This "Awwwwwww.....so cute" moment brought to you by J-Canuck.
Perhaps for those American Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）fans, tonight is truly Thanksgiving....depending on how long this video stays up.
I was listening to one of Oginome's BEST albums, "Pop Groover" for the first time in a long time since I wanted to pick one of the tracks for a potential article, and so I went to read up on the singer on J-Wiki. Through the article, I found out that way before "Dancing Hero", even way before her time as the voice actress behind the main character on the 80s anime "Miyuki"（みゆき）, she had been part of a very short-lived trio of elementary school-age singers known as Milk（ミルク）.
Surprisingly, there was actually one YouTube video that had footage of this group singing their 2nd, and final, single from 1980, "Little Kiss". Listening to it, I thought it was somewhat reminiscent of a little Candies performance from earlier in the 70s. I'm pretty sure you can make her out, but Yoko-chan is on the right. Imagine seeing her with long hair!
Oginome hails from Chiba Prefecture and when she was in the 4th grade, she entered a TV Tokyo-sponsored contest known as "Chibikko Utamane Best 10"（ちびっこ歌まねベスト１０...Kiddies' Song Impression Best 10）from which she became a champion. She was quickly spotted and scouted which marked her first entry into show business. With Kazumi Kobata（小畑和美）and Masako Ohmori（大森絹子）, the three girls were united to form Milk and even had their own pseudonyms of Mimi (Kobata), Rumi (Oginome) and Kumi (Ohmori) with the first syllables of their names forming the group name as would be pronounced in Japanese. Milk debuted in April 1979 with "The Are kara Ichinen"（ザ・あれから いちねん...The First Years from Then）, but "Little Kiss" wouldn't come out until August the following year. Soon after that, the group disbanded.
Not sure what happened to Mimi and Kumi, but obviously Rumi would go onto bigger and better things. In fact, she is celebrating 30 years in the geinokai this year.
Hi, J-Canuck.
ReplyDeleteThis is a pretty rare stuff. I've always seen a snippet of the promotional picture that you posted on the bottom of the article in Oginome's generasia page, but I wasn't aware it was from her Milk days. To be honest, I thought I'd never see a video of Milk, and it's indeed very cute. Like you said, their sound was not truy different from the norm established in the 70s.
And now I realize that, like many other aidoru singers from its time, Yoko-chan reached success very early as well. Dancing Hero was released when she was 16 or 17 years old. I don't know why, but she seemed more mature and edgy if compared to Miporin or Nanno, for example. Maybe it was her short hair.
That could very well be the case about Yoko's perceived mature look. Although there are obviously plenty of young women with short hair, I think her even more severe short cut probably made her look more grown up. There's also the fact that she had some more advanced moves in her dancing than would usually be the case.
DeleteAs for the Milk footage, yes, I was surprised to see that it was there on YouTube, so I just had to get it into an article and see how long it lasts.