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.
A few days ago, I posted a Higurashi（日暮し）song on the blog for the first time in a while titled "Odayakana Gogo"（おだやかな午後）. Then, I checked vocalist Naomi Sugimura's（杉村尚美）file on KKP and I realized that I hadn't put up anything from her solo career in about six years!
The last article that I had put up was her final single from June 1982, "Kaze no Naka no Melody"（風の中のメロディー）. A couple of months later, she released her third and final original album which had the same title. From there, I give you "Tasogare ni Last Scene" (Last Scene at Sunset). Written by Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）and composed by Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常寛）, it's one of the more fleet-footed bossa nova tunes that I've ever heard. Sugimura also gives her usual lovely light touch in her vocals.
It was a couple of months ago that I introduced the jazz-fusion band Early Byrds and their special guest Kyoko Kimura（木村恭子）through their 1981 album, "Up and Coming". I focused on the opening track "Galaxy Special" which was an instrumental punctuated by Kimura's scatting.
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Well, this time I'm going with the last song on Side A of the original album, "Ocean Song". Starting out with the calm blue ocean sloshing against the shore, we get to hear Kimura voicing some soothing quotes such as "You're just an ocean away". Along with the aural massage, Early Byrds provide that laidback cocktail-sipping melody which will have you aching to head out to some beach somewhere or at least leave you living the tropical dream vicariously.
With all of the craziness on the planet right now and even with the usual day-to-day sturm und drang of a regular work week, singer-songwriter Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）may have a solution: "Bohtto Shite Miyou" (Let's Try Zoning Out). Yup, this was a track that was written and composed by the Kumamoto native for her July 1996 album"TAIYO" as this relaxing yesteryear-ish pop-rock number encouraging listeners to stop and smell the coffee, roses or other soothing thing. Moritaka was on the drums for this recording.
I first heard the song though when it was included as a coupling song to Moritaka's single "Let's GO!" from February 1997. The arrangement is a little different under its title of "Sweet Baby Version"...even more laidback and bluesy. In both versions, the singer encourages folks to zone out until they get bored. Maybe it'll be a good long while before that happens.
This may go down as one of the tougher and more intense years in terms of famous people passing away. We lost Dolly Parton a couple of days ago and just in the last few hours, I've been hearing of other celebrities leaving this mortal coil. Alongside the news of Parton passing away, the news scroll here on television also mentioned that actor and singer Tim Curry had also died.
For recent generations, Curry may have been known for his roles as hapless and/or somewhat clueless characters on movies like "Home Alone 2". I also remember him as Chief Medical Officer Petrov on the Red October in "The Hunt for Red October" back in 1990,
But my memories go even further back when Curry played the terrifying but charismatic Dr Frank-N-Furter in the original 1973 London and 1975 Broadway productions of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and then the 1975 cinematic version with a very young Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick. Now, I wasn't even a pre-pubescent kid when "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" came out so I missed out on all of the bread tossing and other audience participation stuff. The bits of media that I got about this bizarre show in the pre-Internet age frankly scared the heck out of me, and I think the good doctor was most likely the first instance of me ever seeing a guy dressed up and made up like a girl
Dr. Frank-N-Furter got his own song: "Sweet Transvestite". However, I don't know that one although I did hear that Curry (along with the rest of the cast) was able to sing the one song that I do know from the show, the rock-n-roll "Time Warp". Yet, it wasn't through either the movie or the play that I first found out about it.
Like a lot of high schools, my junior high school had regular after-school dance parties in the cafeteria. My crippling shyness, uncoolness and dancing ability (which could be compared to a hobbled T-Rex stuck in a tar pit) meant that I very rarely attended those gigs. However, against my better judgment and due to peer pressure, I ended up at one of those dances, and strangely enough, at the persuasion of one young lady who took pity upon me, she dragged me onto the floor to do "Time Warp". I should've listened more intently to the lyrics by Richard O'Brien (music by both him and Richard Hartley) since they basically instruct listeners how the dance is done, but then again, I was never much of a lyrics guy anyways. It would be years before I realized that "Time Warp" was a part of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show".
"The Rocky Horror Picture Show" made its very first appearance in London on June 19th 1973. I was able to find the Top 3 of Oricon for the day before.
As I said above, it's been a tough year already for famous people leaving Earth. Within the last 12 hours, I've also heard about the passings of the following people that I also got to know. For these folks and for Curry, my condolences to their families, friends and many fans.
It's been a rather sad week for music fans overall. Last week, I posted a ZZ Top song for Reminiscings of Youth due to the passing of band drummer Frank Beard. And now in the last 48 hours, we've lost superstar Dolly Parton and the great Tim Curry, both at the age of 80. I'll be posting about both people today for a special double ROY.
I have mentioned this in past KKP articles but our family used to watch a fair bit of country music television decades ago including "Hee Haw" in America and "The Tommy Hunter Show" up here in Canada. And a number of times, we got to see the force of nature that was Dolly Parton in the 1970s. Yes, she jumped out on the stage like a particularly buxom Annie Oakley with the big hair and long nails, and even more than her music, she was able to win people over with that friendly charm that practically invited everyone over to her place for dinner and dancing.
And then at the turn of the decade, the 1980 movie "9 to 5" was released which starred Parton, Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda as three harassed employees of a scummy boss played by Dabney Coleman. Sadly, I don't remember much from the film aside from Coleman getting his comeuppance and Tomlin's dream sequence which featured her as Snow White. However, what has remained with me up to now is the upbeat and surprisingly short theme song by Parton herself. "9 to 5" hit the record store shelves in November 1980 and I remember it for the singer's happy-go-lucky vocals, the intrepid pounding piano and Parton's nails clacking away like a typewriter.
"9 to 5" hit the top of the charts in both Canada and the United States. It was nominated for Best Original Song at the Oscars and three other awards at the Grammys. I also saw that even Buckingham Palace paid tribute to Parton with the King's Guard providing their own version of the song. I offer my condolences to Parton's family, friends and fans.
The song was released on November 3rd 1980 so what was hitting the top of the Oricon chart on that day?
When I bought my copy of Yellow Magic Orchestra's "YMO GO HOME!" years ago, there was plenty that was welcome and familiar to me such as the iconic "Rydeen" and "Behind the Mask".
But there were a few tracks that I hadn't heard before that initially left me a little intrigued. One such track was "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" (Pocketful of Rainbows). The technopop was still there but there was something rather laidback and twangy tropical about it, too, that had me wondering whether YMO member Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）had regenerated back to his exotica self of the mid-1970s.
As it turns out though, "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" was something that YMO recorded after getting back together for a bit in the early 1990s. It was released as the band's 10th single in April 1993 although because of the usual red tape and rights issues that probably had Hosono and his bandmates, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）, rolling their eyes up to the heavens, they couldn't officially release it under their old name YMO so they decided to be playful about it and say they were nowYMO (Not YMO). So, I can say that "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" was YMO's debut single.
What also intrigued me was that while I scrolling through the information about the single on J-Wiki, I noticed that not only were there songwriters that weren't any of the YMO band members, i.e. Fred Wise & Ben Weisman, the lyrics were translated into Japanese by Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）.
So, cover song, I surmised. And sure enough, it was a cover song. The original "Pocketful of Rainbows" had been recorded back in 1960 by the one-and-only Elvis Presley for his movie "G.I. Blues". He sang it in the movie with leggy Juliet Prowse who I used to see in a lot of TV variety shows and commercials (usually for panty hose).
As part of the YMO single, there was also an English version of the song. So, the band did a cover of a song by an American music legend. Well, many years earlier, they also did a cover of a song by a British music legend. Incidentally, "Pocket ga Niji de Ippai" reached No. 13 on Oricon.
The return of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）last night from summer hiatus was a special one, to be sure. I don't think I've ever seen a special episode of the long-running music show devoted to a single artist; it's usually been a highlight reel of the year's best performances. But last night, concierge Shosuke Tanihara（谷原章介）had former aidoru Mizue Takada（高田みづえ）onto the show along with her friends and fellow singers Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）and Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）, and Takada was given a tribute in what was advertised as "a one-night-only comeback".
After the episode, I read an article regarding it on Mixi and it mentioned that in March, her husband, the former sumo wrestler Wakashimazu（若嶋津）, had passed away at the age of 69 from pneumonia, something that I hadn't known about. My belated condolences to Takada, the rest of her family and his fans. I don't really know whether his passing and the aftermath triggered the idea to have this special episode but it was great to see Takada again on stage to perform a couple of her old hits including her 1980 single"Watashi wa Piano"（私はピアノ）which was the very first song that I had heard by her as a teenager and was therefore one of the first kayo that got me into this very long hobby in the first place.
"Watashi wa Piano" is this urban Latin-spiced song that has stayed in my memories for almost a half-century. However, the B-side is a completely different song. "Kikyou" (Homecoming) is a warm, folksy and calming tune about the old hometown and the feelings tied with it. With lyrics by Takashi Taka（たかたかし）, the song was actually composed as an instrumental known as "The Poet and I" from 1974 by Canadian pianist Frank Mills. I don't think there was much change in the arrangement during its transition from "The Poet and I" to "Kikyou" so Mills' original was a fine fit for kayo kyoku.
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