Yet another J-pop act to emerge from a university music "circle," or club is Hermann H. & and the Pacemakers, whose alma mater is Tokyo's prestigious Keio University. "Hermann H." is a reference to German writer Hermann Hesse, while "Pacemakers" harkens back to '60s Liverpudlian combo Gerry and the Pacemakers. Among the group's influences are Japanese bands Happy End and the Moon Riders, as well as the Beatles. Hermann H. and the Pacemakers played their first...

Yet another J-pop act to emerge from a university music "circle," or club is Hermann H. & and the Pacemakers, whose alma mater is Tokyo's prestigious Keio University. "Hermann H." is a reference to German writer Hermann Hesse, while "Pacemakers" harkens back to '60s Liverpudlian combo Gerry and the Pacemakers. Among the group's influences are Japanese bands Happy End and the Moon Riders, as well as the Beatles. Hermann H. and the Pacemakers played their first show in January 1998 at a Tokyo "live house" and they released their first mini-album, Heavy Fitness on the Warner Indies Network label in October 1999. Heavy Fitness, with its punchy, hook-laden songs, showed off Hermann's mastery of the power-pop idiom. The five-member (originally six) band's music can be tender and lyrical, as in the single "Yoru ni wa Hoshi to Ongaku wo"; zany, as in the sci-fi-flavored "Newly Discovered Crater"; or just straight-ahead pop-rock, as in "Kotoba no Hate ni Ame ga Furu." Hermann's main creative force is singer/guitarist is Yohei Okamoto, who plays and sings with a serious intensity which is offset by the band's other front man, Wolf (real name: Yuji Wakai), who provides backing vocals but mainly just jumps madly about the stage, adding a bit of weirdness to Hermann H's superlative live shows. Most of the band's songs are in English, because Okamoto and bassist Yasunori Ishii (who shares songwriting duties with Okamoto) find that the rhythms of English suit the kind of music they write. Hermann H. & the Pacemakers' clever, literate brand of power pop isn't really in the standard J-pop mold, and although they've had some moderate chart success, they've yet to break through in a big way.