Fujimaru Band -- I Know It’s Gonna Last

Come Along Radio and I were talking one time and he was recommending some more of the output of singer-musician Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）through his past band work such as SHOGUN. When I looked up his bio on J-Wiki, I found out that Yoshino really liked getting a group of professionals together to do those gigs.

There is his early 80s collaboration with Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）and others in AB'S and way back in the 1970s, Yoshino started up his first band, Fujimaru Band（藤丸BAND）in 1973. The revelation for me here was that Fujimaru Band was created as the support band behind the late Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）! I don't know how many singles or albums Fujimaru Band released but there is the one 1977 album that got recorded by them titled "BGM".

And one of the tracks on "BGM" is "I Know It's Gonna Last", a sunny song totally sung in English by Yoshino. He does a splendid job performing as the rest of Fujimaru Band provides some really nice medium funk, especially with those tight horns and keyboards. I've already put up my fair share of 1970s City Pop, but if someone were to ask me about what would be a representative of Japanese urban contemporary from that decade, I can easily mention "I Know It's Gonna Last".

To give credit where credit is due, Yoshino was on vocals and guitar, Masao Nakajima（中島正雄）was on keyboards, the bass was handled by Kazuyoshi Watanabe（渡辺和義）, and Junichi Kanazawa（金沢順一）handled the drums. Considering the cover above with the guys enjoying a meal together, I guess I can't be surprised that Yoshino liked to get his bands together.