Well, I was just writing about vocal group Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）last week in the regular Yutaka Kimura Speaks series. Mind you, that was a song from their 1980s period but we're back in the 1970s for them, the decade that I've known them best for. And man, this 12th single from August 1978 is quite the banger.
Listening to the first few measures of "America Monogatari" (The Story of America), I have to admit that I was wondering whether we were going to get a refrain from Barry Gray's theme from "Space: 1999", knowing how prog rock and disco that song was. Instead though, I got a huge aural advertisement by Junko Yamamoto（山本潤子）and company to visit the good ol' US of A. More likely, it was a big invitation to take a bite out of the Big Apple.
Written by Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）and composed/arranged by Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）, "America Monogatari" was indeed created for a 1978 Japan Air Lines commercial campaign getting folks to come and visit the United States (though I can't find the ad on YouTube). Ohno really stuffed the song with jazz and disco which were probably the music genres that a lot of Japanese equated America with at the time. Of course, Hi-Fi Set's optimistic and upbeat delivery sure made it inviting for folks to make their reservations.
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