Motoyoshi Iwasaki & WINDY -- Kimi ga Nokoshita Natsu（君が残した夏）/Kaze no Station（風のStation）

Back to the 9/10ths of the iceberg as I have found another pop group that I hadn't known about until sometime in the last few months.

According to J-Wiki, Motoyoshi Iwasaki & WINDY（岩崎元是&WINDY）was a band that had a brief time in the sun in 1986~1987. Led by singer-songwriter and guitarist Iwasaki, WINDY consisted of keyboardist Naohiro Inaba（稲葉直弘）, drummer Kazunori Seki（関和則）and bassist Yoshihito Muranaka（村中義仁）. Altogether, two original albums and four singles came from the group, with a 2012 box set being released titled "The all songs of WINDY".

(26:57)

"Kimi ga Nokoshita Natsu" (The Summer You Left Behind) is the B-side for Iwasaki & WINDY's 3rd single "Maru de Tenshi no You ni"（まるで天使のように...Just Like An Angel） which came out in April 1987. Although I saw an entry for the band in the book "Japanese City Pop", I think I would place this sunny song as simply a nice slice of summery pop, not really in the City Pop or AOR genres. Composed by Iwasaki and written by Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）, this was how I was introduced to the band's works and if I'm not mistaken, I think I heard it on Van Paugam's radio (glad that it and New J-Channel's radio are both back up and running). I guess I can say that it's a skippier type of Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）...not so much by the beach but perhaps on a sun-dappled town road.

I actually found this one by Iwasaki & WINDY earlier tonight and liked it so much that I decided to feature it here as well. "Kaze no Station" (Windy Station) is a track on the band's first album "Heart Wash" from August 1986, and this track is quite a bit more dramatic with some snap to Seki's drumming and the arrangements taking things deeper into the city with added sax appeal. I think Iwasaki sounds rather similar to Kiyotaka Sugiyama（杉山清貴）and Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）but surrounded by a Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）love song. "Music Avenue" put it best when kaz-shin remarked that this would have made for a good number to put into a Japanese TV drama during the 1980s.