GUERNICA – OUR BICYCLES SING [GINRIN WA UTAU] (1982)

lyrics by KEIICHI OHTA | music by KOJI UENO

Guernica’s first and only single. The song was used in a commercial for the carbonated lemon-lime soda “Sweet Kiss” at the time of its release.

The word used in the song’s title, ginrin, is an archaic word for bicycle that literally means ‘silver rings.’ There isn’t an equivalent in English – bicycle has been used since the 1800s – so I decided to just use ‘bicycle.’

Translation and notes are under the cut:

GUERNICA – MOUNTAIN RANGE OF DREAMS [YUME NO SANGAKU CHITAI] (1982)

lyrics by KEIICHI OHTA | music by KOJI UENO

If you can’t handle her at her Tyrolean hats, you don’t deserve her at her bug wings.

Translation and notes are under the cut:

GUERNICA – CAFE DE PSYCHO (1982)

lyrics by FOX | music by KOJI UENO

Before Guernica got all orchestra-y, their first album provided a nice balance between synth and 30s-style orchestral music. This song is one of the more markedly synthetic ones in the entire Guernica catalog, and one of the standouts from the album.

I’m not quite sure who FOX is. I ran some google searches and apparently he’s got writing credits on a few Togawa tracks and has a tenuous connection to HALMENS, a band in which Togawa was a member, but there’s no Wikipedia page for him or anything. Suppose it’s just a mystery lost to time at this point.

Worth noting that the title of the song is written with the now (and then) outdated katakana ヰ instead of イ, rendering it Cafe de Sawiko in purest Romanization.

Translation and notes are under the cut: