When the musical typhoon known as B'z made landfall in the late 80s, I was just making my way into the new world of J-Pop after going through the first couple of phases of old kayo kyoku in the 60s and 70s and then YMO/aidoru through the 80s. Along with a lot of new acts such as Dreams Come True and Jitterin' Jinn, the duo of Inaba and Matsumoto made a big impression by just slamming in with their hard-driving mostly rock/a little techno sound. "Bad Communication" always threw me awake whenever I saw the Rie Miyazawa commercial for that computer called FM Townes.
Then came "Be There", B'z's 4th single which came out in May 1990. This was another shot of electric orange juice to the system, starting with the intro which did the aural version of Hot Potato between the left and right speakers (or headphones). For me, I think this was the song that sealed in the B'z sound: Matsumoto's (melody) wailing guitar and Inaba's (lyrics) buzzsaw vocals. I love the refrain, the guitar solo, that "HIT IT!"in the middle of the song, and the "BE THERE ANYTIME!"
This was actually also the ending theme song for what I believe was a news show on one of the commercial networks. Great title for the show...I could imagine folks just coming to the show for that song. In its first release, "Be There" made it as far as No. 7 on Oricon, and became the 60th-ranked song of the year, with close to 350,000 singles sold. There was even more love shown to it when it was re-released a decade later when the song peaked at No. 3. The single didn't originally come out on a studio album but made its first appearance on the duo's compilation album, "B'z -- The Best Pleasure" released in 1998.
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| B'z -- Be There |
Thanks J-Canuck for this great post on B'z. It actually comes at a good time as this year marks their 25th Anniversary and to celebrate they are planning on releasing an awesome multi-CD/DVD collection called "B'z The Best XXV" on 6/12/13. The set will be separated into two volumes spanning their career - Set One -1988-1998 and Set Two - 1999-2012. I'm not a huge B'z fan but I'm seriously considering getting this bad boy just to get all their PVs and Live Performance clips. Here's a link to their homepage which details more about the set - http://bz-vermillion.com/news/130325.html
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've been fairly picky about what I like from B'z. Basically, I've almost done my blog contributions for the band, but I think there is perhaps one more song I can do. So, if any of you have your own B'z favourites, you can go on ahead and profile them.
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