Tatsuhiko Yamamoto -- Saijoukai （最上階）

Well, I plunked some more yen into the coffers of CD Japan since there were a couple of albums that I wanted to peruse. One of them was a compilation album "70s & 80s Best" by Tatsuhiko Yamamoto（山本達彦）who I have written about in the last year starting with his single "Last Good-Bye" from 1982.

As with a number of singers in the City Pop genre, there isn't a whole lot of information on Yamamoto. For one thing, the J-Wiki article for him has only deposited the singles and albums that actually scored relatively high in the rankings which means that only his 80s output is listed. It would be easy to make the mistake of assuming Yamamoto debuted in that decade as a solo singer (he had been with the band Orange in the mid-1970s). Plus, his website is sorely lacking in material, including any sort of discography which has been categorized as "under construction".

However, I managed to find out that Yamamoto started his solo career in 1978 with his album "Toppuu〜SUDDEN WIND"（突風）. One of the tracks from that release and the first track on "70s & 80s Best" is "Saijoukai" (Top Floor) which was composed by Yamamoto and written by Ayumi Date（伊達歩）. It's a melancholy if hopeful ballad about a man standing on the top floor of a building sometime around the Holidays while paying tribute to the love of his life who may in fact have died tragically. My impression is that instead of wallowing in eternal grief, the protagonist is coming out of his mourning and thanking her up in heaven for the good times they had together.

The one thing that got my interest about Yamamoto was that from listening to some of his other songs on YouTube, he wasn't just another singer specializing in the City Pop genre. He started to come across as a pop balladeer. The piano also seemed to be an extension of himself with that symbolism further reinforced with the faded picture of the instrument on the front cover of "70s & 80s Best". I gather that he was the Piano Man of Japan, somewhat comparable to the Piano Man of the USA, Billy Joel, who is also very popular in Japan.

"Saijoukai" is definitely not City Pop but it is somewhat wistful 70s New Music to me. In a way, he rather bridges the gap between two other Japanese balladeer-songwriters, Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）and Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）. Yamamoto isn't quite as nasal as Inagaki or dips quite as deep as Kisugi in terms of his voice (although this isn't to say that Takao is a basso profundo by any means); he occupies the middle between those two fellows. Another insight is that when listening to Disc 1 of "70s & 80s Best" last night, Yamamoto struck me as a singer who may be quite comfortable in the pop realm but, like Inagaki and Kisugi, hasn't minded going a bit rock or even jazzy at times.

Will be listening to Disc 2 later on tonight. But this one is definitely a keeper.