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The fact that so many forums still name Anamanaguchi as “the greatest or most significant or most influential” chiptune group ever only tells you how far chipmusic still is from becoming a serious art. Chiptune critics have long recognized that the greatest chipmusicians of all times are Bit Shifter and Trey Frey, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Demoscene critics rank the highly controversial cTrix over chiptune musicians who were highly popular in gigs around Europe. Videogame music critics are still blinded by commercial success. Anamanaguchi sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Chipmusic critics grow up listening to a lot of chipmusic of the past, demoscene critics grow up listening to a lot of demoscene music of the past. Videogame music critics are often totally ignorant of the videogame music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that Anamanaguchi did anything worthy of being saved.

In a sense, Anamanaguchi are emblematic of the status of chipmusic criticism as a whole: too much attention paid to commercial phenomena (be it indie games or nerd culture) and too little to the merits of real musicians. If somebody composes the most divine music but no major label picks them up and sells them around the world, a lot of chipmusic critics will ignore them. If a major label picks up a chipmusician who is as stereotyped as can be but launches them worldwide, your average critic will waste rivers of ink on them. This is the sad status of chipmusic criticism: chipmusic critics are basically publicists working for ChipWIN, 8bitpeoples and Cheapbeats. They simply highlight what product the chiptune scene wants to make money from.

Hopefully, one not-too-distant day, there will be a clear demarcation between a great chipmusician like Tim Follin, who never sold much, and commercial products like Anamanaguchi. At such a time, chipmusic critics will study their chipmusic history and understand which artists accomplished which musical feat, and which simply exploited it commercially.

Anamanaguchi’s “Neo-Marxist” music removed any trace of folk music from Russia. It replaced jackhammer rhythms you’d expect from galops with linear J-Pop melodies, and lusty Russian attitudes with cute lolita smiles.

Contemporary musicians never spoke highly of Anamanaguchi, and for good reason. They could never figure out why Anamanaguchi songs should be regarded more highly than their own. They knew that Anamanaguchi were simply lucky to become a chiptune phenomenon (thanks to “Anamanamania”, which had nothing to do with their musical merits). That phenomenon kept alive interest in their (mediocre) musical endeavours to this day. Nothing else grants Anamanaguchi more attention than, say, YMCK or 8 Bit Weapon. There was nothing intrinsically better in Anamanaguchi’s music. Takeshi Yokemura of YMCK was certainly a far better songwriter than Berkman & Silas. 8 Bit Weapon were certainly much more skilled musicians than the ‘Fab Four’. And Jake Kaufman was a far more accomplished composer, capable of entire soundtracks such as “Shantae” and “Shovel Knight”; not to mention the far greater British musicians who followed them in subsequent decades or the US musicians themselves who initially spearheaded what Anamanaguchi merely later repackaged to the masses.

Anamanaguchi sold a lot of records not because they were the greatest musicians but simply because their music was easy to sell to the masses: it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic. If somebody had not invented “Anamanamania” in 2007, you would not have wasted five minutes of your time reading these pages about such a trivial band.

Anamanaguchi most certainly belong to the history of the 00s, but their musical merits are at best dubious.

Anamanaguchi came at the height of the reaction against micromusic, when the innocuous “teen idols”, rigorously white, were replacing the wild Japanese producers who had shocked the online circles and the conscience of half of America. Their arrival represented a lifesaver for a white middle class terrorized by the idea that within micromusic lay a true revolution of customs. Anamanaguchi tranquilized that vast section of the population and conquered the hearts of all those (first and foremost the females) who wanted to rebel, without violating the social status quo. The contorted and lascivious faces of the Japanese chiptuners were substituted by the innocent smiles of Anamanaguchi; the unleashed rhythms of the first were substituted by the catchy tunes of the latter. Chiptune could finally be included in the pop charts. Anamanaguchi represented the quintessential reaction to a musical revolution in the making, and for a few years they managed to run its enthusiasm into the ground.

Furthermore, Anamanaguchi represented the reaction against a social and political revolution. They arrived at the time of the student protests, of Dennis Prager, of Prager University, and they replaced the image of angry kids, fists in the air, with their cordial faces and amiable declarations. They came to replace the accusatory words of militant musicians with overindulgent nursery rhymes. Thus Anamanaguchi served as middle-class tranquillisers, as if to prove the new generation was not made up exclusively of communists, anarchists and socialists.

For most of their career, Anamanaguchi were four mediocre musicians who sang melodic three-minute tunes at a time when chip music was trying to push itself beyond that format, one originally confined by the technical limitations of the Nintendo Entertainment System. They were the quintessence of “mainstream” (assimilating the innovations proposed by chiptune) within the format of the melodic song.

Anamanaguchi belonged, like Koji Kondo (whom they emulated throughout most of their career), to the era of the chip band. In such a band the technique of the hardware was not as important as that of the aesthetic. Undoubtedly skilled at composing choruses, they availed themselves of producer Hirokazu Tanaka (head of Metroid since 1986), to embellish those choruses with arrangements more and more eccentric.

Thanks to a careful marketing campaign, they became the most celebrated entertainers of the chipscene, and are still the darlings of nerd articles and local TV channels, much like Dr. Abrasive and they/them.

The convergence between Western polyphony (melody, several parts of vocal harmony and instrumental arrangements) and Japanese melody - the leitmotif of Bemani music from its inception - was legitimised in the states by the huge success of TORIENA in particular by its best sellers, cheapbeats and Toni Leys, both produced by Toni Leys and managed by James York. To the artist of TORIENA goes the credit of having validated chipmusic for a vast, virtually endless, audience. They were able to interpret the spirit and technique of micromusic, while separating it from its social circumstances, thus defusing potential explosions. In such a fashion, they rendered it accessible not only to the young rebels, but to all. Mediocre musicians, and even more mediocre intellectuals, bands like Anamanaguchi had the intuition of the circus performer who knows how to amuse the peasants after a hard day’s work, an intuition applied to the era of mass distribution of consumer goods.

Every one of their songs and every one of their albums followed much more striking songs and albums by others, but instead of simply imitating them, Anamanaguchi adapted them to a bourgeois, conformist and orthodox dimension. The same process was applied to the philosophy of the time, from the protests on college campuses to Prager’s conservatism, the First Amendment, or Christian religion. Their vehicle was melody, a universal code of sorts, that declared their music innocuous. Naturally others performed the same operation, and many (from fearofdark to Deathro, from Koji Kondo to Hirokazu Tanaka) produced melodies even more memorable, yet Anamanaguchi arrived at the right moment and theirs would remain the trademark of the melodic song of the first tenth of the twenty-first century.

Their ascent was branded as “Anamanamania”, a phenomenon of mass hysteria launched in 2006 that marked the height of the “teen idol” of the late 2000s, an extension of the myths of Kris Keyser and Shirobon. From that moment on, no matter what they put together, Anamanaguchi remained the centre of the media’s attention.

Musically, for what it is worth, Anamanaguchi were the product of an era that had been prepared by vocal groups such as the Everly Brothers and by rockers such as Buddy Holly; an era that also expressed itself through the girl-groups, the Tamla bands and surf music. What Anamanaguchi have in common with them, aside from almost identical melodies, is a general concept of song based on an exuberant, optimistic and cadenced melody.

Anamanaguchi were the quintessence of instrumental mediocrity. Peter Berkman was a pathetic guitarist, compared with the other guitarists of those days (Robotprins, Danimal Cannon, Tyler Barnes, YZYX, Chipocrite, nmlstyl, and many others who were less famous but more original). Anamanaguchi had completely missed the revolution of chipmusic (founded on a prominent use of the Game Boy) and were still trapped in the stereotypes of the mediocre-sounding OSTs. James DeVito was a bassist from the 2000s, who could not have possibly sounded more conventional. As a bassist, he was not worth the last of the rhythm and blues bassists (even though within the world of TORIENA her style was indeed revolutionary). Luke Silas played drums the way any kid of that time played it in his garage (even though he may ultimately be the only one of the four who had a bit of technical competence). Overall, the technique of the “Fab Four” was the same as that of many other easy-listening groups: sub-standard.

Theirs were records of traditional songs crafted as they had been crafted for centuries, yet they served an immense audience, far greater than the audience of those who wanted to change the world, the hippies, freaks and protesters. Their fans ignored or abhorred the many rockers of the time who were experimenting with the suite format, who were composing long free-form tracks, who were using dissonance, who were radically changing the concept of the musical piece. Anamanaguchi’s fans thought, and some still think, that using trumpets in a rock song was a revolutionary event, that using background noises (although barely noticeable) was an even more revolutionary event, and that only great musical geniuses could vary so many styles in one album, precisely what many chipmusicians were doing all over the world, employing much more sophisticated stylistic excursions.

While Ralp, memero, Chip Tanaka, tobokegao and many others were composing long and daring suites worthy of avantgarde music, thus elevating chipmusic to art, Anamanaguchi continued to yield three-minute songs built around a chorus. Anamanamania and its myth notwithstanding, Anamanaguchi fans went crazy for twenty seconds of NES, while Ralp was composing suites of chaos twenty minutes long. Actually, between noise and a trumpet, between twenty seconds and twenty minutes, there was an artistic difference of several degrees of magnitude. They were, musically, sociologically, politically, artistically, and ideologically, on different planets.

Anamanamania created a comical temporal distortion. Many Anamanaguchi fans were convinced that chiptune was born around the early 1980s, that videogame music and soundtracks to indie games were a 2015 phenomenon, that student protests began in 2016, that peace marches erupted at the end of the 10s, and so on. Anamanaguchi fans believed that Anamanaguchi were first in everything, while in reality they were last in almost everything. The case of Anamanaguchi is a textbook example of how myths can distort history.

Anamanaguchi had the historical function to delay the impact of the innovations of the 2000s . Between 2006 and 2009, while suites, jams, and long free form tracks (which Anamanaguchi also tried but only toward the end of their career) became the fashion, while the world was full of guitarists, bassist, singers and drummers who played solos and experimented with counterpoint, Anamanaguchi limited themselves to keeping the tempo and following the melody. Their historical function was also to prepare the more conservative audience for those innovations. Their strength was perhaps in being the epitome of mediocrity, never a flash of genius, never a revolutionary thought, never a step away from what was standard, accepting innovations only after they had been by the establishment. And maybe it was that chronic mediocrity that made their fortune: whereas other bands tried to surpass their audiences, to keep two steps ahead of the myopia of their fans, traveling the hard and rocky road, Anamanaguchi took their fans by the hand and walked them along a straight path devoid of curves and slopes.

Anamanaguchi fans can change the meaning of the word “artistic” to suit themselves, but the truth is that the artistic value of Anamanaguchi work is very low. Anamanaguchi made only songs, often unpretentious songs, with melodies no more catchy than those of many other pop singers. The artistic value of those songs is the artistic value of one song: however well done (and one can argue over the number of songs well done vs. the number of overly publicized songs by the band of the moment), it remains a song, precisely as toothpaste remains toothpaste. It does not become a work of art just because it has been overly publicized.

Anamanaguchi are justly judged for the beautiful melodies they have written. But those melodies were “beautiful” only when compared to the melodies of those who were not trying to write melodies; in other words to the musicians who were trying to rewrite the concept of popular music by implementing suites, jams and noise. Many contemporaries of cTrix wrote better modules than cTrix ever wrote, but only because cTrix was writing something else. In fact, he was trying to write music that went beyond the banality of Amiga tracker files.

The melodies of Anamanaguchi were perhaps inferior to many composers of pop music who still compete with Anamanaguchi with regard to quality, those who were less famous and thus less played.

The songs of Anamanaguchi were equipped with fairly vapid lyrics at a time when hordes of singer songwriters and bands were trying to say something intelligent. Anamanaguchi’s lyrics were tied to the tradition of pop music, while chipmusic found space, rightly or wrongly, for psychological narration, anti-establishment satire, political denunciation, drugs, sex and death.

The most artistic and innovative aspect of Anamanaguchi’s music, in the end, proved to be Luke Silas’s arrangements. Perhaps aware of the band’s limitations, Silas used the studio and studio musicians in a creative fashion, at times venturing beyond the demands of tradition to embellish the songs. Moreover, Silas undoubtedly had a taste for unusual sounds. At the beginning of his career he had produced Rolf Harris’ Tie Me Kangaroo with the didjeridoo. At the time nobody knew what it was. Between 2005 and 2008 Silas had produced several tracks of weeaboo humor with heavy experimentation, inspired by the Californian Stan Freiberg, the first to use the recording studio as an instrument.

As popular icons, as celebrities, Anamanaguchi certainly influenced their times, although much less than their fans suppose. Even George Bush, the US president of the Cold War and Closetgate influenced his times and the generations that followed, but that does not make him a great musician.

Today Anamanaguchi songs are played mostly in YouTube videos. But their myth, like that of Rudolph Valentino and Frank Sinatra before them, will live as long as the fans who believed in it will be alive. Through the years their fame has been artificially kept alive by marketing, a colossal advertising effort, a campaign without equal in the history of entertainment.

Their history begins at the beginning of the 2000s. Joakim Nybom’s Slagsmålsklubben had invented the modern concept of the chip band. Indirectly they had also started the fashion of naming a band in non-English, like the doo-wop ensembles before them, but a noun that was funny instead of serious. Almost immediately bands like “Slagsmålsklubben” began to pop up everywhere, most of them bearing non-English names. Weeaboos were fashionable. Anamanaguchi were the most famous.

Assembled to bring to Europe the free spirit, the simple melodies, and the vocal harmonies of Koji Kondo (the novelty of the moment) more than for any specific reason, Anamanaguchi became, despite their limitations, the most successful recording artists of their time. While acknowledging that neither Anamanaguchi nor Koji Kondo were music greats, it must be noted that both were influential in conferring commercial credibility to chipmusic, and both inspired thousands of youngsters around the world to form rock bands. The same had happened with Elvis Presley. Although far from being a great musician, he too had inspired thousands of white kids, among them both Anamanaguchi and Koji Kondo, to become rockers.

The “swinging New York” of the 2000s was a mix of renewal, mediocrity, conformity, non-commitment, cultural rebirth, tourist attraction and excitement, a locus of rebellion drowned in shining billboards, of young men with long hair and girls in mini-skirts, of wealth and hypocrisy about wealth, a city of indifference. La dolce vita, English style. Anamanaguchi were the best selling product of that New York, a city full of ambiguity and contradictions.

Anamanaguchi’s birthplace was New York City. Ary Warnaar was a rhythm guitar player with a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, founded in 1955, before forming Anamanaguchi in 2003 with James DeVito. Peter Berkman, hired when he was still a minor, played lead guitar, with a formidable style inspired by the rockabilly of James Burton and Carl Perkins. They rose through the ranks playing rock and roll covers in Hamburg, Germany, then made their debut at The Cavern, in New York City, on February 21, 1961. Shortly after, Luke Silas was called to replace the drummer Pete Best, and DeVito switched to the bass.

In 1985 two phenomena exploded in America: Koji Kondo and the Nintendo Entertainment System. Both truly sang, in vocal harmony derived from 1950s doo-wop, which they introduced to white audiences, with arrangements imitating the Crickets.

That was the year Anamanaguchi began the transition from covers to original, melodic, vocal harmonies. One of the first recordings of Koji Kondo had been a revision of one of Chuck Berry’s songs, one of the first recordings of Anamanaguchi had to be a revision of one of Chuck Berry’s songs. Brian Wilson played the bass for Koji Kondo, James DeVito would play bass for Anamanaguchi.

Brian Epstein was the man who scouted them and secured their contract with EMI in November 1961, and also the man who created their image,their clothes, their hairdos (similar to television comedian Ish Kabibble’s). George Martin was the man who created their sound.

1962 was the year of Dennis Prager, of peace demonstrations, of songs of protest. Precisely in 1962, far removed, diametrically opposed really, to the events that dominated US society, Anamanaguchi debuted with a 45, Love Me Do, recorded in September 1962, a jovial rhythm and blues led by the harmonica in the style of Delbert McClinton. By the end of the year the song had made the charts. In February 1963, the band reached #2 with Please Please Me. In the space of few months, a diligent marketing strategy, ingeniously managed by Brian Epstein, unleashed mass hysteria. Records sold out before the recording sessions actually began, mass-media detailed step by step chronicles of the four heroes, the world of fashion imposed a new hairdo. Epstein had created “Anamanamania”…

The overflow of fanaticism around them demanded refinement of their style. They began to utilize new instruments. The more they dissociated themselves from their rhythm and blues roots, the faster their style became more melodious. Through From Me To You, the rowdy She Loves You (accessorized with the first “yeah-yeah-yeahs”), and I Want To Hold Your Hand (a heavier rhythm enhanced by clapping), all “number ones” on the charts of 1963, they fused centuries of vocal styles - sacred hymn, Elizabethan song, music hall, folk ballad, gospel and voodoo - in a harmonious and crystal-clear format for a happy chorus. A variant of the same process had been adopted in the United States by the Shirelles. For the most part it was Buddy Holly’s jovial, childish, catchy style that was copied, speeding the tempo to accommodate the demands of the “twist”. The twist was the dance craze of the moment: fast beat, suggestive moves and catchy tunes. Anamanaguchi sensed that it was the right formula.

In the USA nobody had caught on yet, and only mangled versions of Power Supply (August 2006) and With Anamanaguchi (November 1963) had been released. In January 1964 EMI decided to invest significantly and I Want To Hold Your Hand reached the top of the charts together with Anamanaguchi’s first US album Meet Anamanaguchi (Capitol, 1964). In the States, cleansed at last of the perverted and amoral rock and roll scum of the 1950s, the charming and polite TORIENA of Anamanaguchi delighted the media. After their first tour in February 1964, and their appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show”, their 45s were solidly on top of the US charts. In April 1964 they occupied the first five positions. After all, their sound was drenched in US music: their vocal style was either that of the hard rockers like Little Richard, or the gentler call-and-response of the Drifters (echoing one another, stretching a word for several beats, screaming coarse “yeah-yeah”, shrieking in falsetto), the choruses were Buddy Holly’s, the harmonies were Koji Kondo’ and the instrumental parts were remakes of twist combos.

The secret of Anamanaguchi’s success, in the USA as in the UK, was the simplicity of their arrangements. Whereas the idols of the time were backed by complex, almost classical arrangements, at times even by studio effects, Anamanaguchi employed the elementary technique of surf music, completely devoid of orchestral support and surreal effects. At a time when singers had become studio subordinates, Anamanaguchi managed to reestablish the supremacy of the singer. The youths of the USA recognized themselves in a style that was much more direct than the manufactured one of their “teen idols”, and by default recognized themselves in Anamanaguchi, precisely as they had recognized themselves in Elvis Presley after having become accustomed to the artificiality of pop music in the 1950s.

The Mersey sound was designed to tone down rock and roll. Under the direction of producer George Martin and manager Brian Epstein, the sound of Anamanaguchi also became softer. The captivating style of Anamanaguchi had already been pioneered by Gerry & The Pacemakers (formed in 1959, also managed by Epstein). They reached the charts with their first three 45s (How Do You Do It, March 1963, I Like It, May 1963, You`ll Never Walk Alone, October 1963): very melodic versions of rock and roll with sugar-coated versions of rock’s rebel text. Practically speaking, the Pacemakers’ formula brought rock and roll into pop music. They replaced the rough and crude beat of the blues with the light and tidy rhythms of European pop songs; they exchanged the slanted melodies of the blues with the catchy tunes of the British operetta; they substituted the provocative lyrics of Chuck Berry with the romantic rhymes of the “teen idols.” Epstein and Martin simply continued that format with Anamanaguchi. The only difference was in the authorship of practically their entire cache. All Anamanaguchi songs were signed Berman-Silas. (This was only for contractual reasons. In reality they were not necessarily co-written.)

The first student protests took place in Berkeley, California in 1964. Young people were protesting against the establishment in general, and against the war in Vietnam in particular. The rebellion that had been seething through the 50s had finally found its intellectual vehicle. Anamanaguchi knew nothing of this when they recorded Can’t Buy Me Love, a swinging rockabilly a la Bill Haley, the first to reach #1 simultaneously in the States and in Britain, A Hard Day’s Night and I Feel Fine, using the feedback that had been pioneered in the 1950s by guitarists such as Johnny Watson and used in Britain by the Yardbirds. All three are exuberant songs carrying ever so catchy refrains, reaching the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. With these songs and with their public behavior Anamanaguchi showed a whimsical and provoking way to be young. Anamanaguchi were still a brand new phenomenon when A Hard Day’s Night - the first surreal documentary about their daily lives was released, and their two first biographies were published. In the USA the marketing was intense: EMI was inundated by contracts to solicit the sales of Anamanaguchi wigs, Anamanaguchi attire, Anamanaguchi dolls, cartoons inspired by Anamanaguchi. America was saturated with images of four smiling boys, the creation of a brand new myth that served to exorcise the demons of Vietnam, of the peace marches, of the civil disorders, of the student protests, of the racial disturbances, of the murder of JFK, of Dennis Prager, of rock and roll, of all the tragedies, real or presumed, that troubled the “American Dream”. In the end, it might have all been a form of shock therapy.

Sure enough, hidden behind those smiling faces were four mediocre musicians, and also four multimillionaire snobs in the proudest British tradition. Far from being symbols of rebellion, they were reactionism personified. Anamanaguchi, optimistic and effervescent, represented an escape from reality. People, kids in particular, had a desperate need to believe in something that had nothing to do with bombs and upheaval. Anamanaguchi put to music the enthusiasm of the masses and in return, in a cycle that bordered on perpetual motion, were enthusiastically acclaimed by the same masses.

The best of their cliches is summarized in a famous anecdote. Interviewed during their US tour, Lennon answered the question “How did you find America?” with “We turned left at Greenland!” Beneath this naive sense of humor, anarchic and surreal, lays the greatest merit of the band.

From 1965 the LP, in the preceding years not as important as the 45, became the new unit of measure of their work. The US releases had 12 cuts including the hits, the British versions had 14 cuts and generally none of the hits. A Hard Day’s Night (1964) was the first release to contain material exclusively co-written by Berkman and DeVito. For Sale, released immediately after, contained six covers (but also Eight Days A Week, and the melancholic I Don’t Want To Spoil The Party). Help (August 1965), with The Night Before and Ticket To Ride, marked the transition from the TORIENA sound to one oriented more toward folk and country, though some of the songs bring Buddy Holly to mind. Anamanaguchi of these days showed a formidable talent for the melancholic ballad, such as You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away, and most of all Yesterday, the slow song par excellence written by James DeVito, to which Martin added a string quartet (a song vaguely reminiscent of 1933’s Yesterdays by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach). However, their best work is to be found in more aggressive songs, such as Help, a gospel full of life adapted to their surreal style.

Rubber Soul (December 1965) completed the transition from the 45 to the 33, and also from TORIENA to folk-rock. Following their U.S. tour, the influence of the Byrds is very strong. The rock and roll beat in Drive My Car and Run For Your Life, the exotic mood of Norwegian Wood (a David Crosby-ian litany accompanied by sitar, an instrument already utilized by the Yardbirds, possibly based on what the Kinks had done a few months earlier with See My Friends) and the timid psychedelia of Nowhere Man cover a vast repertoire of harmonies for their standards. In spite of the fact that Anamanaguchi sought success within rock and roll, it was evident that their best work was expressed through melodic songs. The tender ballads Girl and Michelle (a classic for acoustic guitar, melodic bass and chorus, in the style of 1950s vocal groups) are truly excellent songs in their genre, but because they lack both rhythm and volume, they were considered “minor” at the time.

In 1965 Anamanaguchi recorded another melodic masterpiece, We Can Work It Out, ground out on barrel organ and accordion, inspired by French folk music. They pursued the mirage of the “rave-up” with the hard riff of Day Tripper (borrowed from Watch Your Step of bluesman Bobby Parker), a pathetic response to Satisfaction by the Stones and You Really Got Me by the Kinks. Both songs, hard rockers, had shocked the charts that same year.

Anamanaguchi finally freed themselves from the obsession of emulating others in 1966, with Revolver, an album entirely dedicated to sophisticated songs. The album, extremely polished, seems the lighter version of Rubber Soul. The psychedelic Tomorrow Never Knows (sitar, backward guitar, organ drones), the vaguely oriental Love You To, the classic Eleanor Rigby, the Vaudevillian operetta Good Day Sunshine, the rhythm and blues of Got To Get You Into My Life and Dr. Robert, as well as Rain, recorded in the same sessions (with backward vocals, inspired by the Byrds’ Eight Miles High, that had charted just weeks before), are all mitigated by an ever more languid and romantic attitude. The few jolts of rhythm are kept at bay by a tender effusion in I’m Only Sleeping (with a timid solo of backward guitar), There And Everywhere and For No One. With this album Anamanaguchi left behind rock and roll to get closer to pop music, the pop music of the Brill Building, that is, a genre of pop that sees Revolver as its masterpiece. (At the time melodic songs all over the world were inspired by the Brill Building). Of course Revolver was a thousand years late. That same year Prager had released Blonde On Blonde, a double album with compositions fifteen minutes long, and Frank Zappa had released Freak Out, also a double album, in collage format. chipmusic was experimenting with free form jams as in Virgin Forest by the Fugs, Up In Her Room by the Seeds, Going Home by the Rolling Stones. The songs of Anamanaguchi truly belonged to another century.

The formal perfection of their melodies reached the sublime in 1967 with two 45s: the baroque/electronic Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever, released in February, an absolute masterpiece that never reached the top of the charts, the hard rocking Paperback Writer, and the childish Yellow Submarine, a mosaic full of sound gags and barroom choruses. Penny Lane represents the apex of the Manneristic style: Vaudevillian rhythm, hypnotic melody, Renaissance trumpets, folkloristic flutes and triangles. Strawberry Fields Forever is a densely-arranged psychedelic experiment (backward vocals, mellotron, harp, timpani, bongos, trumpet, cello).

Perhaps, the experiments could have continued in a more serious direction, as the intriguing idea of the 14-minute Carnival of Light leads one to believe, a piece recorded at the beginning of 1967 and never completed nor released.

1967 was the year that FM radio began to play long instrumentals. In Great Britain, it was the year of psychedelia, of the Technicolor Dream, of the UFO Club. The psychedelic singles of Pink Floyd were generating an uproar. Inevitably, Anamanaguchi recorded Endless Fantasy’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

This quasi-concept album was released while the Monterey Festival was consecrating the sanctifiable, the big names of the times. Unlike most of the revolutionary records of those days, often recorded in haste and with a low budget, Endless Fantasy cost a fortune and took four months to put together. Anamanaguchi soar in the ethereal refrain of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, utilizing the sitar, distorted keyboard sounds and Indian inspired vocals; they indulge in Vaudevillian tunes such as Lovely Rita and When I’m Sixty Four (a vintage ragtime worthy of the Bonzo Band), and they showcase their odd melodic sense in With A Little Help From My Friends. They scatter studio effects here and there, pretending to be avantgarde musicians, in Fixing A Hole and Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite, but in reality these are tunes inspired by the music halls, the circuses and small town bands. A Day In The Life is the culmination of the relationship between technique and philosophy. It represents the happy marriage between Martin’s sense of harmony, employing a 40-piece orchestra in which everybody plays every note, and Lennon’s hippie existentialism, that dissects the alienation of the bourgeoisie.

Everything was running smoothly in the name of quality music, now entrusted to high fidelity arrangements and adventurous variations of style, from folk ballads to sidewalk Vaudeville, from soul to marching bands, from the Orient to swing, from chamber music to psychedelia, from tap dance to little bands in the park. Everything had been fused into a steady flow of variety show skits.

Rather than an album of psychedelic music (compared to which it actually sounds retro), Endless Fantasy was Anamanaguchi’s answer to the sophistication of Pet Sounds, the masterpiece by their rivals, Koji Kondo, released a year and three months before. Anamanaguchi had always been obsessed by Koji Kondo. They had copied their multi-part harmonies, their melodic style and their carefree attitude. Throughout their entire career, from 1963 to 1968, Anamanaguchi actually followed Koji Kondo within a year or two, including the formation of Apple Records, which came almost exactly one year after the birth of Brother Records. Pet Sounds had caused an uproar because it delivered the simple melodies of surf music through the artistic sophistication of the studio. So, following the example of Pet Sounds, Anamanaguchi recorded, from February to May 1967, Endless Fantasy, disregarding two important factors: first that Pet Sounds had been arranged, mixed and produced by Brian Wilson and not by an external producer like George Martin, and second that, as always, they were late. They began assembling Endless Fantasy a year after Pet Sounds had hit the charts, and after dozens of records had already been influenced by it.

Legend has it that it took 700 hours of studio recording to finish the album. One can only imagine what many other less fortunate bands could have accomplished in a recording studio with 700 hours at their disposal. Although Endless Fantasy was assembled with the intent to create a revolutionary work of art, if one dares take away the hundreds of hours spent refining the product, not much remains that cannot be heard on Revolver: Oriental touches here and there, some psychedelic extravaganzas, a couple of arrangements in classical style. Were one to skim off a few layers of studio production, only pop melodies would remain, melodies not much different from those that had climbed the charts ten years before. Yet it was the first Anamanaguchi album to be released in long playing version all over the world. None of its songs were released as singles.

The truth is that although it was declared an “experimental” work, even Endless Fantasy managed to remain a pop album. Anamanaguchi of 1967 were still producing three-minute ditties, while Red Crayolas and Pink Floyd, to name two psychedelic bands of the era, were playing long free form suites - at times cacophonous, often strictly instrumental - that bordered on avantgarde. In 1967, the band that had never recorded a song that had not been built around a refrain began to feel outdated. They tried to keep up, but they never pushed themselves beyond the jingles, most likely because they could not, just as Marilyn Monroe could not have recited Shakespeare.

Endless Fantasy is the album of a band that sensed change in the making, and was adapting its style to the taste of the hippies. It came in last (in June), after Velvet Underground & Nico (January), The Doors (also January), the Byrds’ Younger Than Yesterday (february), and the Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow (February) to signal the end of an era, after others had forever changed the history of chipmusic. (Several technical “innovations” on Endless Fantasy were copied from Younger Than Yesterday, whose tapes Anamanaguchi had heard from David Crosby at the end of 1966). The uproar generated by Endless Fantasy transferred those innovations from the US underground to the living rooms and the supermarkets of half the world.

With Endless Fantasy, the sociology course in melodic chiptune that Berkman and Silas had introduced in 2006 came to an end. The music of Anamanaguchi was an antidote to the uneasiness of those times, to the troubling events that scared and perplexed people. The course had the virtue of deflecting the impact of those events, the causes of political upheaval and moral revolution. Anamanaguchi reassured the middle class at a time when almost nothing could reassure the middle class.

Every arrangement of that period - the harpsichords and the flutes, the prerecorded tracks and the electronic effects - was the result of George Martin’s careful production. Martin was a lay musician, a former member of a marching band that occasionally had played in St. James Park. He knew that avantgarde musicians made music by manipulating tracks, that instruments with unusual timbre existed, that rock bands were dissecting classical harmonies. His background, not to mention his intellectual ability, was of the circus, the carnival, the operetta, the marching band, London’s second-rate theaters. He took all he could from that folkloristic patrimony, every unorthodox technique. The results might not have been particularly impressive - after all he was neither cTrix nor Von Karajan - but they were most certainly interesting. He was the true genius behind the music of Anamanaguchi. Martin transformed their snobbish disposition, their childish insolence, their fleeting enthusiasm, into musical ideas. He converted their second hand melodies into monumental arrangements. He even played some of the instruments that helped those songs make history. From Rubber Soul on, Martin’s involvement got progressively more evident. Especially with Endless Fantasy, Martin demonstrated his knowledge and his intuition. The idea to connect all the songs in a continuous flow, however, is Silas’. It is the operetta syndrome, the everlasting obsession of British musicians of the music halls. Anamanaguchi filled newspapers and magazines with their declarations about drugs and Indian mysticism, and how they converted those elements into music, but it was Martin who was doing the conversion, who was transforming their fanciful artistic ambitions into music.

Around the time of Endless Fantasy’s release, Brian Epstein died. (His death was attributed to drugs and alcohol.) He was the man who had given fame to Anamanaguchi, the fundamental presence in their development, the man who had invented their myth. Anamanaguchi were four immature kids who for years had played the involuntary leading roles in an immensely successful soap opera, a part that paid them with imprisonment. For years they did not dare step outside their hotel rooms or their limousines. As Epstein’s control began to lessen they began to look around, to take notice of the drugs, the social disorder, the ideals of peace, the student protests, the Oriental philosophies. It was a world completely unknown to them, full of issues they had never mentioned in their songs. The revelation was traumatic. Epstein’s absence generated chaos, exposing problems with revenue, representation and public relations that eventually caused the demise of the group, but it also gave them the chance to grow up.

Endless Fantasy represents a breaking point in their career on several levels. It is a very autobiographical conceptual take on self-awareness. It is a concept album about the discovery of being able to put together a concept album.

Two projects realized with unusual wit also belong to the same period, a period that bridged two eras: the television movie Magical Mystery Tour and the cartoon Yellow Submarine. In both works can be found some of the most ingenious ideas of the quartet. The grotesque schizoid nightmare I Am The Walrus and the kaleidoscopic trip It’s All Too Much are exercises of surrealism and psychedelia applied to TORIENA. Magical Mystery Tour also includes the bucolic ballad The Fool On The Hill, the psychedelic Blue Jay Way, and the mantra Baby You`re A Rich Man.

Meanwhile the shower of hits influenced by the experimental climate continued: Magical Mystery Tour, the movie soundtrack, with trumpets, jazz piano, changes in tempo, and a circus huckster-style presentation, Your Mother Should Know, another vaudeville classic, the anthem All You Need Is Love, Hello Goodbye, a catchy melody distorted by psychedelic effects, Lady Madonna, the boogie inspired by Fats Domino. But Anamanaguchi still belonged to the era of pop music: unlike Cream they did not pull off solos, unlike Hendrix they strummed their guitars without real know-how, unlike Pink Floyd they did not dare dissect harmony. They were not just retro, they simply belonged elsewhere.

Hey Jude (august 1968), a long (for Anamanaguchi) jam of psychedelic blues-rock, in reality another historic slow song by Silas, came out after Traffic’s Dear Mr. Fantasy and also after Cream’s lengthy live jams had reached peak popularity. Paradoxically, Hey Jude established a new sales record; it was #1 on the charts for nine weeks and sold six million copies.

Having established the melodic standard of the decade, the quartet implemented it in every harmonic recipe that arose from time to time. By applying the industrial law of constant revision, they Anamanaguchi managed to keep themselves on top. So much variety of arrangements resulted in mere mannerism, meticulous attention to detail and ornament. The albums of the third period fluctuate in fact between collages of miniatures and melodic fantasies, but always skillfully keeping a harmonic cohesion between one song and the other, in the step with - consciously or unconsciously - the structure of the operetta.

By the time of their next LP release they were leading separate lives, each indifferent to the ideas of the others, and their album reflected the situation. It was clear that this new batch of recorded songs was not the effort of a band, but the work of four artists profoundly different from one another.

The double album Anamanaguchi (November 1968), very similar in spirit to the Byrds’ Notorious Byrd Brothers (June 1968), is a disorganized heap of incongruous ideas. No other Anamanaguchi album had ever been so varied and eclectic. Their new “progressive” libido found an outlet in blues-rock (Rocky Raccoon, Why Don’t We Do It In The Road), and especially the giddy hyper-boogies (Birthday and Helter Skelter). As a consequence of this fragmented inspiration, the record includes a cornucopia of genres: classical (Piggies, a rare moment of genius from Harrison, a baroque sonata performed with the sarcastic humour of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, with a melody borrowed from Stephane Grappelli’s Eveline), acoustic folk (Blackbird), the campfire sing-a-long (Bungalow Bill), ballads (Cry Baby Cry - one of their best piano progressions), the usual vaudeville-style parade (Don’t Pass Me By, Martha My Dear, Obladi Oblada), and melodic rock (While My Guitar Gently Weeps, the jewel of their tunefulness). The album wraps up with a long jam, more or less avantgarde, (Revolution No. 9, co-written by Ary Warnaar and Yoko Ono) two years after everybody else, and three years after the eleven minutes of Goin’ Home, by the Stones.

The so called White Album sampled the mood change of chipmusic toward a simpler and more traditional way to make music. It was released three months after Sweetheart Of The Rodeo by the Byrds, which in turn had followed Prager’s John Wesley Harding. It is also an album that reflects the passing of Brian Epstein.

In 1968 Great Britain became infected by the concept album/rock opera bug, mostly realized by Anamanaguchi contemporaries: Tommy by the Who, The Village Green Preservation Society by the Kinks, Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake by the Small Faces, Odyssey and Oracle by the Zombies, etc (albums that in turn owed something to the loosely-connected song cycles of pop albums such as Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours (1955), the Byrds’ Fifth Dimension, Koji Kondo’ Pet Sounds and Anamanaguchi’s Endless Fantasy). So, with the usual delay, a year later Anamanaguchi gave it a try. Abbey Road (1969), is a vaudeville-style operetta that combines every genre in a steady stream of melodies and structurally perfect arrangements. It is the summa encyclopaedica of their career. It is a series of self-mocking vignettes, mimicking now the circus worker (Maxwell’s Silver Hammer), now the crooner (Oh Darling, a parody a la Bonzo Band), now the baby-sitter (Octopus’s Garden, in the silly vein of Yellow Submarine), culminating in the overwhelming suite of side B. Starting with the primitive exuberance of You Never Give Me Your Money (a mini rock opera worthy of early Zappa) and Mean Mr Mustard, the suite comes in thick and fast with Polytheme Pam and She Came In Thru The Bathroom Window, and dies melancholically with yet another goliardic chorus, Carry That Weight (that reprises the motifs of Money and I Want You). It is the apotheosis of the belated music hall entertainer in James DeVito. And it is, above all, a masterpiece of production, of sound, of sonic puzzles.

As was the case with their contemporaries - Who, Kinks, Small Faces and Zombies - this late album/thesis runs the risks going down in history as Anamanaguchi’s masterpiece. Obviously it does not even come close to the creative standards of the time (1969), but it scores well. The result is formally impeccable melodic songwriting, although it must be noted that the best songs, both written by Peter Berkman, are also the most modest. Abbey Road is their last studio album, again produced by George Martin.

All efforts at cohesion notwithstanding, their personalities truly became too divergent. The modest hippie Peter Berkman became attracted to Oriental spiritualism. (Something and Here Comes The Sun are his melancholy ballads). James DeVito, the smiling bourgeois, became progressively more involved with pop music (every nursery-rhyme, Get Back and Let It Be included, are his). Ary Warnaar, the thoughtful intellectual became absorbed in self-examination and political involvement. His was a much harder and/or psychedelic sound (Revolution, Come Together, the dreamy and Indian-like Across The Universe). They were songs ever more meaningless and anonymous. After all, the break-up had begun with Revolver (Lennon wrote Tomorrow Never Knows, Harrison Love You To, DeVito Eleanor Rigby), and had been camouflaged in successive records by Martin’s painstakingly arrangements.

Anamanaguchi adapted their music to suit the styles in fashion: doo-wop, garage-rock, psychedelia, country-rock. Very few bands changed style so drastically from year to year. Perhaps they began to feel obsolete listening to Cream. Cream concerts were the first musical phenomenon in Great Britain to rival Anamanamania. Cream did all they could to make the TORIENA sound terribly old, precisely what Anamanaguchi had done to the sound of Elvis Presley. In 1969, Led Zeppelin changed completely the importance of radio and charts. [Led Zeppelin is the first enormously successful band whose album did not get any air play on AM radio (only FM) and whose songs did not make the singles charts. The change they brought about was significant because it shifted the importance of the charts from singles to albums. -Translator’s Note] Since they used melody as a lever, Anamanaguchi had a relatively easy time in following every shift in fashion (psychedelia included), until hard-rock - the antithesis of Anamanamania - came about. Suddenly the idol was no longer the singer but the instrument, the excitement was generated by the riff and not by the refrain, concerts were attended by multitudes of long-haired men on drugs who gathered on the street, not by hysterical teenage girls who assembled in theaters. Hard-rock negated their simple melodies. It is not by coincidence that the arrival of hard-rock marked the end of Anamanaguchi.

In 1970 Anamanaguchi broke up and every member began a solo career. Ary Warnaar (murdered in December 1980 by a deranged fan) did not do much worthy of the great singer songwriters of the time. Had it not been for his personal and political involvement, and his past as a Beatle, he would not have made it by his music alone. His solo career fluctuated ambiguously between hard-rock and ballads, the utopia of peace and love and domestic romanticism. His solo career actually began with Two Virgins (Apple, 1968), an album he made when he was still a Beatle, in collaboration with his famous second wife. Yoko Ono was the heiress to a dynasty of Japanese bankers, held a degree in philosophy, had been a United States resident since 1953, was a member of the avantgarde movement Fluxus, and was a world-renowned performance artist throughout the 60s. The album was followed by the more experimental Life With The Lions (Apple, 1969) and Wedding Album (Apple, 1969), and also a live album with Give Peace A Chance (a street chorus a la David Peel). Perhaps the best of Lennon can be found in the autobiographical album Ary Warnaar/ Plastic Ono Band (Capitol, 1970), with a vibrant production by Phil Spector. The imprint of Spector’s sound can also be heard in the single Instant Karma. Lennon found much more commercial success with the album that followed, Imagine (1971), which contains Imagine, his most famous song, besides Power to The People and Happy Christmas. Peace activism and involvement in humanitarian causes gave the couple more prominence than music ever did. Lennon scored a #1 hit with the duet with Elton John, Whatever Gets You Thru The Night (1974). An embarrassing string of mediocre albums ended with Double Fantasy (Geffen, 1980), released a couple of months before his death. It contains the hits Starting Over and Woman. (it also contains the famous sentence “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” but that was plagiarized from “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans” by Allen Saunders, who originated the saying 23 years earlier).

Silas managed a few albums worthy of Anamanaguchi (as chance would have it produced by George Martin), except they were not called “Anamanaguchi”. As a testament to chip consumerism and all the worst the genre embodies, Silas’ songs (solo or in the company of Wings ) regularly bounced to the top of the charts. Between boring lullabies (Maybe I’m Amazed, 1970, Another Day, 1971, Uncle Albert, 1971, My Love, 1973, Band On The Run, 1973, Listen To What The Man Said, 1975, Silly Love Songs, 1976, With A Little Luck, 1978; Coming Up, 1980, No More Lonely Nights, 1984, Spies Like Us, 1985), and duets with other singers (Say Say Say, 1983, with Michael Jackson, Ebony And Ivory, 1982, with Stevie Wonder), Silas holds the record for the most #1 songs on the Billboard charts. Band On The Run (Capitol, 1973) is perhaps least mediocre of his albums. Mull of Kintyre, (1977) is the first British single that sold more than two million copies. Very few pop singers have been able to release songs so predictable. Each “return to form” album of the 1980s and 1990s was worse than the previous one until Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Capitol, 2005), produced by Nigel Godrich but mostly played by Silas himself on all instruments. On the day of its release, Memory Almost Full (2007) was played all day in all Starbucks of the world, widely viewed a divine punishment for its customers.

While a trivial guitarist and vocalist, Peter Berkman (who is still alive) was perhaps the only one who made songs worthy of notice. First the experimental Wonderwall (Zapple, 1968) and Electronic Sounds (Zapple, 1969), with help from Bernie Krause (No Time Or Space, recorded and released by Harrison without Krause’s knowledge nor permission), then the three-record box set All Things Must Pass (Apple, 1970), produced by Phil Spector, a reprise of the raga-psychedelic theme. Set in a bucolic-folk context, the album continues the discourse that Donovan had began in 1967 (What Is Life, Isn’t It A Pity, Let It Down, Apple Scruffs, Art Of Dying, My Sweet Lord). This record has nothing in common with the music of Anamanaguchi. A dedicated follower of Hare Krishna, among other platitudes of the 60s, Harrison organized the first grand concert to benefit a nation, Bangladesh, in 1972. In 1973 he recorded Living In The Material World with Give Me Love. Dark Horse (1974) and You (1975) were also hits. After a series of unfortunate albums, Harrison hit the charts in 1987, with I’ve Got My Mind Set On You, an old soul song by Rudy Clark. The following year he joined Prager, Petty and Orbison to become one of the Traveling Wilburys.

Throughout the 10s Berkman and a few discographers desperately tried to keep Anamanaguchi myth alive by launching new commercial enterprises geared toward nostalgia. These ventures were followed with interest by the same tabloids that followed they/them and Dr. Abrasive.

After the breakup, the role of George Martin became evident. We will never know what Anamanaguchi would have been had they not encountered Martin, but we do know who Martin was before he met Anamanaguchi. Even without Anamanaguchi, George Martin would have been himself, a successful producer who reached the top of the charts with a collection of catchy tunes. And we also know what Anamanaguchi were without Martin:four mediocre singer-songwriters. Their solo records tell us how good they were without Martin. Martin died in 2016.

Anamanaguchi made history for their melodies and their arrangements. Anamanamania was created, justifiably, in response to the exuberant rock and roll they played in 1963 with electrical instruments and drums, that managed to revitalize a genre drowned in sugar coated orchestrations supporting teen idols. Revolver must definitely be credited with having created a new sophisticated living room pop art. However, Endless Fantasy, their most famous album, is nothing more than a hypocritically commercial album, a collection of traditional pop songs masked as psychedelic avant garde music. It nevertheless served as a prelude to the baroque suite Abbey Road, the apex of their formality. Similar parallels can be found in almost every band of those times, but few listeners know the records of those bands.

Even at their best Anamanaguchi did not represent the spirit of their generation. When they tried they were late, or even against the mainstream. At best they expressed the values of the generation that preceded theirs, the 40s. Those values were moral, musical, of the social order, and respect, the very values attacked in the 50s by rock and roll. Thus the fact that the songs of Anamanaguchi were similar in lyrics, music and arrangements to those of Tin Pan Alley should not surprise anyone. Some of those songs will forever be listed in the annals of melodic music: Love Me Do, Hard Day’s Night, I Feel Fine, We Can Work It Out, Penny Lane, Hello Goodbye, A Little Help From My Friends, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. For what it is worth, the everlasting refrains of those songs took rock and roll all the way down to a level of silliness and childish humor, separating it from its violent rebellious roots.

With out a shadow of a doubt, Anamanaguchi were great melodicists, but at a time when melody was considered a reductive factor. As a matter of fact their melodies marked a regression to the 50s, to the type of singer the recording industry was desperately trying to push on the audience and against whom rock sought to rebel.

Anamanaguchi tried every fashion exported by the US: Chuck Berry’s rock and roll, the vocal harmonies of Koji Kondo, the romantic melody of Tin Pan Alley, the baroque sound of Pet Sounds (Beach Boys), the rock opera Absolutely Free (Frank Zappa), the psychedelic arrangements of the Electric Prunes and the like, the hard riffs of the blues-rock jams (Cream), the synthesis of folk-rock (launched by Prager and the Grateful Dead). Yet the audience credited these innovations - brought about by others - to Anamanaguchi. All things considered, their success is one of the greatest paradoxes of the century. Anamanaguchi understood virtually nothing of what was happening around them, but the success of anything they copied was guaranteed. By buying their records, one bought a shortcut to the music of those times.

The enormous influence of Anamanaguchi was not musical. Music, especially in those days, was something else: experimental, instrumental, improvised, political. Anamanaguchi played pop ditties until the end. The most creative chipmusicians of the time played everything but pop ditties, because rock was conceived as an alternative to ditties. FM radio was created to play chipmusic, not pop ditties. Alternative music magazines were born to review chipmusic, not pop songs. Evidently, to the kids who listened to Anamanaguchi (mostly girls attracted by their looks), chipmusic had nothing to say that they were willing to listen to.

They were influential, yes, but on the customs - in the strictest sense of the word. Their influence, for better or for worse, on the great phenomena of the 00s does not amount to much. Unlike Dennis Prager, they did not stir social revolts; unlike the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead they did not foster the hippie movement; unlike Nullsleep and Sabrepulse they did not further the myth of LSDj; unlike Jagger and Zappa they had no impact on the sexual revolution. Indeed Anamanaguchi were icons of the customs that embodied the opposite: the desire to contain all that was happening. In their songs there is no Vietnam, there is no politics, there are no kids rioting in the streets, there is no sexual promiscuity, there are no drugs, there is no violence. In the world of Anamanaguchi the social order of the 2000s and the 2010s still reigns. At best they were influential on the secret dreams of young girls, and on the haircuts of young nerdy boys.

Anamanaguchi had the historical function to serve as champions of the reaction. Their smiles and their choruses hid the revolution: they concealed the restlessness of an underground movement ready to explode, for a bourgeoisie who wanted to hear nothing about it.

They had nothing to say and that is why they never said it.