Man, the gems you re-discover after so many years. During my time in Gunma, I bought a quartet of Off-Course（オフコース）CDs, each a compilation that has some connection with a season. I pulled out the one representing summer and put it into the player. I was pleasantly surprised at some of the really lovely tunes that had never been released as singles by Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）old band. And there was quite some variety in the tunes as well as they ranged from Folk to J-AOR to Rock.
But I wanted to feature this one particular number that was not only on the summer compilation but was also originally on Off-Course's 5th album from September 1977, "Junktion". The track is called "Shio no Kaori" (Fragrance of the Sea), and it's this wonderfully comfortably breezy number sung, written and composed by band guitarist Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）. This is the sort of song that I would like to hear while driving down the highway from Tokyo to Shonan sometime in the late summer. While listening to the entire compilation today, I noticed that Off-Course over the years took in a number of influences from what sounded like Santana, The Doobie Brothers and perhaps even Yes. With "Shio no Kaori", I thought there was a bit of Santana and perhaps even some late 70s Billy Joel.
(Unfortunately that video did get taken down.
But here is the karaoke version.)
I'm hoping the video stays up for a while at least. The uploader said that it's an excerpt from a live performance of Off Course in 1977. The first song performed is "Shio no Kaori" but it sounds like Oda is singing here rather than Suzuki. As for "Junktion", it peaked at No. 21 on the Oricon album charts, and it also has one of my very favourite Off-Course ballads, "Aki no Kehai"（秋の気配）.
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| The coast by Ito City, Shizuoka Prefecture. |
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