Well, "Kita no Kamome Uta" is as manly and as cool as a sea/fisherman-related song gets. You got rhythmic beat of the drums that gets you all pumped up, and the powerful sting and revving of the electric guitar brought to you by composer Masato Sugimoto (杉本真人), then comes Ichiro Toba's (鳥羽一郎) snarly vocal delivery to make the song more menacing. I can just imagine a middle-aged, hardened sailor in his rubber boots and overalls - let's call him Mr. Briney - raring to go out on his trusty vessel to earn a living on the ocean's dark, choppy waters. And of course, there'll also be a massive flock of gulls up above squalling away, competing with Mr. Briney for the fish. The lyrics were written by Ryuichi Satomura (里村龍一), they seem to be talking about the life of a fisherman, but I'm not entirely sure.
Released in 1989, Toba had sung this gritty song on his 3rd Kohaku appearance on the same year. The first video of "Kita no Kamome Uta" I had watched was with a youthful-looking Toba smiling smugly and dancing and headbanging to the music. Unfortunately this amusing performance got deleted. I really hope the person re-uploads it though since I hardly get to see him do that. He usually just stands there looking quite sullen with his thick, furrowed eyebrows, it's either that or I have to pay attention to him more often.
(I'm afraid the one that Noelle was mentioning has been taken down but this is another karaoke version.)
Here's the karaoke version of the full song with the man himself in it. Considering some of these karaoke videos I've seen with the original singers staring in them, this one ain't bad... there are others that are really cringe-worthy or downright hilarious.
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Hi, Noelle.
ReplyDeleteYup, "Kita no Kamome Uta" is one of the perennial salt-of-the-sea enka tunes that I've often equated with Sabu-chan. It's got that shakuhachi-and-guitar brio that kinda imagines the modern-day samurai doing what a samurai has to do.