True to their name, the Flower Travellin’ Band were some free and open spirits. The cover of their debut Anywhere showed the band on motorcycles, naked as the truth; the record itself found them reupholstering four Western blues and rock classics. Their followup was Satori, considered a masterpiece of lysergic hard rock. Their commitment to the holy, heavy-psych freakout — as well as their tendency to write English lyrics — won them a number of Western admirers, and a chance encounter with a traveling Canadian rock/fusion act in Osaka led to the whole band moving to Toronto for a spell. The result was the focused, deceptively-titled Made In Japan. After FTB returned home, they coughed out a live/studio hash (Make Up) before their producer, and then the band, moved to other projects. Singer Joe Yamanaka turned to reggae, fronting the Wailers for a time. In 2007, musician and author Julian Cope published Japrocksampler, a beloved, dreadfully-titled survey of Japan’s rock scene. FTB graced the jacket by way of the Anywhere cover; the next year, the band released We Are Here. Produced by bassist Jun Kobayashi’s son Ben in Toronto, the record was a conscious attempt to avoid nostalgia. In practice, that meant sounding like a fusion funk act, although Hideki Ishima gets to show off his sitarla, a hollow-bodied electric guitar of his own invention. Tour dates followed (including their American live debut), but Yamanaka’s death from lung cancer shut the lid on further efforts.