Continuing on with my listening of those CDs I purchased last month, I picked up another of the "Light & Mellow" series (this time titled "Dream") solely on the cool and groovy "Somewhere in Tokyo" by comely Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）. And I think I hit the jackpot with this particular edition since there are some more gems in this compilation.
Case in point: Masaki Matsubara's（松原正樹）"Silly Crush". Now I've seen Matsubara's name through liner notes of many an album over the years and apparently according to the liner notes for "Light & Mellow: Dream", he has the reputation of being Japan's No. 1 session guitarist with over 10,000 songs that he has participated in starting from 1974 backing up Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）. I can only imagine the callouses on those fingers.
However, he has released his own albums since 1978, one of which was his 4th album from 1983, "Painted Woman". "Silly Crush" is one of his tracks on the album, and when I heard the vocals, I automatically thought Kenny Loggins. But actually, the voice belongs to Eric Tagg, a name that has shown up in the pages of this blog when he provided the original "No One There" which was covered by Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）on his 1995 "Cornerstones" album. Both Matsubara and Tagg worked on "Silly Crush".
Indeed, I am a sucker for a good tight horn section and this one has the prolific Jake H. Concepcion on sax once more.
Thanks for having a post bout Silly Crush. I love Citipop (or Japanese Funk pop disco overall), specially this song of Masuki Matsubara. I think the song is brilliant, catchy and addictive. Plz write more analysis about the song, I’d love to read.
ReplyDeleteI love Japanese Citypop as well!! So good. This song has been particularly relevant to me the last week or so.
DeleteHope you can continue to enjoy the nice groove and slick stylings of City Pop. :)
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