El DeBarge -- El DeBarge

From Discogs

Welcome to another Thursday Reminiscings of Youth session where I take a look at some of those English-language songs or albums that impressed upon my own ears, soul and mind when I was but a wee lad...namely back in the 1970s and 1980s.

I also sometimes touch upon movies from way back then and this time, it's "Short Circuit" from 1985. I had forgotten the fact that it starred Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, two thespians who I would send out a "Where are they now?" alert. To be frank, I never got around to seeing the movie although the cute robot Johnny Five was all the craze in that summer along with the phrase "No. 5's alive!".

And this is where this week's ROY target comes in. It's El DeBarge's first solo album "El DeBarge" from May 1986 and three songs from that release are known to me and not surprisingly, all three were released as singles throughout that year. Arguably, the most well-known of them is "Who's Johnny?" which was made into the theme song for "Short Circuit". This was basically my only connection with the movie and I'd say it's the poppiest song that I've ever heard by El...right down to the childish way he sings out the title from time to time. It could even have made for the coolest theme song to a Saturday-morning cartoon. But this was something I was hearing on heavy rotation on the radio. It made it to No. 3 on America's Billboard. Peter and Ina Wolf were responsible for the songwriting.

 

Meanwhile, the dream team of Burt Bacharach, Bruce Roberts and Carole Bayer-Sager took care of "Love Always", and this one and the next song are the tracks that have held better sway over me since this is El in his element: R&B and soul. As much as I have loved the full family's "All This Love" from several years before, "Love Always" is another wonderful ballad by the solo DeBarge that has lived rent-free in my head all these decades. Maybe part of the reason is that it's been compared to the music that Michael McDonald has covered according to the album writeup on Wikipedia, and I'm a huge McDonald fan.

In the same paragraph, "Someone", a splendid mid-tempo track that hovers between "Who's Johnny?" and "Love Always", has also been compared to the works of Stevie Wonder. Created by Jay Graydon, Mark Mueller and Robbie Nevil, this is a song that I also heard regularly on the Toronto radio stations and once I got weaned off of radio after graduating from university, I lost contact with it while forgetting the title and maybe even the singer. I'd figured that it was El behind it but without the title and the fact that life was interrupting me for several decades, I could never confirm it. Well, doing the research on the album for ROY, I finally found it again and it still sounds as wonderfully 80s soulful now as it did back then. Another check off my list. "Someone" got somewhere in the Top 20s on Billboard.

"El DeBarge" did OK by peaking at No. 24 on Billboard. It did even better on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart by coming in at No. 8. So then, what Japanese singles were being released in the merry month of May 1986?

REBECCA -- Raspberry Dream

Miki Imai -- Tasogare no Monologue （黄昏のモノローグ）

Yuki Saito -- Doyoubi no Tamanegi （土曜日のタマネギ）

Yuko Kawai/Itsumi Osawa -- Shanghai Bojou Exotica（上海慕情exotica）

By King of Hearts via Wikimedia Commons

I've been to Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei and all of them I enjoyed. Unfortunately, I never got the opportunity to visit Shanghai with all of its modern towers. Mind you, I did have Shanghai crab...or Chinese hairy crab...in Hong Kong when it was in season. Marvelous stuff that and I say this as a guy who usually isn't too crazy about eating crustaceans simply because I don't like having to eat my food as if I'm on a mining expedition.

Well, let us segue into Yuko Kawai's（河合夕子）"Shanghai Bojou Exotica" (Shanghai Yearning Exotica) which was a track on her March 1982 sophomore album "Fujiyama Paradise". With Kawai handling words and music and Masao Urino（売野雅勇）also having a go at the lyrics, it's quite the bouncy technopop exotic kayo of touring through the titular city in the People's Republic of China. It sounds like it can describe a fascinating and supremely cheerful exploration of the metropolis, old and new areas all included (although Kawai has apparently thrown in a lot of other cities into the lyrical mix).

A few years later, a cover of "Shanghai Bojou Exotica" was released as Itsumi Osawa's（大沢逸美）7th single in January 1985. Under the late Hiroshi Shinkawa's（新川博）arrangement, this version got a fair share of steroids including some snazzy horns. It's no longer an innocent stroll through Shanghai...it's more of a limousine tour on the main streets with the guests gallivanting from the roof. I can only imagine the ultimate destination is some expensive bar at the top of one of those Shanghai towers.

Hiroshi Wakagi, The Blessin' Four and Misuzu Children's Choral Group -- Tatakae! Thunder（戦え!サンダー）

 

Over the past several weeks, I've seen hurricane after hurricane along with torrential rains batter parts of Japan including the prefecture where I'd resided for many years: Chiba. Then yesterday, parts of my own province, including Toronto, got walloped by what has been called "a once-in-a-century storm" (although I think they'll probably come once every other year now). We got majorly pummeled by a couple of lines of thunderstorms and that second line that hit us around the dinner hour came with the loudest thunder cracks that I'd ever heard in my life. I was worried about power outages and there were plenty of those in the Greater Toronto Area but luckily, our neighbourhood was spared from those.

(1:07)

Last year, I used Marvel's "Thunderbolts" movie to segue into the opening theme for the 1972 NTV tokusatsu series "Thunder Mask"（サンダーマスク）. Well, I'm using yesterday's actual storm-of-the-century to introduce the ending theme for the show. "Tatakae! Thunder" (Fight! Thunder) was written by Yoichi Azuma（東洋一）and composed by Takeo Watanabe（渡辺岳夫）as this typical heroic tokusatsu song performed by the same entities behind the opening theme "Thunder Mask": Hiroshi Wakagi（若木ヒロシ）the Misuzu Children's Choral Group（みすず児童合唱団） and the vocal group The Blessin' Four（ ザ・フレッシング・フォー）. The arrangement by Yuushi Matsuyama（松山祐士）is a familiar one with the crisp battery of horns, the shimmering strings and the groovy bass. All that scary thunder will go away now!

Kosetsu Minami -- Ano Hi no Sora yo（あの日の空よ）

 

Maybe it says something about veteran folk singer-songwriter Kosetsu Minami's（南こうせつ）April 1990 single "Ano Hi no Sora yo" (The Sky on That Day) that I could only find concert footage on YouTube rather than the original recorded version. 

I also heard it for the first time on a recent episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）which is why I'm writing about it now. Written and composed by Minami with Shozo Ise（伊勢正三）co-writing the lyrics, I had thought that his summery paean to almighty love had been created back in the 1970s so it was with some surprise that I discovered its emergence to fans happened a couple of decades later. But it goes to show that Minami has made some wonderfully timeless singalong music since he debuted over fifty years ago. 

Ami Suzuki -- Our Days

 

Singer and actress Ami Suzuki（鈴木亜美）appeared on NHK's "Asaichi"（あさイチ）a couple of days ago but it wasn't to sing anything or to promote a new movie or TV show. Instead, she came on the show's cooking segment to rustle up some ginger-infused meatballs in a sauce, and I recall last year, she whipped up another recipe on the show.  I have to say that despite her being 44 years old according to her J-Wiki profile, she still looks like that sparkling wide-eyed teenager from the late 1990s.

Considering the Komuro Steamroller that ran through the Japanese music world throughout most of the final decade of the 20th century, I gather that Suzuki's time with music producer Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）was one of the last examples of one of his proteges making a big mark on the charts. I saw Suzuki as a more girl-next-door type tackling the Komuro music compared to the dance club-friendly Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）and Tomomi Kahala（華原朋美）from earlier years.

With Suzuki, it was more about the upbeat stuff including "Be Together" (which I heard repeatedly on the "Asaichi" segment as a running gag), so it was interesting to hear "Our Days", a ballad which served as her 8th single from September 1999. I barely remember it and indeed it was written and composed by Komuro with Mitsuko Komuro（小室みつ子）also helping out on the lyrics. I can't say that she had the most polished delivery with this ballad which might explain why I tend to remember her happier songs but then again, her forlorn vocals might be in line with the more melancholy melody. 

"Our Days" did hit No. 1 on Oricon, going Platinum, and it eventually became the 47th-ranked single of 1999. It also became a track on Suzuki's 2nd album "infinity eighteen vol.1" from February 2000. That album also hit the top of the charts and became the 15th-ranked album of the year.

The First Songs to Start It All For Me

 

Well, that was quite the coincidence. I just posted up "The Firsts (Mariya, Tatsuro, Akina, EW&F, EPO)" earlier this afternoon and it contained a few of my 80s favourites that helped start my path of kayo kyoku glory. Then, I find out that this week's "Uta Con"（うたコン）was having an 80s theme night. It was quite the manna from heaven for me.

I recall that I wrote up years ago a somewhat rambling account of my history of liking kayo kyoku so in a way, this article will emulate the overall theme. However, this time around, I'm just going to be a little more judicious with my thoughts here. But let it be said that these songs made a foundation to start things off for me thanks to an old classmate's "The Top 10" and "The Best 10" videotapes and my graduation trip to Japan in 1981....before I got to listen to "The Sounds of Japan" and watch my first ever Kohaku Utagassen in January 1982.

Hiromi Iwasaki -- Sumire Iro no Namida （すみれ色の涙）

The long black hair, the wide smile and the voice that could part clouds and let sunshine through. It was this ballad that started my own fan feelings for Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）and pretty much pegged her in my mind as the Queen of Pop Balladry for a number of years.

Masahiko Kondo -- Blue Jeans Memory （ブルー・ジーンズ・メモリー）

Matchy the tough but tenderhearted teenager will always be represented by "Blue Jeans Memory" whose titular movie posters were all over the place when I was traveling through Tokyo and Osaka in the torrid summer of 1981. 

Jun Horie -- Memory Glass（メモリーグラス）

One reason that I haven't included Yellow Magic Orchestra in the list is that listening to their "Firecracker" on the local Japanese-Canadian community TV show here in Toronto had me intrigued but not quite head-over-heels for Japanese pop music. It took that graduation trip several months later to finally cement things. Anyways, Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass" was more kayo than "Firecracker" but that certain synthesizer in play here further fired up my interest in technopop.

Hitomi Ishikawa -- Machibuse　（まちぶせ）

I got to hear this in Japan, I also did the same on those videotapes and then finally, Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）showed up on the 1981 Kohaku Utagassen. It was pretty much wall-to-wall "Machibuse" for several months so there was no way that I would leaving this one off the list.

Imo Kin Trio -- High School Lullaby

This was another wall-to-wall song because of the Japan trip and videotapes although I wouldn't hear about the background behind the making of this song and even how the name of this group came about for several years. On tonight's "Uta Con", I even learned some more information which answered one question that had been rattling about in my head just as long: Why didn't these guys show up on the Kohaku despite the crazy popularity of this song in 1981? Well, Imo Kin Trio（イモ欽トリオ）, the trio of young comics-turned-sudden singers who did show up to perform "High School Lullaby" tonight, explained that they actually had been given that golden offer by NHK. However their mentor, legendary comedian Kin'ichi Hagimoto（萩本欽一）who starred with them on their Fuji-TV variety show shot the question across their bow, "Do you really consider yourself singers?" and explained that if you accept the invitation, you're taking away a spot from a real singer who's dedicated to their craft. So, long story short, the answer was NO. I find this a bit ironic on Hagimoto's part since I believe he was the one who got the trio to get themselves into the music business; I guess he hadn't realized how successful they were going to get. Sorry, I did say I was going to be more judicious but couldn't help myself here.

Toshiyuki Nishida -- Moshimo Piano ga Hiketanara（もしもピアノが弾けたなら）

This was another wall-to-wall song that I heard in Japan and on those videotapes. And not surprisingly, it was the one to start things off on "Uta Con" tonight with Yo Oizumi's（大泉洋）rendition of the song. Still miss Nishida（西田敏行）who passed away almost two years ago.

The Firsts (Mariya, Tatsuro, Akina, EW&F, EPO)

 

Good heavens! It's September already! Time sure has flown in 2026. But as it is, autumn is just around the corner, school will be starting up again here and NHK will officially announce that the Kohaku Utagassen will be broadcast once more on December 31st. Ironically, though, for a summer that really hasn't been all that blazing hot this year in Toronto, today's been a really hazy and humid affair. But no worries, things will cool down by this long weekend.

Anyways, I'm dusting off the KKP category of The First once again. I began this one with "The First -- J-Canuck" almost a decade ago with a rambling recounting of some of the first Japanese songs that I heard and then a few years later, I posted "The Firsts by J-Canuck" where I selected some of my other firsts via genre. Other writers on the blog have also chimed in with their firsts.

Well, being whimsical me and acknowledging the fact that today is September 1st, I've decided to put up some of the first songs I heard by five artists. I also acknowledge that I'm putting up a couple of examples of "September" since I'm so shamelessly enthralled by them nearly fifty years following their release, but I'll defend myself with Blog Founder's Prerogative. 

(1978) Earth Wind & Fire -- September

Yup, this was my first exposure to the legendary guys at Earth Wind & Fire thanks to my pink SONY radio. I always wondered why these guys were so funkily devoted to the ninth month of the year but the disco and the dancing kept distracting my (soul) train of thought. I hope the guys at Area 51 have another great time this year, too.

(1979) Mariya Takeuchi -- September

The whole Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）thing began with this song on "Sounds of Japan". It put my whole impression of aidoru voices in a different perspective because up until this tune, I'd thought that female Japanese singers had to sing up in the ionosphere. I actually thought Mariya was Mario for a few days because her vocals were so low. As the years and decades have passed, I've come to realize that her "September" is pretty unique: a combination of 50s/60s girl pop, a bit of disco and contemporary pop.

(1983) Akina Nakamori -- Kinku （禁区）

I always remember my first and for Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）, it was "Kinku". I hadn't known anything about the singer or the image that her handlers had wanted to convey (misunderstood punk student) or the fact that the song was an example of techno aidoru music. At the time, it struck me as being this enigmatic and dramatic tune sung by a teenage girl whose vocals also went down to the basement.

(1983) EPO -- U, Fu, Fu, Fu, (う、ふ、ふ、ふ）

If EPO had actually gone with her first choice for a career path which was (I believe) a gym teacher, she would have had her young charges whipped into shape with that boomer voice of hers. Thankfully for me and the rest of her fans, she has used her vocals to provide brightness and spark into the music sphere. Her surrounding musical arrangement has frequently followed suit. "U, Fu, Fu, Fu" may come off as one of the most unusual titles in Japanese pop, but the entire song can have the power to transport listeners to happy and joyful 80s Tokyo.

(1990) Tatsuro Yamashita -- Endless Game

Indeed, it was neither "Christmas Eve" nor any of his City Pop classics that served as the introduction to Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）works. It was the theme song to the 1990 TBS drama "Yuwaku"（誘惑）that caught my ear due to its class and moodiness...and that trombone! Who was bringing a trombone solo into a late 80s pop tune? It wasn't City Pop per se but it sure was urban and urbane.