Original Love -- X'mas NO HI

 

Christmas presents on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" can come from various places, and I was lucky to find yet another one via Scott's most recent podcast of "Holly Jolly X'masu". His target was "Mint Sound's X'mas Album" from 1987. Scott has been raving about this one because of the mix of new songs and classics done by an eclectic group of artists from the New Wave, rock or Mod community. I'll be honest and say that out of the fifteen artists and bands involved, I only know two of them. One is the late Kyoko Togawa（戸川京子）and the other is Original Love.

Original Love's contribution to "Mint Sound's X'mas Album" was "X'mas NO HI" (no kanji but the meaning is "Christmas Day"). It's quite the gift for a guy who has known about Original Love and Takao Tajima（田島貴男）since the 1990s with their sunny soul and jazz hits like "Seppun (Kiss)"（接吻）and "Asahi no Ataru Michi" （朝日のあたる道）. But I had to realize that the band had been around years before my discovery of them, going all the way back to 1985.

Formerly known as Red Curtain back in the very early days, Tajima realized that the band needed a bit of a shakeup, so they recruited a new member and changed their name to the current Original Love. Scott gives his own explanation on "X'mas NO HI" at 35:39 of the podcast in which I also found out that it was soon after the indies-era Original Love recorded this Xmas song that Yasuharu Konishi（小西康晴）invited Tajima to join Pizzicato Five. As such, from what I read on J-Wiki, Tajima had believed that with his commitment to P5, he wouldn't be able to release any Original Love albums, so he and the band put out a self-titled album in August 1988 as a memento with "X'mas NO HI" as one of the tracks.

Scott loved "X'mas NO HI" and so do I because it's not only a cool tune but it additionally shows a proto-Original Love sound, so to speak. Compared to what I fell in love with in the 1990s, "X'mas NO HI" has Tajima and company pulling off a laidback rockabilly sound with some nice doo-wop harmonies. But there is no mistaking Tajima's voice in there although it's slightly higher in tone. The singer was behind words and music but the way it sounds, it could have come straight from the 1950s.

P.S. Would like to end this with an announcement that we've got what could possibly be one of the worst snowstorms of the season heading our way in the next day or two. So, it's probable that with any resulting power outages that "Kayo Kyoku Plus" may be in that rare position of not having any articles go up on Friday. It would royally suck so I'm hoping that there will be a meteorological miracle overnight.