Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Kazumasa Akiyama -- Dig My Style


Discovered another new and fun musician tonight. He's called Kazumasa Akiyama(秋山一将)and he's a jazz guitarist who started with 2 albums in the 1970s: "Dig My Style" (1978) and "Beyond the Door" (1979).

The title track from "Dig My Style" is an enjoyable slice of light funk n' fusion with Akiyama himself providing the vocals (pretty nice English there). It would be nice to strut down the main street of either Shinjuku or Roppongi to this one. I'm not sure who Akiyama modeled himself on but his guitar sounds somewhat like George Benson near the end.

Akiyama doesn't have a J-Wiki entry but he has his own website. From there, I found out he was born in 1955 and starting learning the guitar by himself at the age of 10. He listened to a lot of the Beatles and Ray Charles and then started getting into jazz. After several years of performing in various groups with artists such as jazz drummer Motohiko Hino(日野元彦)and singer Yasuko Agawa(阿川泰子), he released a couple of more albums in the 2000s: "Quiet Storm" (2005) and "Dr. Rain" (2008).

I was looking at the cast of musicians for "Dig My Style", and it turns out one of the backup singers was Etsuko Yamakawa(山川恵津子)who has already been mentioned for that other new and fun group I wrote about last night.


3 comments:

  1. Please, if someone have some mp3 from this or another kasumaza disc, send to me!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hello, Felipe.

      Sorry to hear that you haven't been able to find anyone to help you out. HMV Japan apparently is selling some of the CDs for "Dig My Style" (https://www.hmv.co.jp/artist_%E7%A7%8B%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%86_000000000250750/item_Dig-My-Style-Uhqcd_7096801).

      Tower Records Japan has his other album "Beyond The Door" (ビヨンド・ザ・ドア) (https://tower.jp/search/item/%E7%A7%8B%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%80%E5%B0%86?), although Tower requires a Japanese address to send the album to. If you have a friend living in Japan who can take it, that would be great. Otherwise, you can set up a Buyee or Tenso account which would provide a Japanese address and then send any albums over to your country.

      Hope you can get your own copy of the albums!

      Delete

Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.