Pisces -- Koibito to Konaide（恋人と来ないで）

Saw this bittersweet ballad recently on YouTube and I found it wistful enough for me to cover it tonight.

There was a short-lived duo called Pisces（パイシス）consisting of Paul Okada（ポール岡田）, formerly of the Group Sounds band The Carnabeats（ザ・カーナビーツ）, and Yukiko Terakado（寺門由紀子）, a jazz singer who had studied at the Musashino Academia Musicae in Tokyo. Pisces was formed in 1974 and only released two singles, the second of which was "Koibito to Konaide" (Don't Come Here With Your Lover) which came out in April 1976.

Written and composed by Yumi Arai（荒井由実）, "Koibito to Konaide" is this grand and wistful ballad about a final meeting between two people before the breakup at a favourite cafe in which the woman asks her soon-to-be former boyfriend to remember and preserve their past by not letting any new partners invade it...namely the cafe. It might sound pretty harsh but I can understand her feelings on that matter, although considering the tone of the song, she may just be joshing.

Reading the information below the YouTube video, I also found out that Yuming's（ユーミン）concept for the song was based on the music of Donny & Marie Osmond! Way back when, our family used to watch "The Donny & Marie Show" on Friday nights on ABC, and on listening to the song, I totally got the feeling of Marie's big hit in 1973 "Paper Roses", a song that I heard often on the show and on radio. Amazing how things come full circle.

Going back to "Koibito to Konaide", that same information also let me know that frequent Yuming collaborators, Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）, provided backing vocals. Some years later, Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）did a slightly more melancholy self-cover of the song with actor Masumi Okada（岡田眞澄）as a track on her 1980 album "Surf & Snow". FYI, there is no familial relationship between Paul Okada and Masumi Okada since the former is a stage name for Kazuhiko Nagaoka（長岡和彦）from Shiga Prefecture.