Hi-Way -- Black Coffee（ブラック・コーヒー）

I'll be honest. Although I've been drinking coffee ever since I got into university (it'd been tea before that), I'm not so much of a connoisseur that I can drink it pitch black. My cuppa joe needs the cream; I've been able to live without the sugar (especially if I'm having dessert with it) but there's gotta be something milk-based in there.

Well, allow me to segue somewhat haphazardly then over to a band that was singing about black coffee. This is the band Hi-Way（ハイウェイ）...great name, too bad that it was over for them pretty quickly. Their one and only album "Age" from 1982 didn't contain "Black Coffee" but was the B-side for their single, "Honoo no Yoru"（炎の夜...Night of Passion）. Composer, lyricist and vocalist Yoshimitsu Kamiura（上浦容充）has got husky vocals slightly reminiscent of James Brown and Shigeru Matsuzaki（松崎しげる）as he sings about the wonders of the hot drink while perhaps taking a jab at its rival, tea (I will stay out of that argument, thank you very much).

"Black Coffee" is pretty cool and groovy to go along with the blast of caffeine, and everything that fans would imagine in an 80s City Pop tune is in here. I would think that Kamiura would have been plugging for Nescafe or Maxwell House in an ad, and in fact, within the liner notes for the song in "Light Mellow ~ City", Highway started out with a jingle for a cup ramen ad, and the 5-piece band received a Best New Artist award from a Kansai radio station. However, one of the band summarily left (I'm assuming that it's Kamiura) and then Hi-Way broke up.