylvian • vocals, guitar, synthesiser
Rob Dean • guitar
Richard Barbieri • synthesiser, keyboards
Mick Karn • bass, saxophone
Steve Jansen • drums, percussion, synthesiser

John Punter • production

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Always more videos to follow, so please keep your electric eye on me babe!

I don’t own the rights, and I’m not making any money out of this etc. Just a fan making videos for other fans.

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