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Philosophy – Japanese promo – Ben Folds Five

PCD-0686

I’m back! What did I miss? Anything happened since my last post in late 2019?

Today’s post is in regards to one of my holy grails, the Japanese promo of ‘Philosophy’ that was released to radio stations in early 1996. I had almost lost hope that I would ever own this CD, after over five years of serious Ben Folds Five collecting I was never able to track down a copy. It got so bad that at one point I was contacting other collectors on Twitter asking them to sell me their copy (sorry Makiko).

Then, one day I was scrolling through Discogs and saw that a Japanese record store had put it up for sale at a fairly reasonable price. One month later, and I was holding a mint copy of ‘Philosophy’ in my hands. It was wrapped in cellophane and looked as it had never been played. Not a smudge or a scratch, I couldn’t believe the CD that had just travelled halfway around the globe was almost exactly 25 years old.

25 years ago…

Well, I don’t know about you but that just made me feel old. 25 years! So where was Ben Folds Five up to in late 1995 and early 1996? According to the (wonderful) Ben Folds biography ‘A Dream About Lightening Bugs’, the success of the first Ben Folds Five in Japan took the band a little by surprise. The debut album wasn’t initially released in Japan, but was gaining traction in mid to late 1995 on import sales alone.

In response to this interest from the Japanese market, Caroline Records put together plans to release the debut Ben Folds Five album in the territory on 13th December 1995, a whole six months after the US release. The Japanese edition of ‘Ben Folds Five’ was almost identical to the US and European release, but with the additional live version of ‘Tom and Mary’ included as a bonus track. I’ll cover this in a future blog.

Japanese radio promos

In support of the December ’96 album release, two radio promos were released to Japanese radio stations around this time. The first radio single was ‘Jackson Cannery’, and this was released shortly before the album debuted. You can read about this release in a previous blog:

In January 1996, this second single was released to Japanese radio stations; ‘Philosophy’.

Interesting tidbits

  • It’s clear when you take a look at the Japanese radio promos for ‘Jackson Cannery’ and ‘Philosophy’ that they were developed around the same time. The promo artwork featuring stick piano sketch and Ben’s handwriting are similar across both releases.
  • The look and feel is also very similar to the Japanese release of Emaline in 1998, albeit without the iconic piano sketch.
  • As was customary with all Japanese releases, the lyrics are provided in the inlay card in both English and Japanese.
  • This promo CD also promotes the first Ben Folds Five tour of Japan in February 1996, which according to the inlay card was a sell out. The Japanese concert dates took place during what was supposed to be a week off for the band after two months of solid touring in the US. As you’ll see, the schedule looked fairly gruelling!