Chiharu Matsuyama/Ayako Fuji -- Gin no Ame（銀の雨）

 

Early this morning, I went off to the nearby clinic to get some blood work done. The weather was and is unusually warm for this time of year with the temperature currently at 25 degrees Celsius; we should be talking about Wind Chill Index right now but for today, we're back to the Humidex which feels like 32 degrees! Glad that we haven't uninstalled the air conditioner quite yet and the fan in my room is back on full speed. We even had some thunderstorms earlier as I left the clinic; saw some trifurcated lightning bolts crack along the sky.

It was raining but it wasn't too hard though the drops were steady for about a half-hour or so. We're back into sunny weather again. Speaking of rain, here is a Chiharu Matsuyama（松山千春）song titled "Gin no Ame" (Silver Rain). A B-side to the folk singer's sophomore single "Kazaguruma"（かざぐるま...Pinwheels） from June 1977, this has absolutely nothing to do with Noriko Miyamoto's（宮本典子） "Silver Rain", her City Pop song from 1981. Just so you know.

To wit, Matsuyama's "Gin no Ame" is a melancholy folk ballad about a man who finally realizes that the lady of his dreams simply doesn't reciprocate his feelings and so he has pulled himself away. Of course, the meteorological setting for all this is a lot of silver rain. I'm gonna have to ask about what silver rain means in significance regarding sad situations. Maybe the precipitation (and feeling of sadness) is so heavy that it's taken on that shiny gray colour? 

In any case, along with the guitar, I enjoy those sweeping strings that swoop in during the chorus. Matsuyama took care of words and music while Tadashige Matsui（松井忠重）arranged everything. "Gin no Ame" also ended up on Matsuyama's debut album that was released in the same month as "Kazaguruma", "Kimi no Tame ni Tsukutta Uta"（君のために作った歌...The Songs I Made For You）. It broke into the Oricon album chart at No. 8 and became the No. 29 album for 1978 and even went up ten ranks to No. 19 for 1979.

Enka singer Ayako Fuji（藤あや子）provided a much different cover version of "Gin no Ame" when she released her June 2017 album "GENTLEMAN ~ Watashi no Naka no Otoko-tachi"（私の中の男たち...The Men Around Me）. Her version speaks of smoky jazz in a nightclub environment.