Kazuo Zaitsu -- Skyline no Theme（スカイラインのテーマ）

 

I guess my weekly Reminiscings of Youth article on Gary Numan's "Cars" has made for a good lead-in for this particular tune because it also deals with a car: specifically the Nissan Skyline.

The Skyline has been mentioned in these pages of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" since there had been an early 1970s folk song by duo BUZZ, "Ken to Mary ~ Ai to Kaze no yo ni" (ケンとメリー〜愛と風のように〜), which garnered a lot of popularity due to the two titular tourists traveling through Japan in that Nissan brand. I don't know whether the prestige from the ad translated into a lot of Skyline purchases but looking at the old commercial, I gather that the image was of stylish but comfortable driving through the countryside...a leisure activity that many company workers most likely swooned over and cherished.

By around 1980, the jingle and jingle singer changed. Singer and actor Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）had gone solo away from his band Tulip and for the Skyline, he came up with the very simply titled "Skyline no Theme" (The Skyline Theme). Not surprisingly, the music, the lyrics and the vocals by Zaitsu were perfect to evoke that feeling of calm and collected driving on the highways and byways, and I think that Ken and Mary were still making their rounds of the Japanese archipelago. Personally, I would be perfectly fine in a hammock while listening to "Skyline no Theme" but that's just me.

It took a bit of doing since "Skyline no Theme" hadn't been released as a single and apparently it wasn't on an original album. However, it did show up as a track on Zaitsu's Christmas Day 1980 live album "Zaitsu Kazuo Solo-Concert Live The Round About Way" although the ones that I have here sound straight from the recording booth instead of a live session.