Fist of the North Star, Leon Carr, Urban Utopia, North Star Theme, Bust a Move

I have a mania.  No, I am not trying to caption a “lolcat”  (that would be ‘I HAZ a mania’–learn to meme).  I am not alone in my mania.  My mania is satisfied.  Many manias out there are not satisfied.  I’m not talking about the unlawful and ungodly desire to place one’s bum in Cheez Whiz and chase old people… No, that mania is shared by us all and can be easily fixed by attending the college of your choice.  No, my friends… I speak of a mania that many of us thought we’d NEVER see satisfied.  NO.  Not the mania to have Snooki do the cheez whiz thing–hell, she does that most weekday afternoons anyway!  Stop interrupting.  Let the nice man finish his blog…

The mania, my dear sweet friends-in-cheese, is the mania to hear the complete song from the ending credits of Fist of the North Star, the series–well, the English dubbed series.

I read your mind, I know this… Those tears of hopeful-yet reserved joy which are presently wetting your keyboard/smart phone are not in vain.  Let loose a triumphant cry of joy, O-nerd!  For I bring good tidings…

That magnificent drum n’ bass track is available.  You can buy that fucker.  Hell, you can steal that fucker too (no, I won’t link it and yes I bought it).  I have the deets and I’m gonna lay em on yo’ ass.  But first… I wanna blog, so shut up.

The name of the artist is Leon Carr (or his stage name or whatever–I haven’t yet tracked him down to say “OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOGOGOSJOAWERIHOWHFAEOHIFAWOEIH” but don’t worry… I will)

The name of the track is “Urban Utopia” or ‘North Star Theme.’

It was put out by Reinforced Records.  It was on a compilation of drum and bass and electronic music called “Original Liquid.”

You’re welcome.

Don’t worry, I’ll link shit at the bottom.  Now let the nice man write his frigging blog already!!!

First, I confess, I did not know about Fist of the North Star in 1984.  I was a frigging baby and wouldn’t have known Hokuto no Ken from Hokuto piss the bed and scream for mac n’ cheese Ken.  No, I came across Fist of the most awesome and bitching cool North Star in 2001 or thereabouts–too many blogging beers between then and now to firmly remember, sorry.  Regardless, believe it or not, this series was a part of why I am where I am today.  (obviously, “today” is subjective to when your Hokuto–no idea when you’re reading this–ass is presently enjoying my blog during work hours)  The point is, I found comfort in this show when I had none.  Sad, I know… I had to watch people blow up due to trauma to pressure points to feel better about myself… Sigh… I’m a completely fucked person, I realize this…

So when I saw this anime for the first time, I was in a pretty bad place.  I was living with a woman with whom I was dating and we were just really REALLY not compatible.  I mean, we kind of got along; but not really.  We fought like cats and dogs that are of different religions and went to different high schools that preferred different rival teams that had shot each others’ cats and dogs; it was rough.  But the funny thing is/was that we didn’t really GET it, ya dig what I mean?  We just thought it was normal to scream at one another and say terrible things.  If you’ve seen Jersey Shore, then you probably get it.  I suppose the thing to remember was that we were very young.  I used to say that we were playing house.  I think it was more that we both liked having a roommate and were too lazy to move on.

Whatever.  It was poisonous and I lost years of my life in that apartment.  Learn from my fail, kids… Even if the person you’re with is “pretty cool”  ‘most of the time’ or ‘not that bad’… DO NOT FRIGGING MARRY THEM IF YOU’RE NOT MADLY IN LOVE WITH THEM AND THEY WITH YOU.  Trust me.

No, I didn’t marry her–obviously.  We are not talking about the love of my life, Gangsta Vicki–No, that woman is the light of my life and everything good.  The only thing we bicker over is who gets the last piece of cake or the last drink–She thinks I should have it and I want to give it to her.  Yep, we’re THAT couple.  You get diabetes hanging with V-diddy and yer ole buddy Jas.  We’re gross.  I don’t care.  It’s fucking better than feeling “meh” about your spouse, let me tell you.  I’ll be “THAT” couple all fucking day long, brah.  Being in love and happy is a mighty fine thing.

But I digress…

We’re talking about when I was UN-happy.

So anyway, I was playing Job with a lesser demon of the inferno and too chicken shit to get out of there.  I knew I didn’t love her that way and I’m pretty sure she was just in love with being in love–I think she would’ve married a turnip; but hell man, I could be wrong.  I KNOW I was an asshole, believe me.  I’m not trying to push it off on her.  I was a complete egotistical dickhead and a mean shit and I hate myself for ever being such a crass, petty, shit-wad.  There.  I kind of feel better.

So basically, we were no prize and we certainly taught each other a lot about what NOT to do in a relationship.  I don’t know where she is now and believe it or not, man I hope she found something good, I really do.  I sincerely hope to NEVER see her again; but in my line of work..?  Sigh… Here’s to hoping.

North Star, right?  I know my anime nerds and Kenshiro fanboys are like, “what the fuck, man?!!!”  Well, my fellow nerds, I never said I was going to review, discuss or pay tribute to North Star.  In fact, I don’t even know where I’m going with this–other than to pay a bit of homage to the ENDING CREDITS music of the ENGLISH DUBBED version.  I have never seen the Japanese ending titles.  I have ordered the remaining box set of Fist of the North Star–the episodes after the English dubbing was ceased.  I must say, I’m curious as hell to see what happens to Kenshiro and Rei and all the rest of them… But I’m mad bummed that they’re not dubbed.

Don’t get me wrong… Japanese is a BADASS language–seriously, I would totally speak it all the time if I could; it just sounds so damn cool!  But for the cheese factor, nothing is better than hearing “You’re already dead… You just don’t know it” in that John Wayne wannabe kind of slow-talking cool-ass voice of English Kenshiro.  It’s the ultimate goofiness.  I love that shit.  I’m going to miss it.

How does this all tie in?  Fuck if I know.  I was in a bad place and I was young enough to think that this anime was the shizz.  Now that I’m older, I KNOW it is.

Fist of the North Star is the best damn anime I have ever seen.  Seriously, seriously good shit.  I mean, they do the whole “re-cap” thing on gawdamn nearly every frigging episode, which can and does get old; but man… So inventive.  I hear tell that the box set that is currently coming to me via Amazon takes the story to whole new levels and this is where “it gets good.”  Bring it on!  I can’t wait.

You can’t fault this shit.  You seriously can’t.  Everything is hand drawn–yeah, back then, computer animation wasn’t even beyond Donkey Kong, early Nintendo stage, ya dig?  I THINK they’d done the original Tron at that point; but we’re talking Vectrex line graphics with that movie (although I do love the original Tron–haven’t seen the new one.  I went drinking on my birthday instead of watching the new one like I had originally intended).  So the point of that is, every frame you see is hand drawn by some poor bastard with an analog pencil.  Yep, stone age baby!

Regardless, it’s awesome.  The voice-overs are just hokey ass silliness.  Sooooo anime; but sooo fun.  Hell, even MY WIFE gets tickled watching this show.  Seriously.  On a good day, I can get her to shout “KKKEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNN” in a high pitched little anime-girl voice and it absolutely SLAYS me.  Hilarious.

How can you say something bad about this show?

I can’t.

But as much as people love the show, I found a cabal of people online who were all searching for the ending credit music to this show.  If you don’t dig electronic, drum and bass, dance, house or whatever the fuck you want to call it–you may not dig it; but for the people who loved the song, it was a hard pill to swallow that you couldn’t get the track anywhere.  For a time, all you could get was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd_wVhef0WI&feature=related

Look at that animation… Beautiful, isn’t it?  But listen to that track!!!  Fucking killer.  Truth.

So that was all many of us had.  You might notice the 26K plays… I will tell you, I am personally responsible for over 500 of those bad boys–EASY.  I put it in a playlist and used to listen to it whenever I did anything around the house.  Cooking?  Yep.  Cleaning?  Yep.  Sexy time?  Nope.  I’m not telling you what I play for sexy time.

So me getting in trouble with my wife aside, somehow the people at Reinforced Records figured out that all these people BEGGING them to release the fucking track might mean that they could sell a few.  They released it.  As soon as I found out, I bought it on Amazon immediately.  After I did, I found this:

I ain’t mad.  I hope Leon Carr got paid, baby!  This is the absolute shit.  It is such a good drum and bass track that I can’t stand it.  Or dance or whatever you fucking call it.  It’s awesome.  I love this track.  A whole lot of people agree with me too.  There were forums with people discussing everything they knew about the track and how it could be found and all that noise.  You see, since it was recorded FOREVER ago, there weren’t a lot of details on how the hell it could be found.  Not many people knew anything about the song other than it was put out by Reinforced Records.  That was it.

Just goes to show you… If you band together with other internet nerds, you can get people to help you find lost childhood (or otherwise) treasures you thought you may never again see/hear.  Sometimes, the internet does pretty cool things.

If you dig the track, buy it here–support the artist.