NOT Yellow Magic Orchestra -- Pocket ga Niji de Ippai（ポケットが虹でいっぱい）

 

When I bought my copy of Yellow Magic Orchestra's "YMO GO HOME!" years ago, there was plenty that was welcome and familiar to me such as the iconic "Rydeen" and "Behind the Mask".

But there were a few tracks that I hadn't heard before that initially left me a little intrigued. One such track was "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" (Pocketful of Rainbows). The technopop was still there but there was something rather laidback and twangy tropical about it, too, that had me wondering whether YMO member Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）had regenerated back to his exotica self of the mid-1970s.

As it turns out though, "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" was something that YMO recorded after getting back together for a bit in the early 1990s. It was released as the band's 10th single in April 1993 although because of the usual red tape and rights issues that probably had Hosono and his bandmates, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）, rolling their eyes up to the heavens, they couldn't officially release it under their old name YMO so they decided to be playful about it and say they were now YMO (Not YMO). So, I can say that "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" was YMO's debut single.

What also intrigued me was that while I scrolling through the information about the single on J-Wiki, I noticed that not only were there songwriters that weren't any of the YMO band members, i.e. Fred Wise & Ben Weisman, the lyrics were translated into Japanese by Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）. 

So, cover song, I surmised. And sure enough, it was a cover song. The original "Pocketful of Rainbows" had been recorded back in 1960 by the one-and-only Elvis Presley for his movie "G.I. Blues". He sang it in the movie with leggy Juliet Prowse who I used to see in a lot of TV variety shows and commercials (usually for panty hose). 

As part of the YMO single, there was also an English version of the song. So, the band did a cover of a song by an American music legend. Well, many years earlier, they also did a cover of a song by a British music legend. Incidentally, "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" reached No. 13 on Oricon.