m-flo -- L.O.T. (Love Or Truth)

 

Welcome to another Hump Day in the middle of the final full week of March. We're still making our slow way to spring weather as we hover a little over 0 degrees Celsius here in Toronto, but at least we've made some progress with the sun. 

As such, why don't we lift some of those spirits up with a bit of m-flo? I haven't discussed about LISA, VERBAL & ☆ Taku in over a year, and I was able to find this nice pick-me-up which was released as the group's November 1999 6th single, "L.O.T. (Love Or Truth)". To be honest, I'd never heard of this one before since for one thing, it hadn't been included on the lone BEST collection I have of them, "Award Super Nova".

m-flo to me has usually meant hip-hop or hip-pop so to hear this one is quite the revelation because "L.O.T.", which was written and composed by m-flo with H.U.B.'s help on the lyrics, strikes me more as a contemporary Latin pop number with some jazz elements (although VERBAL has got his usual rap patter in there). It's also been recognized as the group's first ballad and it's beautifully sung by LISA. "L.O.T." was used as the theme song for a TV Asahi drama series "Best Friend".

Quite the atmospheric music video for "L.O.T." but that hotel corridor looks like it came straight from "The Shining"! I was expecting a couple of creepy twin girls to invite LISA and company to play. Anyways, the video below is of the Agape Mix of the song. The song scored a No. 24 ranking on  Oricon. It also appeared as a track on m-flo's first album "Planet Shining" from February 2000; it peaked at No. 6.

The above video from the channel Heisei Sound System is an AI City Pop version of "L.O.T." that was released a couple of months ago, and to be honest, it was the first version of the song that I had heard before I quickly tracked down the original. I have to admit that it does sound quite good, and usually I haven't been all that impressed with the AI attempts at urban contemporary.

Mai Arai -- Wild Lady（ワイルド・レディー）

 

There is one famous scene from the anime "Sailor Moon" in which Usagi drank the wrong drink and, well, she got a little more excitable than she usually is. Strangely enough, I was in a similar situation when one of my students at a party got a little more than she bargained for after imbibing a little too much of the good stuff and she started rattling things off in both Japanese and English. By the end, she was speaking in tongues.

That was what Mai Arai's（あらい舞）"Wild Lady" reminded me of when I first heard it last night. This was the debut single for the then-19-year-old singer-songwriter from Kyoto when she released it in November 1978. Written, composed and arranged by Arai, it does sound a bit like Pink Lady with the dynamic melody touched by a bit of disco and rock-n-roll. 

Now, for KKP readers, if the name Mai Arai sounds familiar to you, then you must have thoroughly read the details in the article for Mikako Hashimoto's（橋本美加子）"Heart Byoyomi"（ハート秒読み）which was one of Arai's creations for the 80s aidoru. I was intrigued enough by the presence of this songwriter when I wrote up the Hashimoto post that I decided to take a deeper look. As it turned out, she gained her ambitions for the music industry when she was a senior in junior high school. Not long after, she got into the industry although her singles came out quite slowly with her seventh single being released in 2005. Her debut album wouldn't hit the shelves until 1990 although by that point, she'd gone with the new stage name of hideko. In 1982, she went on a national tour with fellow singer-songwriter Eigo Kawashima（河島英五）, and she's provided singers such as Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）, Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）and GWINKO with her tunes.

The Works of Mariya Takeuchi 2（竹内まりや）

 

Oh, dopey me. I'm four days late in wishing singer-songwriter Mariya Takeuchi a Happy Birthday! But here's hoping that her family enjoyed themselves on the special day. Last year (when I did remember her birthday), I acknowledged the day with a Yutaka Kimura Speaks translated piece about the singer. When I thought about whether to do a Creator article about her, I quickly realized that I had already done one back in 2019.

However for that first entry, I introduced some songs created by Takeuchi in that article that had never been covered before. Well, then, I decided that for this one, I'll bring the comfort food...songs by her that have their own articles from way back when just to remind viewers about what she has given other singers. And of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list.

(1982) Naoko Kawai -- Kenka wo Yamete (けんかをやめて）

(1984) Hiroko Yakushimaru -- Genki wo Dashite （元気を出して）

(1984) Yukiko Okada -- Dreaming Girl

(1988) Masayuki Suzuki -- Misty Mauve

(1991) Riho Makise -- Miracle Love

Yoshie Kashiwabara -- Shiawase Ondo（しあわせ音頭）

 

Listening to music all these decades and handling KKP for the past fourteen years, of course, I know all about those 45" singles and CD singles with their A/B sides and coupling songs. Sometimes though on a singer's J-Wiki discography, I encounter something called the kikaku single（企画シングル）or "planned single". I'm still not 100% on the meaning or purpose of these things, but from my experience, I can glean that they refer to special releases by a singer tackling a genre that's not usually in their wheelhouse.

And thus, we come to Yoshie Kashiwabara's（柏原芳恵）"Shiawase Ondo" (Happy Folk Song). I found this song just recently on YouTube and it took me a little longer than usual to track this down since "Shiawase Ondo" hadn't been included on Yoshie-chan's long single list. It was placed on the...you guessed it...the kikaku single list and it even got its own entry on J-Wiki.

I guess it's because Kashiwabara was covering something that wasn't her usual aidoru stuff. Released early in her career, July 1982, "Shiawase Ondo" is all about the festival minyo, and the dead giveaway was the title's use of ondo which is often used for the traditional folk songs of Japan. She's got quite the adorably cute delivery of Masato Fujita's（藤田まさと）lyrics but the music is also notable not only for the old-style jaunty folk (vocal whoops included) but the fact that it sounds quite Okinawan and technopop at the same time. I started thinking that Yellow Magic Orchestra had been involved, and sure enough, one third of the group, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, provided the melody which Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）then arranged into a spacey yet familiar tune that the kids would love to dance to. 

For Yoshie fans, "Shiawase Ondo" must have been quite the rare thing to covet since this kikaku single hadn't gotten onto an original album for years until March 2004 when it was finally included on the aidoru's CD box set "Kashiwabara Yoshie Premium Box"（柏原芳恵 プレミアムBOX）. The single itself peaked at No. 70 on Oricon.

Hiroshi Uchiyamada & Cool Five -- Futari no Midosuji（二人の御堂筋）

 

I haven't been to Osaka in many, many moons so my remembrance of the streets there is woefully lacking compared to my knowledge of some of the thoroughfares in Tokyo. However, Midosuji seems to pop up a fair bit especially when it comes to kayo kyoku. In fact, I'm wondering if I ought to provide an Author's Picks list of songs that pay tribute to what has been called Osaka's Champs-Elysees. But I'll leave that for further thought. Off the top of my head, though, there is Feifei Ouyang's（欧陽菲菲）"Ame no Midosuji"（雨の御堂筋）from the early 1970s. Anyways, the above video is provided by Japan Walking Tours on YouTube.

Well, yesterday, we were watching the weekend "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌...Songs of Japanese Spirit）as usual, and The Cool Five's Kiyoshi Maekawa（前川清）appeared to provide one of his old group's classics "Saikai Blues"（西海ブルース）from 1977. Since his Cool Five members have basically retired or passed away, some of the other male guest singers provided the backup chorus. I figured that I must have already written on "Saikai Blues", and sure enough, I had done so back in December 2023.

But I wasn't going to be deterred by that, and it didn't take me long to track down another Hiroshi Uchiyamada & Cool Five（内山田洋とクールファイブ）Mood Kayo song. That was their 26th single from December 1975, "Futari no Midosuji" (A Couple in Midosuji), and it fits the typical Cool Five Mood Kayo feeling of love gained and lost in a famous part of a Japanese city. Of course, there's plenty of rain and mournful chorus to emphasize the bittersweetness of romance. Written by Shinichi Ishihara（石原信一）and composed by Taiji Nakamura（中村泰士）, it did OK by hitting No. 44 on Oricon.

Mariko An -- Kanashimi wa Kakeashi de Yatte Kuru（悲しみは駆け足でやってくる）

 

At first, I'd assumed that this would be Mariko An's（アン真理子）first appearance on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but that would have been wrong. The former chorus singer and dancer has been up here and not too long ago. In fact, back in 2022, I posted an article for the duo Yuki to Hide's（ユキとヒデ...Yuki & Hide）"Shiroi Nami"（白い波）from 1967, and as it turned out, I was reminded that Yuki had been Mariko...before she became Mariko; her real name is Yuki Sato（佐藤ユキ）.

Yuki to Hide would release a couple of singles including "Shiroi Nami" (Sato would release a couple of her own solo singles while the duo was still together) and then break up in 1968. Taking on the new stage name of Mariko An, she made a new debut with the July 1969 single "Kanashimi wa Kakeashi de Yatte Kuru" (Grief Comes Running). Written by An herself with Katsuhiko Nakagawa（中川克彦）taking care of the melody, it's a melancholy kayo kyoku although through An's lyrics, it seems as if she's really trying hard to balance the worlds of light and dark especially as they affect the youth of the nation when it comes the vagaries of love. An released seven more singles up to the mid-1970s and one original album in 1970. She also continued to work as a lyricist under her real name of Yuki Sato although the kanji was a variant version（佐藤由紀）.

Roly Poly Rag Bear -- Sentimental Bus

 

This sci-fi comedy movie "Project Hail Mary" with Ryan Gosling has crept into theatres fairly meekly but it's been doing pretty good box office thus far. Strangely enough and rarely enough, I'm currently reading the original novel just before I head off to slumber each night, and I may actually watch the movie for comparison's sake. The overarching theme here is friendship between two beings despite vast differences due to a common goal.

Things aren't quite as high-stakes and dramatic within the adorable music video for indies pop and shoegaze band Roly Poly Rag Bear's "Sentimental Bus", but it shares the theme of friendship among a couple of stuffed animals and a human. "Sentimental Bus" is a track from the duo's 2004 album "Straw, Water, Pinstripe" and the melody is about as comfortable as a warm blanket and/or a hot bowl of soup on a cold winter day.

I couldn't find much information about Roly Poly Rag Bear but according to what I could scrape off the Net was that Mihoko Tanoue（田之上美穂子）and Makoto Igarashi（五十嵐誠）formed the pair in 1998 and released a number of singles and albums including "Straw, Water, Pinstripe" throughout the 2000s before going on hiatus in late 2010. Along with their sunny and warm indie pop stylings, they were also known for performing some Shibuya-kei although I have yet to come across any of that part of their discography.