Tatsuro Yamashita -- Monday Blue

Met up with a few of the guys yesterday for brunch and a movie. The movie du jour was "Atomic Blonde" starring Charlize Theron as super agent/force of nature Lorraine Broughton, aka Jane Bourne Bond-Wick. That alias is a joke, of course, but it does describe who this lady is and what she brings to the table (soon to be pulverized). It was quite an entertaining hoot and I would certainly recommend the folks in Japan to catch it (not due out there until October 20th), and especially for folks like me who still love listening to the 80s European New Wave stuff, you'll want to get the soundtrack. The first song right from Scene 1 is New Order's "Blue Monday", for example. One of my favourites from the era.

Well, I managed to find a song by Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）which is titled "Monday Blue". Being from his 3rd studio album "GO AHEAD!" from December 1978, it's definitely not New Wave at all but it is surely a wonderfully soulful urban ballad. I can just imagine those listeners accustomed to the Oricon-friendly aidoru hits and enka ballads from the 1970s coming across this one and perhaps some of them instantly fell in love (or at least, in intrigue) with New Music.

Written and composed by the master himself, the song isn't just about the usual harangue about Mondays but perhaps the end of a romance during the weekend although near the end, there seems to be some hope for revival. A couple of things got me in the heart while I was listening to "Monday Blue". One was the lyric where Tats sings "...whenever a love ends, it's always in the morning light". When you put that together with the lyric that gives the setting of October, there is something quite wistful about waking up on a morning that doesn't have the sun all that high in the sky anymore. The other point is the romantic arrangement itself.

According to the J-Wiki article on "GO AHEAD!", Yamashita got a group together in the form of drummer Hidekazu 'Ponta' Murakami（村上 “ポンタ” 秀一）, keyboardist Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）, guitarist Tsunehide Matsuki（松木恒秀）and bassist Akira Okazawa（岡沢章）for getting this song together. In retrospect, it sounds rather incredible but the four fellows were rather nervous about how "Monday Blue" would gel but Tats seemed quite confident and comfortable about the results. Plus the control room staff during the recording had their breath taken away near the end of the song.

I've noticed that I've been putting up a lot of his material up on the blog over the past several months but being a biased Tatsuro Yamashita fan, it's awfully hard to simply ignore when music like the one here is so good to listen to. As it is though, "GO AHEAD!" only got as high as No. 75 on Oricon in its original LP release. A re-release of it in 2002 on CD had it getting more rankings love by hitting No. 25.