trf -- EZ DO DANCE

The early 90s for me was the era of the "alphabet" bands. While I was biding my time here before returning to Japan, I was hearing about groups like Zard, Deen, ZYYG, and B'z....kinda wondered if the recording companies chose the names by tossing around some Scrabble tiles. Then came trf. Unlike the other bands which were into pop/rock, the TK Rave Factory were all about fun on the dance floor. I arrived in Japan in late 1994 just when Tetsuya Komuro's（小室哲哉） first big squad had just hit superstardom with "survival dAnce" and "Boy Meets Girl". But I also kept hearing this one past song of theirs along with snippets of the video for that song, "EZ DO DANCE". Those three words still burrow into my brain whenever I hear the band's name mentioned.

trf's 2nd single was released in June 1993, and it did pretty well by peaking at No. 15 and overall ending up on the annual Oricon rankings at No. 72. According to J-Wiki, it had a very long run and eventually sold close to 800,000 copies.

As for the video, I finally got to see it in its entirety just a few minutes ago, and I don't think I had ever seen vocalist Yuki dance as much as she did for this song. The videos of the group that I saw back in Japan then usually had her bandmates, Chiharu, Sam and Etsu doing the heavy lifting while she sang and swayed. But for "EZ DO DANCE", it looked like Yuki was pushing it as hard as Chiharu and Etsu. This video also came under the category of "Necessity is the mother of invention". Because of a very limited budget, it was basically just Yuki dancing and singing in the studio while Chiharu and Etsu popped in and out of silhouette while everyone else danced in the dark against a shifting background. The resourcefulness paid off with a Japan Record Award for Best Video.

The song also picked up another small dimension as a conversation piece over the years. The singer, KEIKO (now known as KCO) who would later become professionally and matrimonially involved with Komuro, auditioned once by using "EZ DO DANCE". During the performance, she promptly fell off the stage, but like a real trouper, she immediately got back up and finished it off. Some years later, she would do an official cover of the song titled "EZ DO DANCE Meets KEIKO", apparently without any lingering trauma, via trf's 2006 album, "Lif-e-Motions".

There are also tons of other versions of the song on YouTube at the very least.