Los Indios -- Shirisugitanone（知りすぎたのね）

Reading Marcos V's article on that collaboration between NGT48's Rika Nakai（中井りか）and veteran Mood Kayo group Los Indios（ロス・インディオス）the other day had me thinking about them once more. Not that the end of the year means tons of visits to bars and other types of watering holes in Tokyo; I would think that the final week would be spent sprucing up the home and cooking up all that osechi. Instead the days leading up to January 1st just gets me into that traditional music type of mood, and Mood Kayo is one such genre.

It may not have garnered as much acclaim as their "Como Esta Akasaka?"（コモエスタ赤坂）, but Los Indios' "Shirisugitanone" (Know Me Too Well) was released in the same year, 1968, as their arguably most famous song and it has that comforting mix of Mood and Latin that just brings up images of walking through various tony districts of Tokyo at night such as the aforementioned Akasaka.

Written and composed by the veteran songwriter Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）, the lovely melody is paired up with some sorrowful lyrics about a fellow whose now-erstwhile girlfriend has dumped him because she didn't like the "warts-and-all" part of him. Maybe it was news of another affair or he was in deep with a bad crowd....it doesn't matter, he's all by his lonesome once more.

Despite the sad story, it's still a wonderfully natsukashii kayo to hear and someday I may have to try it out at karaoke....that is, if I can meet up with a bunch of like-minded amateur singers. I don't think my old buddies in Japan are really all that much into Japanese music in general....at least, not into Mood Kayo.