Hiroyuki Namba -- Party Tonight

Kinda looks like my city got transplanted onto Utopia Planitia on Mars, doesn't it? Not sure how all this came about but I didn't let the photographic opportunity go to waste.

Anyways, just a few days after writing about musician, singer-songwriter and SF novelist Hiroyuki Namba（難波弘之）for the first time, I did feel rather compelled to come back to him quickly since I came across a couple of tracks from his 1981 album "Party Tonight". I don't have the album...yet, but still would like to introduce these two.

The first is the title track itself with the full title of "Party Tonight ~ Chikyuu wo Tooku Hanarete"（パーティ・トゥナイト (地球を遠く離れて...Get Far Away from the Earth)）. Composed by Namba and written by Yukari Udo（有働ゆかり）, I recognized the song immediately since it's also included on one of the "Light Mellow" CDs in my possession. It sounds like a pretty calming down-to-earth City Pop number but Udo's lyrics paint a cosmic tale of someone inviting that significant other for what seems like a romantic rendezvous on the Red Planet. Before I took a look at the lyrics, I had already my ears exposed to the then-odd lyric involving Phobos and Deimos, the two moons orbiting Mars.

However, the piece de resistance for me on this album so far is "Silver-Gray no Machi" (シルバーグレイの街...City of Silver and Gray) which is even more of a 1981 party-down-Tokyo-town treat than the title track, and for those bass addicts, you've come to the right place. I couldn't find out for sure who created this ideal contribution to a Van Paugam City Pop party but according to the Raregroove shop, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）and Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）also had their fingerprints on the song, and certainly that would be Yoshida's voice supporting Namba's vocals. The overall arrangement sounds like something from the late Rod Temperton's bag of tricks, and "Silver-Gray no Machi" could have adorned the ears of any city slicker heading to Shinjuku or Roppongi way back when while wearing a shiny silver-gray suit with skinny tie.