Haruko Kuwana -- Rum & Vodka（ラム＆ウォッカ）

 

Rum and vodka? Hmmm...sounds like putting together TNT and nitroglycerin. Then again, I was never much of a drinker so I think those two forms of alcohol are fairly lethal for a guy like me. For the purposes of this article, I was trying to look for any cocktail that includes rum and vodka and I didn't have to look far. There is the (in)famous Long Island Iced Tea as you can see above. 

Back in my university days in the 1980s, one of my newfound friends after the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association had been formed and I ended up going to either Kuri the karaoke bar or some other drinking establishment in downtown Toronto with the rest of the gang. Of course, I stuck with my dependable Coke but my friend was intrigued by this tall cool cocktail known as the Long Island Iced Tea. Of course, neither of us knew it really wasn't iced tea but something far more potent with a whole plethora of stuff in there including rum and vodka. He ordered it, drank it and enjoyed it to the last drop. By the last subway, he was ready to drop. But before that, he was flying around like an overcaffeinated gibbon on the subway handholds. He was out of his mind, maybe out of his body and the next morning, out of much of his digested food perhaps. Maybe it was that experience that I witnessed but I've yet to have my first Long Island Iced Tea.

Anyways, all that preamble ramble about rum and vodka is up there so that I can introduce "Rum & Vodka", a track by City Pop chanteuse Haruko Kuwana（桑名晴子）from her June 1985 album "Don't You Know". It's great to have Kuwana back on the blog after so long and although the song has a pretty potent title, this tune composed by her brother Masahiro Kuwana（桑名正博）and written by Itsuro Shimoda（下田逸郎）is quite the laidback and groovy product that straddles the line between City Pop and urbane pop although I think the saxophone has it brought over to the former side. I can happily take in this "Rum & Vodka" without fearing any violently deleterious effects.