Agi Jo - Barely Living
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Just hit the 'reserve' button at the checkout page as your shipping option when you've finished making your order, and your order will automatically be held in reserve here until you are ready for us to ship everything to you.You can keep as many orders in reserve with us via our site as you like, until you are ready to ship. Just send us an email when you are ready to ship your reserve orders, and we will get in touch with the combined shipping price, or ship for free if you have exceeded the minimum order amount for free shipping to your address.
Can the reserve function be used to get free shipping? Yes - If your combined order total is more than £50 within the UK, over £150 within the EU, or over £225 worldwide, we'll ship your order to you via courier service, for free.
Here's a step by step guide to using it:
1. Click on the account icon to log into your account.
If you don't have an account, please click 'create account' to make one. If you had an account on the old RWDFWD site, please create a new one with the same email address used on the old site - this will ensure your previous orders are brought through to your new account.
2. Add records to your cart as normal.
3. When you're ready to check out, select 'ship'.
4. Then select 'Reserve items' on the shipping method list, then continue to payment.
5. Once payment is complete, your order will show in your account as 'unfulfilled'. We will have put all the products aside in reserve for you to combine with other orders and ship later in bulk.
6. When you're ready to ship all the items you have in reserve, email us on info@rwdfwd.com and we will calculate the shipping due and arrange for payment to be taken.
7. Sit tight and wait for your records to arrive in the post!
Free Shipping?
We offer free shipping on orders over a certain value
UK orders over £50
EU orders over £150
Worldwide over £225
This is automatically applied at checkout and reserve orders also count towards it.
EU Order info
Unfortunately, the UK is no longer part of the EU - This means that certain shipments sent to addresses there from us may be subject to tax and / or import duty - All orders sent from RWDWD are sent ‘DDU’ - That is, duty unpaid - any import tax and/or duty is the sole responsibility of the buyer.
If you would like to use our reserve function to group several orders into one large shipment, we can arrange for it to be sent tax and duty pre-paid so you don’t have to worry about it at a later date - Contact us for more information.
Big Boss Japan Blues unveils another rare gem via the JB label, operating out of London, with link to the land of the rising sun... This time diving back in time, around half a century back, to re-release a private press rarity from Agi Jo, full of heartache and sincerity in the music -
We're not going to pretend to know anything about this one, but we will say that we give our blessings to everything Japan Blues does, and we'll let the background info seep in from the original source, right here for ya, so you got the scoop before you dive in, arguably most importantly, to the music:
"Agi Yuzuru, where does one start? From late 60s kayou groove singer, actor and model, to dogged krautrock and free music researcher, underground music journalist, magazine owner / editor, and early 80s Japanese electronic music pioneer / instigator, with his (holy grail) label Vanity Records, and – to his death in 2018 - dedicated observer and diarist of new, experimental music. Where does one finish? Yuzuru, who steadfastly refused to license Vanity’s material, though bootlegs started to appear, and while falling prey to his final illness, was working on a near complete collection of those radical releases, only for it to be released posthumously.
Jo was an alias of Agi’s. It’s unlikely the fan base for his earlier pop outings would appreciate a spiky existential protest song, so Agi pressed 100 copies of the record himself. It was 1970, after he had briefly joined folk harmony pop-rock group The Happenings Four. The single was arranged by band member (now Japanese rock legend) Kuni Kawachi. Barely Living: a nihilistic number, in the vein of alternative musician / singer-songwriter Mikami Kan: a pained cry of confused existence, in the darkness of a rapidly modernising world. With Weekend Hippy, a harmonica blasted intro barely keeping to the tune, à la Dylan, we have here a comment on the hippy movement that had spread even to a reasonably conservative country like Japan."Two songs that express anger, and a rejection of accepted norms, both the everyday, and the so-called alternatives. A small testament to the character of a near unsung great of new music in Japan.Licensed in a limited edition of 300 copies, in a facsimile of the original sleeve, with Japanese lyrics, and professionally printed insert with lyrics in English.
There you have it. Special stuff, and a legit time capsule in itself, as an object, already.
Ikiteru Dake No Koto Nanda (Barely Living)
Oira Wa Kanashii Uiikendo Hippy (I am a sad weekend hippy)