Polkadot Stingray -- Sakasama（逆様）

 

As I mentioned last night in the latest Oricon Singles list article, I had been outside for a good chunk of the day yesterday and that was because I went down to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Now, I'm not a huge art guy but this was only my second time there and the last time I was at the AGO was 50 years ago back in 1976 when I was an elementary school student. So I figured that it was time for another visit.

I took my congenial walk through the various rooms and spaces and I also encountered good ol' Henry Moore's sculptures. For me, the AGO is Moore and Moore is the AGO since one of his bronze works once greeted anyone who arrived at the gallery. One of the few things that I remember from the field trip with my school over to the AGO was being separated into pairs with each pair given a huge dark fabric bag for which one partner would enter and make some sort of Henry Moore-esque shape under the direction of the other partner. Considering my partner's name was Nancy, I was VERY careful about not touching her in the wrong places but luckily, she was a good sport. Not sure if such an activity would be allowed today but those were the 70s for you.

The one exhibit I was keen on seeing was famous Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room. She's the artist who's had the real big thing for polka dots and I was a little disappointed that the room was the only example of her works that I could experience aside from one other large mural around the corner. Regardless, I had to leave my coat and bag outside of the IMR but I could take my camera in there and I was given one minute alone to contemplate the environment. Nope, no polka dots but there were plenty of shiny round things to see.

Speaking of polka dots...and yes, there is a song here...I have Polkadot Stingray's latest which happens to be another snazzy jazzy number titled "Sakasama" (Upside Down). For some reason, this anime season has been filling up with these danceable (at least, in one's room) theme tunes. I just wrote about Penthouse's "Ichi, Ni, San"（一二三）for the show "Mairimashita! Iruma-kun"（魔入りました!入間くん...Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun）, and now this is "Sakasama" which ends each episode of the anime adaptation of the manga "Koori no Jouheki"（氷の城壁...The Ramparts of Ice） which seems to be another show about a student slowly coming out of one's shell. I will never turn my head away from an intrepid Big Band swing thing. There are a few more Polkdadot Stingray songs on KKP starting with T-cat's article on "Telecaster Stripe" (テレキャスター･ストライプ) from about nine years ago.

Just one last thing about my trip to the art gallery. My lunch happened to be a refrigerated turkey-and-havarti croissant. With the chai latte, the whole thing cost me almost as much as my general admission to the AGO! Well, at least, it was good and filling. And the visit was also a pleasant one. If any of my art-inclined friends ever came to Toronto, I would take them there.

Tokyo Songs

 

I'm just off by a week here but it was a little over a year ago that I posted "Osaka Songs", a list of Osaka-titled tunes, and crazily enough, in all those 53 weeks since then, I hadn't put up anything called "Tokyo Songs". Little old me had naturally assumed that I'd already done so. Nope, that isn't true. Kinda wild considering that I'd just recently written about Takajin Yashiki's（やしきたかじん）"Tokyo"（東京）. Well, that changes today. Quite the wide range of kayo, too!

(1959) Frank Nagai and Kazuko Matsuo -- Tokyo Nightclub （東京ナイトクラブ）

(1980) Shogo Hamada -- Tokyo （東京）

(1980) Kenji Sawada -- TOKIO

(1980) Tetsuji Hayashi -- Goodbye Tokyo（グッドバイTOKYO）

(1981) Mioko Yamaguchi -- Tokyo Lover（東京LOVER）

(1987) Megumi Mori -- Tokio Town （東京街）

Oricon Single Rankings for April 22nd 1968

 

It's been one of those days where I was out for most of it (explanation next time) and so I'm doing my second of two postings as usual close to the midnight hour. Therefore, I'm not exactly filled with energy right now. I'll have to settle with putting up some rankings and since it's close enough to April 22nd, why not go with April 22nd 1968?

1.  The Tigers                       Hana no Kubikazari

2.  Bee Gees                         Massachusetts

3.  Yukari Ito                         Koi no Shizuku

4.  The Tempters                   Kamisama Onegai

5.  Tomoko Ogawa               Yuube no Himitsu

6.  The Folk Crusaders          Kanashikute Yarikirenai

7.  Village Singers                 Amairo no Kami no Otome

8.  The Monkees                   Daydream Believer

9.  The Spiders                      Ano Toki Kimi wa Wakakatta

10.  Shinichi Mori                Sakariba Blues

Eiichi Ichijo (Hiroshi Itsuki) -- Hatoba no Mari（波止場のマリー）

 

In the old days of NHK's various incarnations of its weekly kayo kyoku show such as "Kayo Concert", hosts, staff and guests would occasionally come up with a theme night. The theme could be based on a samurai drama with the singers all dressed up in historical garb or it could be a bunch of guys out on the town in Shinjuku or Akasaka with one of the female veteran chanteuses as the proprietress of the popular drinking hole. The sets would be quite elaborately set up.

Since the COVID days though, I think those big theme nights have largely shrunk in design and frequency, perhaps due to health and/or budgetary concerns. Still, tonight's "Uta Con"（うたコン）brought out the theme of the annual welcome party for the newbies of a company with everybody getting involved including legendary kayo singer Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）as the generous and wise (if perhaps a tad longwinded) president.

Not surprisingly, Itsuki, who is now celebrating his 55th year in show business, had the final song of the night, and as has been the gimmick for the last few weeks, the staff placed a small trivia question regarding Itsuki as he was performing. As Itsuki fans know, the singer had gone through a number of stage names early in his career in the late 1960s before the name Hiroshi Itsuki was the final one he needed for sustained success. The question was "Which stage name did he have for only one day?", and the answer was "Jun Nakagawa（中川淳）" which explains why I haven't seen any songs under that name in his J-Wiki discography.

Still, let's go to one of his songs under the past stage name of Eiichi Ichijo（一条英一）. I have posted one song when Itsuki was Ichijo, and that was his first single under that name, "Ore wo Nakaseru Yoru no Ame"（俺を泣かせる夜の雨）from 1967. That was more of a Mood Kayo number but his third and final single under Ichijo was "Hatoba no Mari" (Marie on the Waterfront) which was released in April 1968 and it's quite a different animal.

Written by Kaoru Mizuki（水木かおる）and composed by Hideyuki Fujiwara（藤原秀行）, if I could use the 1980s-and-beyond genre New Adult Music, I probably would. It's quite the mix of enka with a jangly Group Sounds arrangement including a really boozy saxophone. My other observation is how consistently high-toned Ichijo is here along with a plaintiveness that reminds me of a young Shinichi Mori（森進一）who was breaking out at around the same time.

Apparently, "Hatoba no Mari" didn't sell but the man hung on for a few more name changes and singles, before he finally hit pay dirt with "Yokohama Tasogare"（よこはま・たそがれ）.

Nobuyuki Hanawa & Okayu -- Ai no Michikusa（愛の道草）

 

Unlike "Uta Con"（うたコン）and "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）, it's not as easy to catch "Hayauta"（はやウタ）on Jme since it seems to be thrown in anywhere on the schedule. Specifically in our case, it's scheduled at times when we are neither awake or otherwise available to watch it. 

But we finally did catch an episode last night after the usual "Asaichi"（あさイチ）, and it was quite a good one. Almost all of the guests were performing stuff that seemed to be arranged in the old kayo kyoku style including this one here.

We don't really hear much about Mood Kayo these days in contemporary Japanese popular music, and the duets are most likely even rarer than appearances of the typical Mood Kayo groups. However, there was one such couple on "Hayauta" last night and it was a combination that I wouldn't have imagined. Singer-songwriter Okayu（おかゆ）, who's been this beautiful nagashi（流し）, or traveling balladeer through the drinking establishment-lined avenues of Tokyo, paired up with the funny man of the comedic duo Knights（ナイツ）, Nobuyuki Hanawa（塙宣之）, to perform the song "Ai no Michikusa". Now, michikusa is defined as "loitering on the way somewhere" according to Jisho.org, but I think "Loitering of Love" loses a lot of its romantic appeal (and may actually hint at something illegal), and the feeling within Okayu and Yasunari Izuma's（出馬康成）lyrics is of a hand-in-hand congenial walk through the shitamachi area of the nation's capital, so why not go with "Love Stroll"?

This is the first time that Izuma's name has been mentioned within the pages of KKP but it should be remembered here because he also happens to be a movie director. In fact, he has directed the movie of the same title as the song of note which stars Okayu and Hanawa as a couple with the former playing the proprietress of a typically tiny nomiya（飲み屋）. According to J-Wiki, the movie "Ai no Michikusa" will be shown later this autumn. In any case, Okayu's melody strikes that Mood Kayo feeling of yesteryear with the frenetically plucked Spanish guitar leading the way. 

Tomoko Soryo -- Kirameita Hibi（きらめいた日々）

 

Happy Monday! Although the temperatures are back below freezing again, the skies are brilliant out there, so can't complain too much. It does go to show that there is a sage piece of advice for Torontonians and that is to never put away your winter tires or clothing until May. I have personally seen snow falling in May but that was decades ago.

There has been a lot going on out there in the world and that includes a fairly powerful earthquake that rocked Hokkaido and the Tohoku area earlier today. I woke up and turned on Jme to see that there had been ongoing NHK coverage of the quake and the ensuing tsunami warning and watches for several hours. Hopefully, everyone there is hanging in there OK.

Perhaps we can start with something a little calming and cosmopolitan, and this would be singer-songwriter Tomoko Soryo's（惣領智子）3rd single from 1977, "Kirameita Hibi" (Sparkling Days). I can feel the City Pop in there but Soryo's creation is quite subtle so that I can also place it as a calm blue ocean of a New Music lullaby. Perhaps the soulful "Kirameita Hibi" can be an example of how folks born in the 21st century feel that strange sense of nostalgia for 1970s or 1980s City Pop. The single was also included in the singer's "City Lights by the Moonlight" album from the same year.

Kenji Ozawa & Scha Dara Parr -- Kon'ya wa Boogie Back（今夜はブギー・バック）

 

Looks like the good times are still rolling with "Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!!"（ガンバレ!中村くん!!...Go for It, Nakamura!）with not just the main show but also with the ending credit sequences which include the songs of yesteryear (specifically, those of the Showa and Heisei eras). We've already gotten Kozo Murashita's（村下孝蔵） "Hatsukoi" (初恋）and Da Bubblegum Brothers' "Won't Be Long" for Episodes 1 and 2 respectively.

The ending of Episode 3 has gone into the hip-hop field this time apparently, so the target song here is "Kon'ya wa Boogie Back"  (Tonight is Boogie Back) which was the March 1994 7th single for hip-hop group Scha Dara Parr with Kenji Ozawa（小沢健二）, formerly of Flipper's Guitar. It was pretty interesting hearing Ozawa going rap but then again, I've learned that he's tried all sorts of genres including jazz and of course, Shibuya-kei when he was with Flipper's Guitar.

Incidentally, there are two versions of "Boogie Back": the "smooth rap" and the "nice vocal" takes of which the former has Scha Dara Parr taking the lead while the latter has Ozawa behind the mike most of the time.

The thing is that the first time I ever listened to "Kon'ya wa Boogie Back", it was not through the original artists. It was actually listening to some musical guests covering the song on the late-night Saturday music variety show "Love Love Aishiteiru" (Love Love 愛している....Love Love I Love You） hosted by the Kinki Kids. At the time, I hadn't heard a whole lot of Japanese rap although we were just on the cusp of a big J-R&B boom from the late 1990s, so I wanted to hear the original with Ozawa and Scha Dara Parr.

"Boogie Back" was written and composed by Ozawa and the three members of Scha Dara Parr: Bose, Ani and Shinco. It peaked at No. 15 on Oricon (selling over half a million copies), and it looks like it has had plenty of covers done over the last thirty years. The song also samples En Vogue's "Give It Up, Turn It Loose" from 1992.

Apparently, the end of Episode 4 features a song by The Barbee Boys that I hadn't experienced before. That'll get its due then.