trf/Prizmmy☆ -- Crazy Gonna Crazy

As I mentioned in my very first article featuring the song & dance unit, trf, my first encounter with the big Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）project was through a couple of Japanese siblings that I was tutoring here in Toronto in the early 90s (I wonder whatever happened to them). The brother was kind enough to lend me his CD single of "Boy Meets Girl", and I even received a tape of that song plus "EZ Do Dance" from another source...all before I hit Japan again for another round of work in late 1994.

So I already had a taste of trf even before leaving my native Canada. And when I did arrive in Tokyo, the group was still on the rise. Basically then, the very first new single by trf  that I heard in Japan was "Crazy Gonna Crazy" which was released on New Year's Day 1995. Of course, Komuro took care of the words and music, and it was another dance-poppy hit....despite the failure in English syntax in the title. Unlike "Boy Meets Girl", this particular song wasn't soaring like a rocket but just kept things nice and happy on the dance floor, melodically speaking.

Instead of being a campaign song on a commercial, though, "Crazy Gonna Crazy" became the theme song for a Fuji-TV comedy-drama "Gaman Dekinai!"（我慢できない！...I Can't Take It!） I barely remember the opening credits for the show which had the cast running around as if they were in a Benny Hill sketch and acting appropriately crazy. Still, the song was far more memorable for me.

"Crazy Gonna Crazy" ended up being trf's biggest hit to date, selling close to 1.6 million copies. Hitting No. 1 on Oricon was pretty much obvious and by the end of the year, it was the 11th-ranked song for the annual charts. It also got onto the group's 5th album, "dAnce to positive" which also hit No. 1 and was the 2nd-most successful album for 1995. It even broke the 2-million barrier. At the time, being in the sway of the Komuro magic, I did get the album.

Almost a couple of decades later, the Avex Entertainment girl group Prizmmy☆ covered "Crazy Gonna Crazy" as their 9th single in October 2013. In fact, they also covered the other two trf songs I mentioned above earlier in the year. Their cover of this song, though, peaked at No. 71. The members at that time were Mia Kusakabe（日下部美愛）, Reina Kubo（久保玲奈）, Karin Takahashi（高橋果鈴）and Aya Sema（瀬間彩海）, none of whom were even close to being born when the original had come out. I guess I will be downing that bottle of Geritol later on tonight.