Another weekend comes to an end. I had another good Sunday with my friend for another round of anime and food and since we're into April now, the Winter season has been wrapping up with some satisfaction on our part. However, this article isn't about any anison here but being late in the evening as I write this, I've decided to go with Mood Kayo.
I had never heard of this group called Akira Sawada & Harbor Knights (沢田あきらとハーバーナイツ...not sure whether they were knights or nights, but for the sake of argument, I'll go with the former), and according to one Japanese fellow's blog, this Mood Kayo sextet never really made it big. In fact, it was quite hard to find any information on the group especially since there is no representation of them on J-Wiki so I couldn't even find out when Sawada & Harbor Knights first started out.
However, there is this one song from 1982 that they performed called "Tokyo Eleven Love Call" which was not too bad for either me or that fellow with the blog. It's got all the tropes for a typical Mood Kayo with the Knights providing the chorus, the Latin touch to the music by Tetsuya Gen（弦哲也）, and Kazumasa Koganei's（小金井一正）lyrics about a sophisticated night on the town in the nation's capital. But Sawada isn't the one on vocals; the crooner here is Knight Koji Hama（浜こうじ）.
(karaoke version; original video was taken down)
And yet, the female announcer introducing the song here states that "Tokyo Eleven Love Call" was a hit for Sawada and his group so who knows how it did originally? Plus, there's the fact that the song was performed on TV so perhaps there has been some legacy of success. In this case, it was covered by Hiroshi Kadokawa（角川博）.
Can't say I'd ever come across the Harbor Knights nor "Tokyo Eleven Love Call" when I was deeper in my Mood Kayo phase. I don't think I've seen them/heard the song on any of those Mood Kayo specials. It's interesting to know about relatively unknown MK groups, though.
ReplyDeleteThe song is easy on the ears, but considering that it was released in the 80's when Mood Kayo had seen much better days, I don't think the song and the group was able to stand out and so it eventually almost disappeared into oblivion.
That was pretty much what I read on one fellow's blog. The group didn't really distinguish itself compared to some of the other established units. Still, I guess the song had a better legacy than the Harbor Knights.
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