The Red Flower of Tachai Blossoms Everywhere

Friday, May 14, 2021

My friend Taro, from Japan, sent me the 10-inch album The Red Flower of Tachai Blossoms Everywhere. I have been looking for this record for the past five years. One of the many articles I have read and re-read on the late David Bowie was his favorite albums. Slowly but surely, I'm purchasing all the albums that he admired. Or, at the very least, the albums he listed for Vanity Fair in November 2003. The list has everything from The Velvet Underground to The Fugs to Robert Wyatt. A nod to the Last Four Songs by Strauss and sung by Gundula Janowitz. Still, the one album that captured my imagination is The Red Flower of Tachai Blossoms Everywhere. Bowie bought his copy at a Chinese Woodblock Print Fair in Berlin in the 1970s. I imagine it was the cover for the album, which is gorgeous, that made him purchase the disc. Gold titles on the front cover: when you touch it, you can feel the texture, which is different from the rest of the record cover. China is envisioned as a well-run landscape with steamboats and hydroelectric dam, sharing space of farmers carrying their goods from one point to another. It a simple life but done elegantly. Almost a dandy's vision of an exotic life done well. 

The text on the record is all in Chinese, except the title on the cover is in English, but in Chinese as well. The back cover lists the songs both in Chinese and English. Seven songs in all. The opening song "A Long, Long Life To Chairman Mao" is uplifting, and there is a sense that there was a struggle, but life will be better now. There is no singing on the record, and all the instruments are played on National Instruments. "Delivering Public-Grain To The State" reminds me a bit of traditional cowboy swing music. All the music here was written in the 20th-century, but it has roots in the ancient world. Perhaps due to the instruments being from another century. Like the cover on this record, it conveys the world of the farmer and their farms. It's industry but not something of the Industrial Revolution, more of the personal feeling of working together for the common good. 

It's an odd juxtaposition of place and time when playing this music in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. As I listen to the album, I look outside my window, which faces the Number 5 Freeway and close to Freeway 2. Like the cover, I can see small cars and trucks traveling at their own pace, either going up North or South. As I drift and being taken away by the melodies, I wonder how far these cars are going? As for myself, I have gone far. But only from my bed to the record player for the last 14 months or so.