Summery music.
Moony-eyed romantic.
Urban funkadelia. What can I tell ya?
80s workout studio-friendliness.
Soulful balladeer of yesteryear.
I think that we can all agree that there are probably a few more descriptors that we can add here, but let's stick with this bunch. As for that first phrase of "Summery music", I can distinguish Kadomatsu from Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）in that (fully realizing that both Tosh and Tats have provided a wealth of both uptempo songs and slow love songs) whereas the latter is someone that I can see entertain a small group of good buddies inside the beach house, Kadomatsu is that fellow that I've imagined having fun with the masses at some large venue outside by the shore while he's manning some DJ's turntables. He lives life large, my friend.
Whether it's on his own albums such as "After 5 Clash" including "Step Into The Light" or whether he's providing music for other singers such as the eternally summery Anri（杏里）in "Timely!!", Kadomatsu has come up with that certain sound that brings to my ears and heart anything from Motown to LA of a certain decade to any sort of Resort Pop reminiscent of either Shonan or Venice Beach. He loves his tight horns, crashing synthesizers, boppy bass and angelic chorus.
So, then, what makes Toshiki Kadomatsu tick? More specifically, how did his sound evolve into the grand discovery for all those City Pop fans in the last few years? Well, Rocket Brown of Come Along Radio and I had a conversation the other day, and we found out that the both of us came across a section that exists only in Kadomatsu's J-Wiki article that dealt with how he had been influenced by certain songs and artists before and after his debut in 1981.
The Kadomatsu J-Wiki article has its share of footnotes, but this section on pre-debut and post-debut influences doesn't have them, and when I tried to look up Kadomatsu influences on the rest of the Net, I couldn't find any particular outside article that the section could have been sourced to. Therefore, anyone close to him or even the master himself could have plunked this interesting information down onto J-Wiki. Anyways, what I'm going to do is first provide the pre-debut influences here (with the post-debut influences next day) and a best-possible translated paraphrasing of what I found (although let me know if I did something wrong). Feel free to pour yourself a highball glass of Perrier to get into the mood.
(February 11 2023: That whole section on Kadomatsu's pre-debut and post-debut influences has been excised from the J-Wiki article, possibly since it was never sourced. Still, I don't think the person who put up all of these songs was simply picking names or titles out of a hat so at the very least, these choices can still provide a topic of discussion.)
B.J. Thomas -- Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head (1969)
Kadomatsu's first encounter with Western music was in kindergarten in the 1960s, but the first Western song that he fell in love with was "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head". Burt Bacharach and Hal David were behind this Oscar-winning song recorded by B.J. Thomas for the movie"Doc Hudson and SHIELD Official Pierce"...sorry, I should say "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" back in 1969. According to the J-Wiki entry for this particular influence on Kadomatsu, he wanted to create original music with a foundation in R&B along with jazz, and also take into consideration chord development and modulation with an inclusion of a Bacharach approach. Maybe that explains his love of some of the mellow horns and those ballads.
"Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" was also a song that I remember hearing a lot on AM radio for years and years, but didn't know about the connection with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" until I was almost in junior high school. The horns and the strings get me into a very sentimental mood.
The Beatles -- Hey Jude (1968)
One of the most famous tunes by The Fab Four was released in 1968, but Kadomatsu first heard this when he was in Grade 4 so perhaps just a little after he'd discovered "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head". Strangely enough, though, it wasn't the original version that he first heard but an orchestral version that was used as the theme song for a TV drama, and getting really interested in "Hey Jude", his older brother told him about The Beatles and he managed to buy the single. The following year, Kadomatsu took up the guitar and really got into playing their tunes. So, taking up the instrument and playing in front of an audience was all thanks to John, Paul, George and Ringo.
I mentioned about my observation that Kadomatsu was someone who loved to play to a crowd and made his songs to fit that want to whip up the masses. Wouldn't "Hey Jude" be the ideal template?
Sugar Babe -- Kyou wa Nandaka (1975)
The J-Wiki article here says that Kadomatsu played Sugar Babe's（シュガーベイブ）lone 1975 album "SONGS" so often that he probably wore out the record. Although this particular track by Tats and band isn't directly referenced in the explanation, I assume that it is this song for which Kadomatsu had a dickens of a time trying to match the chord tensions that Sugar Babe came up with, although by his high school years, he had mastered three-chord progressions for rock music. But he got there eventually and it was often "Kyou wa Nandaka"（今日はなんだか...Today, Somehow）that he played.
Shigeru Suzuki -- Suna no Onna (1975)
Reading the paragraph in the original article, it looks like Kadomatsu had also listened to a fair bit of Happy End（はっぴいえんど）, the legendary band with Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）. So, once the band broke up and Suzuki went solo with his debut album "Band Wagon" in 1975, Kadomatsu decided to give that LP a spin, and was fairly floored by how different the album, including this first track "Suna no Onna"（砂の女...The Woman in the Dunes）, sounded compared to the Happy End tunes. In fact, high school kid Kadomatsu, despite his initial good impressions toward "Band Wagon", seemed to have been mystified enough about how good it was that he asked his buddies who loved playing Deep Purple and Yonin Bayashi（四人囃子）at the time whether it was indeed cool. They reassured him that it was.
Yoshitaka Minami -- Poolside (1978)
A track from Minami's（南佳孝）3rd album "South of the Border", Kadomatsu as that teenager had assumed that the world depicted in the lyrics of "Poolside" was some exotic Valhalla for the grownups that he himself could never access. But he also stated that the world view of the lyrics and music helped him grow up to become an adult a whole lot more quickly. Perhaps it kickstarted Kadomatsu into that wonderful summery haven of City Pop/AOR that had been reflected by the overseas cities of New York and Los Angeles. Those earlier songs above may have assisted in the nitty-gritty of making music, but it seems as if "South of the Border" provided the ideal arena in which to create that music.
I definitely have to say that those three last songs in the pre-debut list are all worthy of getting their own articles soon enough on "Kayo Kyoku Plus".
B.J. Thomas -- Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head (1969)
Kadomatsu's first encounter with Western music was in kindergarten in the 1960s, but the first Western song that he fell in love with was "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head". Burt Bacharach and Hal David were behind this Oscar-winning song recorded by B.J. Thomas for the movie
"Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" was also a song that I remember hearing a lot on AM radio for years and years, but didn't know about the connection with "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" until I was almost in junior high school. The horns and the strings get me into a very sentimental mood.
The Beatles -- Hey Jude (1968)
One of the most famous tunes by The Fab Four was released in 1968, but Kadomatsu first heard this when he was in Grade 4 so perhaps just a little after he'd discovered "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head". Strangely enough, though, it wasn't the original version that he first heard but an orchestral version that was used as the theme song for a TV drama, and getting really interested in "Hey Jude", his older brother told him about The Beatles and he managed to buy the single. The following year, Kadomatsu took up the guitar and really got into playing their tunes. So, taking up the instrument and playing in front of an audience was all thanks to John, Paul, George and Ringo.
I mentioned about my observation that Kadomatsu was someone who loved to play to a crowd and made his songs to fit that want to whip up the masses. Wouldn't "Hey Jude" be the ideal template?
Sugar Babe -- Kyou wa Nandaka (1975)
The J-Wiki article here says that Kadomatsu played Sugar Babe's（シュガーベイブ）lone 1975 album "SONGS" so often that he probably wore out the record. Although this particular track by Tats and band isn't directly referenced in the explanation, I assume that it is this song for which Kadomatsu had a dickens of a time trying to match the chord tensions that Sugar Babe came up with, although by his high school years, he had mastered three-chord progressions for rock music. But he got there eventually and it was often "Kyou wa Nandaka"（今日はなんだか...Today, Somehow）that he played.
Shigeru Suzuki -- Suna no Onna (1975)
Reading the paragraph in the original article, it looks like Kadomatsu had also listened to a fair bit of Happy End（はっぴいえんど）, the legendary band with Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）. So, once the band broke up and Suzuki went solo with his debut album "Band Wagon" in 1975, Kadomatsu decided to give that LP a spin, and was fairly floored by how different the album, including this first track "Suna no Onna"（砂の女...The Woman in the Dunes）, sounded compared to the Happy End tunes. In fact, high school kid Kadomatsu, despite his initial good impressions toward "Band Wagon", seemed to have been mystified enough about how good it was that he asked his buddies who loved playing Deep Purple and Yonin Bayashi（四人囃子）at the time whether it was indeed cool. They reassured him that it was.
Yoshitaka Minami -- Poolside (1978)
A track from Minami's（南佳孝）3rd album "South of the Border", Kadomatsu as that teenager had assumed that the world depicted in the lyrics of "Poolside" was some exotic Valhalla for the grownups that he himself could never access. But he also stated that the world view of the lyrics and music helped him grow up to become an adult a whole lot more quickly. Perhaps it kickstarted Kadomatsu into that wonderful summery haven of City Pop/AOR that had been reflected by the overseas cities of New York and Los Angeles. Those earlier songs above may have assisted in the nitty-gritty of making music, but it seems as if "South of the Border" provided the ideal arena in which to create that music.
I definitely have to say that those three last songs in the pre-debut list are all worthy of getting their own articles soon enough on "Kayo Kyoku Plus".
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