The Birds -- Aru Yoru no Dekigoto（或る夜の出来事）

 

Futako-Tamagawa in western Tokyo is a place that I know quite well because I used to teach a couple of students in the surrounding neighbourhood. It is quite the suburban bedroom town with all of the modern commercial conveniences and restaurants amassing around tall condo towers. I don't think it was ever going to be a place that I could afford to live in on my salary, so being able to even make home visits for lessons was quite a feat.

I have no idea what Futako-Tamagawa looked like back in the late 1960s but according to what I see on that single cover for The Birds'（ザ・バーズ）November 1969 3rd single "Aru Yoru no Dekigoto", the neighbourhood back then seemed to have already been becoming an up-and-coming community. In fact, the first time that I saw it, I had assumed that the place was a major airport with twin singing sisters Junko and Reiko Toyoda（豊田順子・豊田礼子）dressed up like stewardesses. Actually, though, it's a huge sprawling Takashimaya department store on the cover and I guess the Toyodas weren't wearing flight attendant uniforms after all.

"Aru Yoru no Dekigoto" directly translates as "Something Happened One Night" but the official English translation is the more romantic and less dangerous "Lovely Nights With You". And as you might have guessed, the setting in the rumbling urban song is Futako-Tamagawa with a playboy and his red coupe enticing a young lady during that one evening. Akari Yamaguchi（山口あかり）and Shinichi Tanabe（田辺信一）were responsible for words and music respectively, and this single comes just before what is arguably their most famous entry, the theme song for the TBS drama "Attention Please"（アテンションプリーズ）in 1970.