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MINT JAMS" is the seventh album by the Japanese fusion band Cassiopeia. It is their second live album.
With the expansion of Alpha Records into Europe, a plan was made to produce an album for Europe by Cassiopeia, one of the artists on the label. The original plan was to select the best of the existing albums, but Peter Robinson of CBS-UK, who was in charge of distribution in Europe, liked the performance of Cassiopeia in Osaka during the "CROSS POINT" tour in December 1981 very much. He said, "What a great live band. What a great live band," and asked if it would be possible to combine the intensity of a live performance with the precision of a studio recording.
The material used for the album was a live recording of two days of solo performances at Chuo Kaikan (now Ginza Blossom Chuo Kaikan), which was carefully remixed over a period of more than 10 days. The songs were arranged in advance with studio work in mind, with no dubbing done except for some treatment in the studio for the outro of "Time Limit," and the audience noise that is common in live performances was cut out except for parts of "Domino Line" and "Swear," making the album appear to be a studio recording. The album is so good that it could easily be mistaken for a studio recording.
The title of the album was coined from the words "mint" for mint condition and "jam" for jam session (at the time, the band took the liberty of explaining that mint meant "refreshing"). (At the time, the band members were very careful to explain the meaning of mint as "refreshing") and an anagram of the members' initials. The album cover [2] depicts a jar of "hackberry jam," which is the literal translation of the title.
The pure dynamism of their playing, combined with the meticulous studio work, made "MINT JAMS" one of the most representative works of Cassiopeia's career, even today.
The recording techniques they tried in these sessions were also used in their later albums, including studio sessions with the Lee Ritner Group for their next album "Four by Four (4x4)," one-shot studio recordings for 1984's "Down Upbeat," and live studio recordings for 1990's "The Party. PARTY" (1990), and "Down Upbeat" (1984) and "The Party" (1990), respectively. In recent years, he has also been using a method whereby arrangements are fully worked out in rehearsal live performances before recording in the studio for a short period of time.
Mukaiya began to use the "YAMAHA GS1" as his main keyboard around this time, and it has since become Cassiopeia's signature instrument.
The European edition of this album was released in the same year as the Japanese edition. The following year, 1983, when they visited London to record the album "JIVE JIVE," a live performance was held to promote the album.
＜Tracklist＞ A1　Take Me A2　Asayake A3　Midnight Rendezvous A4　Time Limit B1　Domino Line B2　Tears Of The Star B3　Swear