Pedro & Capricious -- My Lover's Eyes

Back in the late 1980s when I was still struggling through university, I became friends with a Japanese fellow who also had some affinity for the old pop music in his home country. He was quite impressed and surprised on finding out that I was also a fan of kayo kyoku. In one of our conversations, I mentioned that I enjoyed the song stylings of Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）and even stated one of her most famous ballads "Go-ban Gai no Mari e"（五番街のマリーへ）. He then stated her old band which I needed a few requests for him to repeat since I couldn't quite understand it.

Pedro & Capricious（ペドロ&カプリシャス）, with all due respect to the band itself, doesn't exactly smoothly roll off the tongue and into the ears when said for the first time. I know now that the first part of the name is based on the founder Pedro Umemura（ペドロ梅村）. As for the "Capricious" part, I still have no idea.

Anyways when it comes to Pedro & Capricious, although I even mentioned in my first article for the band (which was the aforementioned "Go-ban Gai no Mari e") that it dabbled in folk, Latin, jazz and adult contemporary, I had always mentally slathered the group as a folk outfit based on songs such as "Go-ban Gai no Mari e". Well, that image was shattered last night...happily, I might add... when I discovered this treat on YouTube.

I never would have identified this as a Pedro & Capricious number without seeing the band and the song identified under the video. Indeed, this is "My Lover's Eyes" by P&C through their 1980 album "Oasis"（オアシス）, and it's about as far from their folkie days that I could hear. Just brimming with AOR goodness and given that slight technopop sheen thanks to Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, "My Lover's Eyes" is a wonderful feast for my ears that deserves its own sun hat and a glass of Perrier with a pink sweater wrapped around my waist. And last but certainly not least, there are those sexy and mellow vocals by Naoko Matsudaira（松平直子）who was the third vocalist for the band after the departure of Mariko Takahashi into her own very successful solo career. I'm not sure if Matsudaira had ever gone solo herself but that voice would have been perfect for R&B from those days.

Would love to hear more of "Oasis" if "My Lover's Eyes" is of any indication (love the cover, by the way). There's not a lot of information on the album and in fact I had to look at a brief blurb on the search results on Yahoo to find out that Sakamoto had anything to do with the song and that was synthesizer arrangement. So I don't know whether he actually composed the song and for that matter, who took care of the lyrics. And "Oasis" seems to be one of those albums that has yet to get the remastering treatment so maybe it's only the LPs out there, perhaps available for auction.

April 4 2018: Actually I know some more information now thanks to Daemonskald. Ken Sato（佐藤健）took care of the music while Simon Browne provided the lyrics.