Well, Happy Mother's Day to all! I took my folks out for breakfast this morning and boy, was our local diner busy with families wishing to give gastronomical tribute to all of the Moms out there. Can't complain about the weather though. It's been a decent spring weekend.
Commenter Fireminer told me about rock band L'Arc-en-Ciel's "Driver's High" some time ago which I didn't know as well as I did their hit the following year, "Stay Away". But when I heard the melody by band member tetsu and the words by hyde, some of those memory engrams flashed in recognition once more. This was their 17th single from August 1999, and according to the J-Wiki article on the song, the band wanted to create a number that just sounded good while bombing down the highway. Well, the title was probably the final cap onto this song in love with fine driving.
"Driver's High" hit No. 2 on Oricon and ended up as the 60th-ranked single of 1999, going Platinum. It was also used as the first opening theme for the anime version of "Great Teacher Onizuka" (I did write about another theme song for the anime some time ago). It would also be a track on L'Arc-en-Ciel's 6th studio album "ark" from July of that year; it reached No. 1 on the album charts and was the No. 5 album of the year.
Ah, "Great Teacher Onizuka." I can't remember if this was the song that introduced me to L'Arc-en-Ciel but it was one of the early ones and what a tune. I also liked the anime but from what I heard, it wasn't as popular as the live-action series. I remember reading somewhere that it was like the "Seinfeld" of Japan, in terms of popularity and ratings.
ReplyDeleteUp until recently, I only knew about the live-action series starring Takashi Sorimachi. It was covering one of Pornograffitti's tunes that I heard about the anime; great opening credits sequences.
Deletei'm a big L'arc fan! but, on a totally different subject, have you heard the midnight session Klang Ruler x 新しい学校のリーダーズ ? I like their renditions of どうにもとまらない and 笑って許して, i think you might too.
ReplyDeleteHello, bon. I've been keeping an eye on Atarashii Gakko Leaders so I'll have to check those out. Thanks!
DeleteFireminer here. Thanks for listening to my request. I am actually a bit too young for L'arc-en-Ciel, but to the generation of my older brother, they were huge. Fun fact: Some people's first introduction to L'arc-en-Ciel in my country was "Wild Fang", the opening song they did for Mega Man X8.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure. As I mentioned above, "Stay Away" was basically my first real introduction to the band. I've been kinda wondering how those guys are now.
Deletethey are still going strong, here's their 2022's Driver High version at Tokyo Dome, everyone still had to be masked and no voicing allowed. https://youtu.be/UKCViyA34R4
DeleteThat must have been an odd situation to be sure. But I think that those days are over now since Japan has lifted all of the restrictions as of May this year.
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