Anzen Chitai -- Anzen Chitai ZERO (Part 1)

 

This is a bit of an intriguing one, and of course, I'm coming very late to the party. About a week ago, I noticed a YouTube video at the right of the screen which said "Anzen Chitai Mihappyou Album Zero"（安全地帯～未発表アルバム ZERO）. Now, that basically translates into "Anzen Chitai Unreleased Album Zero", and whenever I see "Zero" attached to anything regarding pop culture, I will think that this is a prototype or a prequel of something.

At the same time, my first cynical thought was that those AI gremlins were at it again trying to copy ol' Koji Tamaki's（玉置浩二）voice and that distinctive Anzen Chitai sound from the 1980s. However, when I listened to those first few tracks from "Anzen Chitai ZERO" (as I will call it henceforth), I was somewhat taken aback when I realized that this could indeed be a true and young Tamaki and band performing here. It didn't sound like AI or for that matter, an impressionist doing his best. 

I then consulted with a couple of fellow Anzen Chitai fans: JTM, former KKP writer and good friend, and my sister-in-law. I had broached the subject with JTM before I sent him the link to the video so he had also been skeptical since there was nothing mentioned in J-Wiki or even Anzen Chitai's website about "Anzen Chitai ZERO", and for that matter, the video has been up on YouTube since June 2023 without any powers-that-be striking it down like Darth Vader on Obi-Wan Kenobi. I got a message a day later from him stating that the tracks did sound authentic and raw like a band on the cusp of stardom, but the question remained: Why has there nothing been mentioned about this? My sister-in-law simply said that it could indeed be artificial intelligence at work.

Well, when I threw the title of this mysterious new "first" album into the Yahoo.jp search engine, I got drawn into a number of Ameba blogs whose bloggers wrote about "Anzen Chitai ZERO", and apparently according to them, the songs brought together were from their amateur days in the late 1970s when they had already changed the band name from Invader to Anzen Chitai. One of the bloggers mentioned that one of the tracks, "Yubi no Tawamure"（指の戯れ...Finger Play） had been part of a "Tape 3" that had been sold at one of their amateur concerts back in 1980. Another blogger posited that the songs recorded had been seen by Tamaki and company as being something less than fresh and inspiring so they were given the figurative heave-ho with the band working on a new sound.

Let's see about that. There are ten tracks on "Anzen Chitai ZERO" so for this article, I will tackle the first five tracks. As for the release date, I don't know when the album was to have gone onto shelves but since "Yubi no Tawamure" evidently existed in 1980, we'll go with that until someone corrects me. 

Right from the beginning, there is "Platform" which begins with a train clanging and then a rock guitar wailing away. Tamaki and the gang are obviously having a good time here with the roots rock, and strangely enough, "Platform" hints at some of the good-time stuff on their much later album "V" in the mid-1980s.

At 3:54, "Ai wo Tsutaeru"（愛を伝える...Expressing Love） begins with a slightly cool and goofy acapella from the band and it's a bit more of a pop tune with the rock reined in. There's some guitar chugging and a bit of synth work that I had never heard in an Anzen Chitai song before right in the middle. Tamaki is already showing off that amazing set of vocal cords.

8:05 is when we hear the aforementioned "Yubi no Tawamure" as a funky strut about some interpersonal expressions of love, and yep, those digits are involved. Tamaki hasn't been hesitant about expressing love fairly explicitly.

"Ohzora inst."（大空"inst"...Big Sky Instrumental） at 12:06 is a brief ditty with an acoustic guitar going into some romantic Latin. Finally for this article, at 13:21, "Naite Ki ga Sumunonara"（泣いて気が済むのなら...If Crying Makes You Feel Better） begins with a lonely introspective piano which would usually hint at a heartbreak ballad especially with those amazing Tamaki vocals, but then almost a minute in, our ears are introduced to an electric guitar reggae rhythm and things speed up to mid-tempo wistful and maybe even hopeful.

I'm stopping here for today with Part 2 coming out next week. My initial feelings for "Anzen Chitai ZERO" are that for a group of songs that may have been disposed like a plate of scraps, they're pretty good scraps, and they sound more like the familiar major-label Anzen Chitai than at least some of the music on the band's official debut album "Remember to Remember" from January 1983 although I have yet to hear the moodiness that set the tone for those early years of the band through hits such as "Wine-Red no Kokoro"（ワインレッドの心）. But any of you Anzen Chitai fans can let me know how you feel about the tracks on "ZERO".