Toshihiko Tahara -- Za Seishun Sailing （ザ・青春セイリング）

Well, I was gonna shut down for the night but out of curiosity I decided to do a bit of digging around for an old memory...made of denim. To elucidate, I was remembering the movie "Blue Jeans Memory", the 1981 movie that starred the media-named Tanokin Trio（たのきんトリオ）, namely Masahiko Kondo, Toshihiko Tahara and Yoshio Nomura（近藤真彦・田原俊彦・野村義男）. It was one of my pop cultural touchstones from my 1981 trip to Japan and seeing that poster of the three Johnny's veterans all over the country, plus hearing the theme song by Matchy Kondo, I can't help but remember that movie whenever I think about that fateful school sojourn.

One of the girls in our graduating class brought back a souvenir to Toronto in the form of the actual soundtrack of "Blue Jeans Memory" that she seemed to play fairly often on audiotape when most of us returned for an extra year at Japanese Language School (we were gluttons for punishment, we were). Of course, there was that theme song. But I also remember the 2nd track that followed it, but I never found out the title and I had naturally assumed it was Matchy again who sang it.

Tonight, I actually found that song on YouTube after tracking down the title through Yahoo.jp. I was fortunate that I could remember the guitar lick that gets things really started. The title of the song is "Za Seishun Sailing" (The Teenage Sailing), and I was surprised that it started with some pensive strings and harp before the guitar kicked in. And it turned out the singer was not Matchy but Toshi-chan. No matter! I was happy to hear it again after over 30 years.

Unfortunately, I couldn't track down who took care of its creation, although according to the uploader of the above video, it was possibly Kyohei Tsutsumi （筒美京平）and Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, who had also taken care of the main theme for Matchy.

Apparently in the years since the movie, late 80s Johnny's Entertainment wunderkinds Hikaru Genji （光GENJI）also had their go at "Za Seishun Sailing".