I guess I put it into my mix tape since the melody actually sounded rather Christmas-y and I taped it from an Off Course （オフコース）compilation CD, "Off Course Winter Collection -- White Lyrics". "Omoide wo Nusunde" was also a track on the band's 5th album, "Junktion" which came out in September 1977. It peaked at No. 21 on the Oricon album chart.
"Ronde" was written, composed and performed by Off Course member Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博） and is a bit of a musical guilt trip about the distance that grows between Mom and child as the years go by. It's a lovely song, especially with that bluesy saxophone, and it was used as the theme song for a NTV drama in late 1977 titled "Himawari no Ie"（ひまわりの家...Sunflower House）about a mother who has to run a confectionary shop alone after her husband mysteriously disappeared 7 years previously.
Now that 36 years have passed by, it's surprising that this single didn't do too well, only going as high as No. 89 on Oricon. But according to J-Wiki, Suzuki hadn't been too confident in "Ronde" from the outset stating that he felt that he had gotten asked to write something at the age of 29 that perhaps someone in his 40s or 50s would only realize. He even went as far to say that his creation really didn't fit into the direction that Off Course was veering into and that it was a tune that just got left on the side of the road. Ouch! Still, he also stated that he loved the song.
Suzuki also covered "Ronde" twice on his albums "BeSide" (1996) and "Forward" (2004).
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.