I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
I'll be honest and state that it was because of this song that I had even heard of the Pamir Mountains located in Central and South Asia. Geography and City Pop...what a combination!
Strangely enough, this might be my first example of a hybrid between Exotic kayo and City Pop via "Journey to the Mind ~ Pamir no Yoake"(Dawn Over the Pamirs), the first track on Junko Ohashi & Minowa Central Station's（大橋純子＆美乃家セントラル・ステイション）June 1978 album"Shalom"（沙浪夢）. As written, composed and arranged by Masami Tsuchiya（土屋昌巳）with Ohashi helping out on lyrics and Kenjiro Oda（小田健二郎）assisting on the music, it's certainly got the funkiness of Ohashi's brand of City Pop, but at the same time, there is also something indeed rather exotic about it, as if all this was playing out on some sort of Cessna hundreds of metres above the titular Pamirs themselves. It's also got some rock in there and a weirdly filtered boozy saxophone that pops up at times. It contrasts quite nicely with the second track "Kisetsufuu Tayori"（季節風便り）.
Uh, nope. This "Bohemian" has nothing to do with the more famous "Bohemian" recorded by the late Yuki Katsuragi（葛城ユキ）. We're far from the rock genre with this one.
In fact, I would say that "Bohemian" as performed by singer-songwriter Naomi Sugimura（杉村尚美）has more to do with cruise liner-friendly Latin-spiced City Pop. Released with its A-side, Sugimura's 2nd single"Kaze no Nostalgia"（風のノスタルジア...Windy Nostalgia）, in 1982, this B-side has a lot of bop to boogie onto the Lido Deck. Written by Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）and composed by Sugimura herself, it fairly sweeps over the ocean before a searing keyboard riff suddenly swoops over everybody to finish things off.
I'm always happy to start off Urban Contemporary Fridays on KKP, but today is especially auspicious since I'm going to begin with an album of the genre that I'd been searching for years. Yup, it was the odyssey of tracking down Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Lonely Girl" from February 1983. For the longest time, it seems, the album had been discontinued although many of the singer-songwriter's other releases were available. But then, several days ago, out of a sense of whimsy, I tried out Amazon.jp and lo and behold, there were a few copies of "Lonely Girl" on sale. Well, I wasn't a lonely boy anymore. The air crackled over my keyboard as I whipped out my credit card and fingers and had that sucker sailing over the Pacific and much of Canada to my home.
It arrived, I listened to it and I'm a happy man. Mind you, out of the ten tracks, I've already covered half the album through individual articles on the title track itself, the theme for the anime feature "Final Yamato" "Love Supreme", "Yozora no Earring"（夜空のイヤリング）, "Touch you, tonight" and my favourite track on "Lonely Girl", the bouncy City Pop classic "Jealous". I found out through the liner notes that Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）had arranged the entire album and that Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）along with Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）helped out on the chorus including "Jealous". Also note that unless mentioned otherwise, the songs which all revolve around some aspect of love were written and composed by Yagami.
The folded booklet containing the lyrics is made out as a particularly expensive letter (well, those are a lot of stamps there). It isn't everyday that you get to see a smiling Junko so please enjoy one of the stamps. Anyways, without further ado:
Track 3 is "Kodou no Lullaby"（鼓動のララバイ...Heartbeat Lullaby） is a cool and sultry City Pop number about welcoming home a tired loved one, and without any sort of artifice such as a candlelit dinner or petals floating in a bathtub, the two happily engage in a cuddle in bed (how much clothing they're wearing, I'll leave to your imagination). The Joe Group strings and Masahiro Kobayashi's（小林正弘）fluegelhorn do wonders to take a very intimate experience and have it soaring into the night sky.
The final track on Side A of the original LP is "Moetsukiru made"（燃えつきるまで...Until It Burns Out） shows off why I'm often so in awe of Yagami with those incredible vocals of hers. They were what got me interested in her in the first place and I was given a good reminder of that here. Nice beefy bass by Kenji Takamizu（高水健司）and keyboard work by Maki Yajima（矢嶋マキ）. It's another night sky ballad.
Side A may have finished with a whisper but Side B explodes with cheerful thoughts via a good battery of horns including those manned by Shin Kazuhara（数原晋）and Jake H. Concepcion. There's something rather happily Stevie Wonder about this funk and strut"And I Love You". Just enjoy the stride down Shinjuku as you listen to this one. Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）provided the lyrics.
The penultimate track is "You & I", another huggable love ballad which is arguably the most straight-ahead pop song of "Lonely Girl".Yamakawa and Matsushita provide a bit more in the chorus and Yagami sounds downright adorable whispering the last few syllables every other line at the end. It's quite short but it feels the right length.
The final track is "Falling For You" which has Yagami showing off those soaring vocals and has more of a feeling of Boz Scaggs or Bobby Caldwell. Tsuyoshi Kon（今剛）, who shows up in many of the tracks, has another epic solo and those electric guitar solos have often popped up in those 80s Japanese love songs. I can't also ignore the piano which starts and ends the ballad along with the Joe Group strings once more.
Unfortunately, I didn't get this song with my copy of "Lonely Girl" but apparently for the 2003 re-release of the album, there was a bonus track included as mentioned on J-Wiki. "Sono Mune ni Mou Ichido"（その胸にもう一度...Once More Into These Arms）. Written by Yagami and composed/arranged by the late Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）of Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）, this is some pleasant Latin-infused sunset City Pop with a hint of disco and maybe even Herb Alpert. If you have the 2003 version of "Lonely Girl", consider yourself lucky...apparently "Sono Mune ni Mou Ichido" hasn't shown up anywhere else unless someone tells me otherwise.
The first time I heard this song and recognized it for its epic-ness, it was actually on one of the segments for "The Electric Company", the 1970s children's program to help in reading and grammar. Various characters encounter a monolith in space which crumbles down to reveal a phonic. Meanwhile, the song emphasizes the absolute importance of the discovery.
I would eventually see the motion picture that starts out with that very song...or should I say, tone poem by Richard Strauss, "Also sprach Zarathustra" that was composed in 1896 (technically, it's the initial "Sonnenaufgang" section). Regardless, it and the 1968 film (or hallucinogenic experience) "2001: A Space Odyssey"are totally connected at the hip, and I would compare it to John Williams'"Jaws" in terms of a small series of notes that can command the most attention from everybody. But though Williams' classic two-note realm of terror is about a carnivorous sea creature, Strauss' incredible five-note beginning can span the cosmos; one YouTube commenter even said that it could be the anthem for the entire solar system. With those horns and the timpani pounding out boulders, I can believe it.
Of course, the final ten-minute sequence at the end of the movie with all of those effects and the haunting chorus probably should or shouldn't be seen under the influence of some major pharmaceuticals. People like Dr. Braino would understand. Go easy on the red beauty jackets, though!
Apart from its time in "The Electric Company", "Also sprach Zarathustra" has been getting its due in commercials and various other television shows and movies where it once again and again has gargantuanly commanded attention to products and characters. I can only hope that if a manned NASA mission ever heads out to Jupiter or even Mars in my lifetime, Strauss' spirit would get a kick from his magnum opus being played.
April 3rd 1968 was the date that "2001" was released in the United States. Well, what was hitting the top spots on the brand spanking new Oricon on April Fools' Day 1968? We have Nos. 2-4.
I began the New Wave duo Salon Music file almost a couple of years ago with their July 1983 single"Duet ni Muchuu"（デュエットに夢中）and found it to be a nice slice of the genre this side of Sparks. Quirky and refreshing, it is.
Tonight, I give you the follow-up single to "Duet ni Muchuu", "Hunting on Paris" which was released in October of that year. Vocalist and bassist Jin Yoshida（吉田仁）and vocalist and keyboardist Hitomi Takenaka（竹中仁見）retain the New Wave but go a bit more into the rock zone and the author of the article on Fond Sound hit the nail on the head when the reference was made to The B-52s regarding this song. Sung totally in English, this really is a hunt on the City of Lights since Yoshida and Takenaka are making like a couple of hardcore Francophiles who love everything about the French. The author of the Fond Sound article also states that "Hunting on Paris" was the breakthrough song for the pair, getting them that deal with Pony Canyon.
I don't know that much about actor Renji Ishibashi（石橋蓮司）aside from the fact that he's been often cast as tough guys and high official types. At 178 cm tall, he may not seem all that tall in America but he has likely cast a very long and intimidating shadow in Japan since his career began in the middle of the 1950s.
One thing I definitely didn't know about Ishibashi was that he's been married to an actress by the name of Mako Midori（緑魔子）. Born in Taiwan as Yoshiko or Ryoko Kojima（小島良子）in 1944, Midori started her time in show business in the mid-1960s in front of the camera, but she also had her time behind the recording microphone beginning in 1967. In fact, here is her second single from September of that year, "Onna wa Kanashii"(Women are a Miserable Lot). A particularly smoky Mood Kayo written by Haruki Tango（丹古晴己）and composed by Minoru Yoshikawa（吉川 実）, it is also a cynical song about one woman's opinions on her lot and perhaps a lot of other women's lot in life in the big city...nothing but one-night stands and goodbyes, and maybe those are the high points. Midori puts so much ennui and disdain in her vocals that they make Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）in the last half of her career a decade later sound like the most cheerful girl skipping in the meadow.
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