Tomoharu Taki -- Midnight Flyer（ミッドナイト フライヤー）

 

Perhaps JTM can educate me a bit more on the long-running TV series "The Hangman" since he's always been into the Japanese police dramas. However, from what I've read and seen, the show began in 1980 on TV Asahi with the premise of a secret organization of vigilante killers who give their brand of permanent justice to those evildoers who manage to slip through the fingers of the law.

Well, the title is familiar to me because some years ago, a rollicking reggae cover of the kayo kyoku "Arigata ya Bushi"（有難や節）by KAJA was performed as the ending theme for the fourth season of "The Hangman". Other than that, I haven't had much contact with the show.

Back in early December, I first mentioned the name of Tomoharu Taki（滝ともはる）and his "Taxi Driver" from 1978. Well, the singer-songwriter was involved with the second season of "The Hangman" by providing the ending theme for that one. "Midnight Flyer" was actually written and composed by Australian singer-songwriter Paul O'Gorman (along with Steve Groves) with Taki coming up with the Japanese lyrics, and it's so coolly West Coast AOR that Taki may have sprouted a mullet and a skinny tie just by recording it. I don't know whether O'Gorman himself had sung and recorded "Midnight Flyer" but I couldn't find any such evidence on YouTube. 

PS: Actually, there is one more song that I covered that has an association with the series.

YONA YONA WEEKENDERS -- Sunrise

 

There are many New Year's traditions in Japan and I'm sure that all of them were attempted a couple of weeks ago. Included among them is being the lucky ones to catch the first sunrise to reach the nation. Well, the easternmost point under Japanese claim is Minami-Torishima which is an extremely remote atoll with poisonous snails some 1,848 km southeast of Tokyo. The citizenry can be very hardy and ambitious but I don't think most of them would venture quite that far.

A place that is far more accessible to see that first dawn of the year is Cape Inubosaki in Chiba Prefecture. Supposedly, it arrived at 6:46 am on January 1st. I was never all that keen myself to wake up in the early morning hours of New Year's Day to see the sun break through the horizon; I was perfectly happy to have any osechi or regular breakfast at a more civilized hour.😉

But I digress. A little over a month ago, I wrote about "Tokyo Midnight Cruising Club"（東京ミッドナイトクルージングクラブ）which was YONA YONA WEEKENDERS' 2nd single from May 2020 and also the penultimate track on the City Pop/punk band's second EP "Machi wo Oyoide"（街を泳いで...Swimming Through the City） a month later. It was quite the wistful and calming nocturnal melodic walk during a very jittery time on Earth.

Well, the final track on "Machi wo Oyoide" is "Sunrise". Having YYW have their music video set in a very bright empty swimming pool was probably the right call since although it still keeps that languid groove, "Sunrise" is a more upbeat tune about sun-up symbolizing hope and a happier future...plus some much-needed Vitamin D.

Junko Yagami -- Touch you, tonight/Miss Plumeria （Miss プルーメリア）

 

Incredibly enough, after nearly thirteen years of doing "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I still don't think I have covered all of Junko Yagami's（八神純子）singles going into the early 1980s, and this is considering that the Nagoya singer-songwriter has been one of my favourites in the City Pop field.

Case in point: Yagami's 14th single from October 1982, "Touch you, tonight". I've been seeing this title for years but never quite got around to posting it until today. Written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed by the singer herself, this is just one of a number of successful collaborations between the two which include "Mizuiro no Ame" (みずいろの雨）and "Purpletown" (パープルタウン）, although the latter would eventually include a few more people in the songwriting credits.

"Touch you, tonight" weaves a story of some titillating skinmanship between a couple (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) with Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）incorporating some harder New Wave instrumentation into the City Pop arrangement (there's still that wailing electric guitar though). Speaking of arrangement, Yagami's especially breathy and kittenish delivery at points has reminded me a bit of Minnie Ripperton.

Meanwhile, the B-side of "Miss Plumeria", which was wholly concocted by Yagami, rides on a Doobie Brothers rhythm as she sings about the titular young lady bewitching interested fellows on the beach. It's a pleasant summertime AOR tune that has a rather weirdly bracing bit in the middle before that electric guitar solo reassures listeners once more. The single reached No. 45 on Oricon.

Chiaki Ogasawara -- Key to My Heart

 

Waiting at Castle Frank Station one night for good KKP friend Larry to show up for dinner at the izakaya Kingyo, I was leafing through my copy of "Obscure City Pop CD's 1986-2006" that my other KKP friend JTM had kindly sent me for my birthday last year...not that easy while wearing gloves. Back in October, I posted a track from one of those obscure discs, "Vivienne", by the special duo Blue Eyes of Fortune.

Anyways, as I was poring through "Obscure City Pop", I did find this entry for a lady by the name of Chiaki Ogasawara（小笠原千秋）. Basically, the only information regarding her that I could find anywhere was the blurb that accompanied her debut album in my book. She's a jazz chanteuse from Hokkaido, and in 1987, she released "Luxurious Pockets".

The first track, "Key to My Heart", may be indicative of what "Obscure City Pop" reviewer Hata-san says about the album in that for a jazz singer's debut album, "Luxurious Pockets" isn't really her covering jazz standards in the standard way (have a listen to her take on "Route 66" at 13:18). Many of the tracks are original creations with "Key to My Heart" written by Ogasawara herself and Takashi Oi（大井貴司）coming up with a melody and arrangement that is far more fusion in style. In fact, I'd probably say that it's a tasty sangria of City Pop, J-AOR and jazz which feels tropically refreshing. The keyboard work is quite happily nostalgic for me as it represents a certain style of music that I've heard from people like Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）and Miki Imai（今井美樹）at the time. As I've hinted, the above video posted by Xearching for Sounds is of the entire album.

According to Discogs, Ogasawara released at least six albums up to 1999.

Mopsy Flopsy -- Umi to Kimi（海とキミ）

 

When I first encountered the band Mopsy Flopsy, I had snarkily assumed that it named itself from some puppet character on a kids' show. Whatever the origins though, it's again one of those acts that doesn't have a lot of information and I had to go searching over hill and dale to bring disparate pieces together. The first piece was actually the J-Wiki article for tarento Mari Shinohara（篠原麻里）who had started out as a child model and then became a back dancer for Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）on the 1995 Kohaku Utagassen. Almost a decade later in 2004, she became the drummer for Mopsy Flopsy (which would later change its name to Michiluca).

As for the rest of Mopsy Flopsy, there is vocalist Natsumi Shiraishi（白石なつみ）, guitarist Muneyoshi Minakura（皆倉崇良）, keyboardist Yuuta Tajiri（田尻有太）, bassist Yuuki Ono（小野裕基）, percussionist Rie Miyatake（宮武理恵）and then Shinohara on the drums. That's about the most solid information that I have found thus far on the band; I'm not sure whether Mopsy Flopsy had already been around before Shinohara's time with them, and I don't know if Michiluca is still active, or for that matter, how extensive their discography is.

But in any case, in November 2006, Mopsy Flopsy released their first album "A Beginner's Guide To Mopsy Flopsy" which is about as appropriate a title as one can get for a little-known indies band. Fellow "Kayo Kyoku Plus" contributor HRLE92, aka Island Fantasia on YouTube, posted the entire album onto the platform, and he put it best when he described them as "funky, mellow and carefree". A Tower Records article on the group had an even more descriptive report by stating that it was as if Rickie Lee Jones had tackled the works of Ivan Lins.

For today though, I will just cover the album's first song "Umi to Kimi" (The Ocean and You). Beginning with a pensive piano, a groovy vibe then enters the scene along with Shiraishi's soulful and playful vocals. The song sounds perfect for a stylish Tokyo café's background music playlist and the rest of the album continues these peacefully good times with some bossa nova thrown in. 

Salon Music -- Spike Me Into Space

 

It was just within the last several months that I've become acquainted with the duo Salon Music and listening to one of their earlier entries, the 1983 "Duet ni Muchuu"（デュエットに夢中）, they started out as this cute New Wave act.

Then, while I was searching for more of their material on YouTube, I came across the music video for "Spike Me Into Space" which was a track on their 1999 album "round5 shaggy bee". Well, it looks like vocalist and bassist Jin Yoshida（吉田仁）and vocalist and keyboardist Hitomi Takenaka（竹中仁見）kinda went Ramones rock with the latter's voice hitting some more depths. I was just mentioning about Martha and the Muffins' "Black Stations/White Stations" and their slightly avant-garde video and here is Salon Music's video which goes even further with the Monty Pythonesque cut-and-paste animation. Perhaps the full title of the song could have been "Spike My Drink and Then Spike Me Into Space".

Martha and the Muffins -- Black Stations/White Stations

 

Time for some Canadiana once more on the weekly Reminiscings of Youth. Toronto's Martha and the Muffins is a group that has been around since 1977 and I first heard about them through their 1980 rock/New Wave song "Echo Beach", and until today, I'd been planning to put this one here as their introduction to the pages of KKP because it had apparently been the group's one big international hit.

However, I changed my mind at the last minute. "Echo Beach" is fine and all (and I'll probably cover it soon enough this year), but it hasn't been the Martha and the Muffins' song that really caught my ear when I was a callow youth. No, that honour will go to their 1984 single "Black Stations/White Stations". In a few ways, this single symbolized a new moment in the history of the Muffins because not only did they change their name (albeit temporarily) to M+M, the group pared itself down to a duo consisting of vocalist Martha Johnson and founder Mark Gane and they moved away from New Wave to something funkier and more danceable.

I had heard some inkling about the origins behind "Black Stations/White Stations" as the band's indictment against racism in the radio industry but for me, I was just struck by how catchy it was, especially with the percussion and the lyrics "Black stations, white stations break down the doors/Stand up and face the music, this is 1984!". Plus, there was the black-and-white motif in the slightly avant-garde music video. Both the song and music video got plenty of airplay here, and I recall hearing it very often on my radio as I was in my room puttering away at my high school homework.

Sadly and ironically enough, "Black Stations/White Stations", a song criticizing a radio station for refusing to play a song regarding an interracial relationship, was itself prevented from being played at certain other radio stations because of its lyrics. I certainly didn't get that impression here in Toronto. It made it up to No. 26 on Canada's RPM and No. 63 on US Billboard.

Since I couldn't track down the month of release of "Black Stations/White Stations" in 1984, let's go with what had won the major prizes at the Japan Record Awards that year.

Grand Prize: Hiroshi Itsuki -- Nagaragawa Enka (長良川艶歌)

Best Album: Mariko Takahashi -- Triad

Best Star: Akina Nakamori -- Kita Wing （北ウィング）