As has been the case in previous issues of "Japanese City Pop", this book has defined Japanese City Pop as "urban music for city dwellers", and there probably has been no debating the opinion that the band Happy End was the starting point.
The music world of Happy End that expressed the dreamscape of Tokyoites as a "windy city" goes hand in hand with a refined Western style of sound and it has become the source for the great stream that has connected to today's J-Pop. No matter how big the river, going back to its beginnings will lead to a tiny stream up in the mountains, and in the same way, Happy End's music made only a tiny ripple back in the day, but it's now been appraised as the headwaters for this mighty river of music.
Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）and Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, the four members of Happy End, have each gone onto their own careers after the band's breakup and contributed greatly to the maturation of Japan's pop music. It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to point out that the four of them became the core of the history of Japanese City Pop, considering that it would be rather difficult to seek out any albums within the more-than-500 examples in this book that hasn't been touched by them.
Caramel Mama (later to be known as Tin Pan Alley), which was created by Hosono, Suzuki, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）and Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）, made masterful use of their transcendent performing prowess, and from a sound point of view, they revolutionized Japanese pop. Over here as well, just like Happy End, though it made a little headway back in those days, when comparing and listening to the folk and kayo kyoku that had come before Tin Pan Alley and then listening to music after their arrival, the difference couldn't be clearer. Simply put, what made the Japanese sound cooler came following Tin Pan Alley.
If possible, I'd like the young people of today to realize how cool and sophisticated music was more than forty years ago in our country.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
"Happy End" is still a cool song and I believe I have heard as BGM in ItoYokado once, but I am not sure however, I am sure that I have heard this tune a number of times in the past and not on the radio.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think "Kaze wo Atsumare" has popped up in at least one other commercial and on the "Lost in Translation" soundtrack. For me and a lot of other YMO fans who hadn't known about Hosono before then, it must have been quite a revelation that he was once part of the Group Sounds and folk rock phases.
DeleteYes, it is a really big and surprising revelation!
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