Sugar Babe -- Sugar

A couple of years back, I did this big article on Sugar Babe's "SONGS", the lone album by the band which was released in April 1975. I don't make it a policy to cover every song on an album due to laziness on my part and also because I like to write about some of the tracks separately.

One of the tracks that I didn't cover on the album and that has popped up in my head from time to time is "Sugar". It's the final track and it sounds like Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）wanted to have a little funny jam session to finish the recording and perhaps even place a marker to signify a happy end to the days of the band. Although, naturally, the final product was done in the recording studio, I could have seen the folks of Sugar Babe sitting at various places on a back porch of a cottage somewhere in the wilds of Nagano Prefecture and improvising away.

While Yamashita is singing something in the background there, my memories of "Sugar" lie in the droll vocal gymnastics that the band does. Tats, Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）, Kunio Muramatsu（村松邦男）and the rest all blast out their "Sugar", and there is the "Shu-shu-shu..." Speaking of that latter part, I read on J-Wiki that it was inspired by a similar thing that Nancy Sinatra sang in her 1967 song "Sugar Town".

I had the above tiramisu last night for dessert when my friends and I hit an Italian restaurant by the name of Balsamico at Yonge & Eglinton. In all likelihood, I ingested my total sugar intake for the week after three bites of the above. Darn tasty treat, though!