NUTS -- Kaze wo Kanjite ~ my precious time（風を感じて）

Time to bring out another one of those singers or bands from the underwater 9/10ths of my personal musical iceberg.

I'm not sure how the duo that makes up NUTS came up with the name. I mean, it's obviously their decision and preference to go with it, but the opportunities for snarky jokes could have been endless, if they had decided to take the act West. If someone didn't like the duo's sound, he could just blast out "I'm allergic to NUTS" or if folks had forgotten the names of the members, they could have just pointed at them and simply said "They're NUTS". Of course, since I've come across a lot of bands while doing this blog over the past several years, I could have proposed a collaboration between this duo and a City Pop duo from the 1980s, and said that they were BEERS AND NUTS. A Japanese mixologist's dream lineup for his bar if it had a stage.

All (bad) joking aside, NUTS was made up of vocalist Tomomi Saito（斎藤友美）and keyboardist Akihiko Hirama（平間あきひこ）, and they had a brief time as a duo between 1994 and 1996. Releasing 7 singles and 2 albums, one of those singles that got some attention was "Kaze wo Kanjite ~ my precious time" (Feeling the Wind). An appropriately breezy pop song according to the title, it's a very comfortable tune that reminds me just as much of the early 1990s in terms of J-Pop as any of the rockin' Being acts did.

"Kaze wo Kanjite" got its notice for being the campaign song of the Tiovita vitamin drink in 1995. It's the final ad in this long list of Tiovita ads above. The tune was actually the 5th single by NUTS, released in July 1995.

The late 1980s had its share of female singer-songwriters providing their form of City Pop through those champagne synths. The early 1990s, though, had J-Pop characterized partially with pop tunes defined by somewhat airier synths, figuratively bringing in a fresh feeling and openness. It's almost as if singers and their fans had wanted to get out of the nightclubs and discos of the Bubble Era and out into the sunniness of the daytime countryside.