Off Course -- Koibito yo, Sono Mama de（恋人よそのままで）

 

Welcome to September 2024! Nope, still three weeks away from official autumn and it's still plenty humid here in Toronto. But I'm holding the fort in my steamy room, putting up blog articles.

It was back in February 2012, almost a month into the history of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", when I posted the article on Off-Course's（オフコース）classic "Aki no Kehai"（秋の気配）, one of the first Japanese pop ballads that I ever had the pleasure of listening over and over again, and that was on the ancient Canadian Tire audiotape on which I recorded the sputtering radio episode of "Sounds of Japan" which contained the ballad. Such was how lovely the Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）creation was to me although I would later discover that the lyrics were a whole lot sadder regarding the death of a romantic relationship in a park.

Well, as I've always said from time to time, never ignore those B-sides. The 11th single of the band from August 1977 had "Koibito yo, Sono Mama de" (Lover, Stay As You Are). Usually, when it comes to A-sides and B-sides on vinyl or coupling songs on CD singles, the two songs would diverge in style, genre and/or lyrical content. With this B-side, there was some similarity with "Aki no Kehai" in that love wasn't able to come to the rescue here either with this Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）song, although this time, it was a love that never came to be in the first place. As well, compared to the beautifully wistful and introspective "Aki no Kehai", there is a light and whimsical jazziness to "Koibito yo, Sono Mama de" and the intro almost sounds as if our ears were going to get some country swing jazz. In fact, the old-style jazz even lends itself to a percussive crescendo that would have Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly yell out "OK, comin' home now!" with one final amazing dance sequence to wrap things up. Within the lyrics, the guy who couldn't quite get the girl is sitting on the bench in the park when she sees her one more time years later, but instead of making one last desperate approach, he sighs softly with a smile and surreptitiously points a finger at her and says under his breath, "You stay classy". Alright, that might have been the Anchorman, but...😎 In any case, both sides are also on Off-Course's 5th original album, "JUNKTION" which came out a month after the single.