It's been almost a couple of years since I put up Masatoshi Nakamura's （中村雅俊）17th single, "Koibito mo Nureru Machikado"（恋人も濡れる街角）, an urban ballad that I used to hear often at Kuri, my old Yorkville karaoke haunt. Then I was reminded tonight of another Nakamura kayo classic which was his debut single, "Fureai" (Contact) from July 1974. In fact, the song was released exactly 40 years ago today.
Nakamura was starring in an NTV school drama, "Warera Seishun!" （われら青春！...Our Salad Days）as a young high school English teacher. The drama already had theme songs set, but supposedly halfway through the 22-episode series, Nakamura's Okita-sensei sang this new song from the veranda of his apartment. And "Fureai" soon became the talk of the town, becoming a million seller and hitting No. 1 on Oricon. Written by Keisuke Yamakawa （山川啓介）and composed by Taku Izumi（いずみたく）, the song struck me as being reminiscent of one of those old European love songs from the 1960s; something along the lines of "Those Were The Days" by Mary Hopkin. And Nakamura's vocals are even now such that whenever he sings this one, people of a certain age are sure to be transported back to their old salad days.
The full version of the song is below.
I watched him sing this song on The NHK Kayo concert last night! He performed this song first, then sang his latest single (I think) later in the show.
ReplyDeleteActually I watched this episode just to see this fella (and maybe Duke Aces too...) since I've listened to him him sing the song '風の住む町' (Kaze no sumu machi) written by another of my favourite singers, Aska from Chage&Aska. Here's the link if you want to listen to the original version with Nakamura and Aska. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiRO2BnTUrQ.
Aska did a self cover of this song in his 1991 album 'Scene II' (An album that I'm having difficulty locating), which sounds more... elegant than the original than the original as the original has a more folky, nostalgic feel to it. Both sound good.
Hi, Noelle.
DeleteWe must've been seeing the same program then. "Kayo Concert" was the program I was watching when I saw ol' Masatoshi perform his hit song. I also caught Duke Aces doing "Osanajimi" so I'm kinda wondering about covering that one pretty soon. I'd like to discover some more Mood Kayo in the future.
Oh, cool. So that's the song Duke Aces was singing. I actually kinda liked it, but was too focused on how each of them looked like and was more interested in how each of them sounded like - the old guy doing the bass is really impressive! So I didn't really take note of the song's name, unlike Nakamura's later song, which I like but can't seem to find on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to discover more Mood Kayo... I would say probably ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ (Jacky Yoshikawa to blue comets)? I personally haven't listened to any of their songs but they are one of those Mood Kayo groups like the Cool Five and Mahina Stars that I've heard of. Another one maybe would be 秋庭豊とアローナイツ (Akiba Yutaka to Arrow Knights/nights), I've heard them sing 中の島ブルース (Nakano shima blues), which is their debut song but it didn't do very well. Only when the Cool Five released their cover of it in 1975 did it become popular and I think the Cool Five's version is more well liked up till now too (Well, I personally prefer the Cool Five's version... for reasons quite obvious)
Hi, Noelle.
DeleteI've done a few articles on The Blue Comets and their most famous song is "Blue Chateau". You can listen to them right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j7f2rFP8
I have yet to try out The Arrow Knights so I'll give them a try. I'm sure there are quite a few songs out there in the Mood Kayo genre that are worthy of listening to again. Thanks!