The Vapors
Encyclopedia
The Vapors were a New Wave
and power pop
band from England
, that existed between 1979 and 1981. They had a hit
with the song "Turning Japanese
" in 1980, which reached #3 in the UK Singles Chart
, and #36 in the U.S.
Billboard Hot 100
chart
.
, Surrey
, their members were David Fenton (songwriter
, guitarist
and vocalist
), Howard Smith (drummer
), Edward Bazalgette
(lead guitar
ist) and Steve Smith (bass guitarist
and vocals). Their name was originally spelled "Vapours," but they removed the U
to seem like an American band.
They were discovered and managed
by the father of Paul Weller
, John Weller and The Jam
's bassist
, Bruce Foxton
. The song for which they are mainly remembered, "Turning Japanese
", was produced
by The Jam's producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven
and hit the Top Three in the UK
at the same time that "Going Underground
" was at number one. It was also a big hit
in Australia
and in the U.S. The song "Turning Japanese" was believed to euphemistically
refer to masturbation
.
The band released two album
s: New Clear Days
(the pun on "nuclear" being intentional) and Magnets
. The first was more clearly in the "traditional" new wave style of music
, while touching on social issues such as the nuclear
threat as well as love
themes. The second album dealt more extensively with themes of alienation
, with many dark lyrics
about apparently psychotic
characters, including the opening track, "Jimmie Jones", about cult
leader Jim Jones
. Sales of the second album were poor and the band broke up soon after its release in 1981. Fenton alleged in a later interview with Record Collector
magazine
that lack of record label
support was the chief reason; apparently their intended seventh single 'Red Flag' was cancelled without explanation.
Follow-up singles
"News at Ten", and the aforementioned "Jimmie Jones", both coincidentally reached number 44 in the UK Singles Chart. Record producer Harry Cowell
was for a while the band's drum tech.
who specializes in music law, frontman Fenton has apparently retired from his days as a music creator and performer to concentrate on legal aspects of the music industry.
Edward Bazalgette
has since become a television director
, credits including a 2005 BBC
documentary
about Genghis Khan
.
Howard Smith now runs People Independent Records in Guildford; the band's home town.
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
and power pop
Power pop
Power pop is a popular musical genre that draws its inspiration from 1960s British and American pop and rock music. It typically incorporates a combination of musical devices such as strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs. Instrumental solos are...
band from England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, that existed between 1979 and 1981. They had a hit
Hit record
A hit record is a sound recording, usually in the form of a single or album, that sells a large number of copies or otherwise becomes broadly popular or well-known, through airplay, club play, inclusion in a film or stage play soundtrack, causing it to have "hit" one of the popular chart listings...
with the song "Turning Japanese
Turning Japanese
"Turning Japanese" is a song released by the English band The Vapors from their album New Clear Days, and the song for which they are known best. The song's lyrics consist mainly of the singer talking about pictures of his love...
" in 1980, which reached #3 in the UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
, and #36 in the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
chart
Record chart
A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, Hot 100 or Top 40....
.
Career
Based in GuildfordGuildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, their members were David Fenton (songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
, guitarist
Guitarist
A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...
and vocalist
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
), Howard Smith (drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
), Edward Bazalgette
Edward Bazalgette
Edward Bazalgette is a British television director and former musician.He was the lead guitarist in the 1980s rock group the Vapors, whose hit "Turning Japanese" remains a popular one-hit wonder. He later became a film editor, television producer and director. In 2003, the BBC commissioned a seven...
(lead guitar
Lead guitar
Lead guitar is a guitar part which plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs within a song structure...
ist) and Steve Smith (bass guitarist
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
and vocals). Their name was originally spelled "Vapours," but they removed the U
U
U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details....
to seem like an American band.
They were discovered and managed
Management
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively...
by the father of Paul Weller
Paul Weller
Paul Weller is an English singer-songwriter. Starting with the band The Jam , Weller then went on to branch out musically to a more soulful style with The Style Council...
, John Weller and The Jam
The Jam
The Jam were an English punk rock/New Wave/mod revival band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were formed in Woking, Surrey. While they shared the "angry young men" outlook and fast tempos of their punk rock contemporaries, The Jam wore smartly tailored suits rather than ripped...
's bassist
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
, Bruce Foxton
Bruce Foxton
Bruce Foxton is an English rock and roll musician who is best known as the bass player in punk rock bands The Jam and Stiff Little Fingers.-Biography:...
. The song for which they are mainly remembered, "Turning Japanese
Turning Japanese
"Turning Japanese" is a song released by the English band The Vapors from their album New Clear Days, and the song for which they are known best. The song's lyrics consist mainly of the singer talking about pictures of his love...
", was produced
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
by The Jam's producer Vic Coppersmith-Heaven
Vic Coppersmith-Heaven
Vic Coppersmith-Heaven is an English sound engineer and record producer, best known for his production work with The Jam.-Career:...
and hit the Top Three in the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
at the same time that "Going Underground
Going Underground
"Going Underground" is the first British number-one chart single by The Jam, released in March 1980. It went straight in at number one, a rare feat at the time, and spent three weeks at the top...
" was at number one. It was also a big hit
Hit record
A hit record is a sound recording, usually in the form of a single or album, that sells a large number of copies or otherwise becomes broadly popular or well-known, through airplay, club play, inclusion in a film or stage play soundtrack, causing it to have "hit" one of the popular chart listings...
in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and in the U.S. The song "Turning Japanese" was believed to euphemistically
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
refer to masturbation
Masturbation
Masturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
.
The band released two album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
s: New Clear Days
New Clear Days
New Clear Days was The Vapors's 1980 debut album containing the UK hit single "Turning Japanese", which reached No. 3 in the chart in February 1980. A remix of "News at Ten" , went to No. 45 in July of that year...
(the pun on "nuclear" being intentional) and Magnets
Magnets (album)
Magnets was The Vapors' second album, released in 1981.The album continued The Vapors' dark themes, taking them to a slightly darker level, with "Jimmie Jones" being about Jim Jones, "Isolated Case" about state oppression and disillusionment with politics, "Civic Hall" about the assault Dave...
. The first was more clearly in the "traditional" new wave style of music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, while touching on social issues such as the nuclear
Nuclear power
Nuclear power is the use of sustained nuclear fission to generate heat and electricity. Nuclear power plants provide about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for about 50% of nuclear generated electricity...
threat as well as love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
themes. The second album dealt more extensively with themes of alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
, with many dark lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
about apparently psychotic
Psychosis
Psychosis means abnormal condition of the mind, and is a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality"...
characters, including the opening track, "Jimmie Jones", about cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
leader Jim Jones
Jim Jones
James Warren "Jim" Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 mass suicide of 909 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.Jones was born in Indiana and started the Temple in...
. Sales of the second album were poor and the band broke up soon after its release in 1981. Fenton alleged in a later interview with Record Collector
Record Collector
Record Collector is the United Kingdom's longest-running monthly music magazine. It distributes both within the UK and worldwide. It started in 1979.-The early years:...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
that lack of record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
support was the chief reason; apparently their intended seventh single 'Red Flag' was cancelled without explanation.
Follow-up singles
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
"News at Ten", and the aforementioned "Jimmie Jones", both coincidentally reached number 44 in the UK Singles Chart. Record producer Harry Cowell
Harry Cowell
Sir' Harry Cowell is a British musician and record producer - he is no relation to Simon Cowell. He is married and lives in West London....
was for a while the band's drum tech.
After the band
A solicitorSolicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
who specializes in music law, frontman Fenton has apparently retired from his days as a music creator and performer to concentrate on legal aspects of the music industry.
Edward Bazalgette
Edward Bazalgette
Edward Bazalgette is a British television director and former musician.He was the lead guitarist in the 1980s rock group the Vapors, whose hit "Turning Japanese" remains a popular one-hit wonder. He later became a film editor, television producer and director. In 2003, the BBC commissioned a seven...
has since become a television director
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
, credits including a 2005 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
about Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
.
Howard Smith now runs People Independent Records in Guildford; the band's home town.
Studio albums
| Title | Album details | Peak chart positions | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
CAN Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
NZ |
US Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
||||||
| New Clear Days New Clear Days New Clear Days was The Vapors's 1980 debut album containing the UK hit single "Turning Japanese", which reached No. 3 in the chart in February 1980. A remix of "News at Ten" , went to No. 45 in July of that year... |
|
44 | 41 | 25 | 62 | ||||
| Magnets Magnets (album) Magnets was The Vapors' second album, released in 1981.The album continued The Vapors' dark themes, taking them to a slightly darker level, with "Jimmie Jones" being about Jim Jones, "Isolated Case" about state oppression and disillusionment with politics, "Civic Hall" about the assault Dave... |
United Artists Records United Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:... |
— | 39 | — | 109 | ||||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | |||||||||
Compilation albums
| Title | Album details |
|---|---|
| Anthology |
|
| Turning Japanese: The Best of the Vapors |
EMI Records EMI Records is the flagship record label founded by the EMI company in 1972 and launched in January 1973 as the successor to its Columbia label. The EMI label was launched worldwide... |
| Vaporized |
|
| The Best of the Vapors |
|
Singles
| Year | Single | Peak chart positions | Certifications Music recording sales certification Music recording sales certification is a system of certifying that a music recording has shipped or sold a certain number of copies, where the threshold quantity varies by type and by nation or territory .Almost all countries follow variations of the RIAA certification categories,... (sales threshold) |
Album | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
CAN Canadian Singles Chart The Canadian Singles Chart is currently compiled by the U.S.-based music sales tracking company, Nielsen SoundScan . The chart is compiled every Wednesday, and is published by Jam! Canoe on Thursdays.... |
NZ |
US Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday... |
US Dance |
US Main |
||||
| 1979 | "Prisoners" | — | — | — | — | — | — | New Clear Days | |
| 1980 | "Turning Japanese Turning Japanese "Turning Japanese" is a song released by the English band The Vapors from their album New Clear Days, and the song for which they are known best. The song's lyrics consist mainly of the singer talking about pictures of his love... " |
3 | 7 | 9 | 36 | 34 | — |
|
|
| "News at Ten" | 44 | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| 1981 | "Waiting for the Weekend" | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Jimmie Jones" | 44 | — | — | — | — | 39 | Magnets | ||
| 1982 | "Spiders" | — | — | — | — | — | — | ||
| "Isolated Case" | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "Civic Hall" | — | — | — | — | — | — | |||
| "—" denotes releases that did not chart | |||||||||
External links
- [ The Vapors biography at the Allmusic]
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHb1IFPtlWsTrue Spin The Vapors - The Story Behind "Turning Japanese" YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
]