Pocket Biscuits -- Rapturous Blue

This is actually the back cover of a T-Square album
but it's blue and the swimmer is rather quite rapturous.

The lone entry on the blog (up to now) for surprisingly polished gimmicky band Pocket Biscuits (ポケットビスケッツ) had been "Yellow Yellow Happy", one of my musical touchstones during the 1990s part of my life in Ichikawa and Tokyo. Considering that members Chiaki（千秋）, Teruyoshi 'Ucchan' Uchimura（内村光良）and Udo Suzuki（ウド鈴木）were all comedic tarento, they did actually put together some pretty catchy tunes.

"Yellow Yellow Happy" was their 2nd single and Pocket Biscuits' breakthrough hit, but I also heard bits and pieces of another song by them from that variety show where the unit originated, "Ucchan-Nanchan no Uri Nari!!" (ウッチャンナンチャンのウリナリ!!). It turned out to be their debut single "Rapturous Blue" and the song that got Pocket Biscuits through the door (you can read about how Chiaki, Ucchan and Udo got together in the "Yellow Yellow Happy" article).

Starting off with Chiaki's echoing voice, "Rapturous Blue" dives into an intro that sounds as if it were inspired by B'z in their early years before Chiaki comes back for some poppy verses and then into the more dramatic rumbling technopop refrain. It didn't get any higher than No. 20 on Oricon but I've ended up thinking that the group's debut was pretty darn good. Chiaki herself came up with the lyrics with some help from the rest of the band while Bakufu Slump（爆風スランプ）guitarist Pappara Kawai（パッパラー河合）composed it.

"Rapturous Blue" also showed up on Pocket Biscuits' debut album, "Colorful" which was released in July 1997 but with a decidedly more laid-back arrangement. For some reason, I kept thinking about PSY-S with this version. And the entire song was sung in English by Chiaki but if the lyrics are hard to understand, then you can see the written word here. The album went all the way up to No. 3.