Mai Yamane -- The Real Folk Blues

My, my, Mai, Mai...this has been quite the Mai start for "Kayo Kyoku Plus" today. Just finished an article for Mai Kuraki's（倉木麻衣）"Secret of my heart", an anison for the "Meitantei Conan"（名探偵コナン）series, and now I'm going ahead with a more down-and-dirty tune by Mai Yamane（山根麻衣）for "Cowboy Be-Bop".

In terms of the singer, I'm approaching Yamane in that countervailing way that I've gotten into Japanese popular music. A lot of fans have become J-Pop fans through anison being their front door and then branching into the other genres and singers including the singer in this article. For me, although I had heard of Yamane's contributions to the legendary "Cowboy Be-Bop", I only started getting into this singer through her very early City Pop tunes in the 1980s such as "Tasogare"（たそがれ）, and then I made the inroads into her rock-and-anime area.

So I have arrived at "The Real Folk Blues" which is really a jazz-rock extravaganza with Yamane behind the mike and The Seatbelts as the band. And man, with all of the attention on that opening theme, "Tank!", I've realized that the ending theme is no shrinking violet by any means.

Mentioning about that jazz-rock arrangement, I couldn't really say that "The Real Folk Blues" is a typical fusion tune. I think that the creation by lyricist Yuuho Iwasato（岩里祐穂）and composer Yoko Kanno（菅野よう子）is something that belongs in that category of film noir-spy caper-Neo-Western music. It has that smoky bourbon blend of sexiness, danger and lone-wolf sense of justice. Plus, the lyrics by Iwasato seem to describe something like a final scene from a Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall noir movie: "Sorry, dollface. Would love to be with you but a palooka like me ain't much for settlin' down. Gotta keep movin'". Heck, "The Real Folk Blues" would be something that I would have heard in a 1970s James Bond flick but with the far more intimidating Daniel Craig bringing the hammer down in the opening credits.

Yamane's honey voice and those horns are just perfect for the cool tone. And I gotta say that the coda that seems to describe Bogie walking off into the distance is amazing with the music keeping that main theme but taking on that underlying rhythm of an uncertain future. Y'know...with "Tank!" and "The Real Folk Blues", "Cowboy Be-Bop" may have been an anime with one of the most killer anison theme batteries in history.