Kazumasa Oda -- Oh! Yeah!

Kazumasa Oda--Oh!Yeah!

Back in the late 80s, I had heard and not heard of Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）. To clarify, one day I was team-teaching with one of my teachers in one of my junior high school classes in Tsukiyono-machi when I asked one student who her favourite singer was. She chirped up, "Kazumasa Oda!" I put on a quizzical look but then my partner smilingly replied that he was once the lead singer of Off Course. Well, the lights finally did go on in my memory. I knew Off Course through the songs that had come on during all those "Sounds of Japan" radio shows but had never known the name behind the distinctive voice.

Then, this commercial of a dapper Kazumasa Oda taking a sip of his favourite coffee for Nescafe appeared with this really dramatic song of his was playing in the background (did have the commercial imported over here until the powers-that-be took it down). Released in October 1989, "Little Tokyo" was Oda's first official single as a solo artist without any help from his old band. Although the title may hint at perhaps one of the Japanese-American communities on the West Coast, the lyrics amounted to the protagonist's one-sided love for a woman in the big city. It peaked at No. 3 on the Oricon. I liked it enough that I did get the CD single.

And from that little revelation in my school, my relationship with Kazumasa Oda as solo artist and not as the leader of Off Course began. So, from here, I will introduce his very first BEST album as one of my best albums, "Oh! Yeah!"

1. 空が高すぎる　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Sora ga Taka Sugiru
2. 1985
3. 夜の行方　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Yoru no Yukue
4. I Miss You
5. ためらわない、迷わない　　　　　　　　　　　Tamerawanai, Mayowanai
6. good times & bad times
7. Little Tokyo
8. 春風に乱れて　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Harukaze ni Midarete
9.恋は大騒ぎ　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Koi wa O-Sawagi
10. FAR EAST CLUB BAND SONG
11. ラブ・ストーリーは突然に　　　　　　　　　　Love Story wa Totsuzen ni
12. Oh! Yeah!

Now, I rather held off from doing this album for a long time because I had been hoping that some of his originals would be able to make it onto YouTube, but it looks like the powers-that-be are especially sensitive about having any of his stuff online, so I'm going with some of his fans who wanted to give their own tributes to the man and his work. And besides, this is a blog about fans who want to talk about Japanese popular music, so why not have these folks sing it out? Below is one fan's take on "Little Tokyo".

"Oh! Yeah!" was released in May 1991, almost half a year after one of  his most successful songs via Oricon first made its presence known in January as the theme for the Fuji-TV drama, "Tokyo Love Story", which has its own profile right here. Although I never did a head count in Japan, I'm pretty sure that there was a ton of anticipation for this album to come out. The commercials for the album were coming on pretty strong, so I was basically chomping on the bit to get my own copy. And when I did, I noticed that it was typical Oda on the cover. I'd known for a while that he was never much for showing himself outside of his performances or commercials, so having himself hiding half his face seemed rather normal.

The first 9 songs (all written and composed by Oda) all come from Oda's first three albums as a solo artist. "Oh! Yeah!" starts off with a quiet introspective ballad, "Sora ga Taka Sugiru" (The Sky is So High) about how most people trade their sky-high hopes and dreams for a much more grounded reality as the years pass. It's a sad if lovely song but one that has those lyrical connections with his time in Off Course when a number of their songs dealt with some melancholy consequences of romance. Listening to the cover of it here, I was struck by how similar the man sounds to Oda, and the arrangement is a bit stripped down compared to the original version but still very good. He also sings a couple of other old Off Course hits which should be heard as well.

The first 3 tracks come from his first album, "K.Oda", which was released in December 1986. Tracks 4 and 5 are from "Between the Word & The Heart", released in March 1988, while Tracks 7-9 come from "Far East Cafe" from May 1990.

The last three tracks are the new entries, including this one called "Far East Club Band Song", which is a major-chord barnburner of a crowdpleaser, one that probably gets everyone off their seats at an Oda concert. The original version has Oda trying to catch up with his own melody since the song is so fast, and it even allows a good amount of burning sax and guitar solos. The video above has a tribute band performing it....the music does sound pretty close to the real thing, and according to the person who uploaded it, some of the musicians from Oda's company were kind enough to show up and jam in with the band.

Of course (no pun intended), I couldn't complete a profile of "Oh! Yeah!" without including the piece de resistance, "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" (Suddenly A Love Story), the biggest single of 1991. (Not the real singer above, by the way, but a good rendition.) Perhaps its standing in Japanese pop music history has waned a bit over the past 20 years, but it's still a wonderful song for me. Couldn't ask for a cooler theme song for the megalopolis of Tokyo than this masterpiece. As I may have mentioned in the individual article for this song, Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善） from Sing Like Talking is a backing vocal. Although pretty much all of the instrumentation involved is provided by Oda's synths, it just has that urban contemporary vibe which I would usually connect with a saxophone or a Fender Rhodes or a fluegelhorn. But the entire album, with its concentration of his best hits, has Oda pretty much yelling, "This ain't an Off Course album!" The band itself had also been heading into a more City Pop direction from the early 80s away from its folk roots, but Oda seemed to blast his way out from any Off Course influence as he went solo via his new arrangements. Just as one last aside here, it's a pity that I couldn't find "Yoru no Yukue" (Direction of the Night) for you to listen to here; it's a more conventional but no less great urban contemporary song.

The single "Oh!Yeah!" was released as the other half of the "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" single in February of that year. It's a slow, funky and cool ballad as Oda sings the equivalent of a sexy slow dance with the help of Chikuzen Sato and Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）, two other cool funky dudes. Below is the karaoke version done by another pretty good soundalike.

The two A-sides-as-one hit the 2 million sold barrier and as mentioned became the No. 1 single of the year. The album also did the exact same thing, and pretty much sent Oda up into the stratosphere for the rest of his career up to the present day. "Oh!Yeah!" became the No. 5 album of 1991.

March 15 2014: A P.S. over here, but I made a follow-up to this article featuring the original songs from the album.