Currently in the not-so-common situation of being between assignments right now since my project manager has given me the heads-up on a short editing thing coming down the pipe in the next couple of hours.
In the meantime, then, I can write up this article about another track from master composer/arranger Katsuhisa Hattori's（服部克久）music series "Ongaku Batake"（音楽畑...Music Field）. Last year, I did introduce the series with an oh-so-mellow AOR song "Secrets" from the second album "Juicy & Crispy".
Well, from his third album "Bon Voyage" (1986), I bring you "Dream Avenue" which, as YouTube commenter Ikaros 420 put it, an "amazing combination of late 50s and 80s sounds/styles". And yeah, even if it had been recorded in the mid-1980s of aidoru-dom and City Pop, "Dream Avenue" with Hattori's silky arrangement and heavenly voice work (would like to know who the main female vocalist was) brings back memories of 1950s musicals and song-and-dance segments on the old American variety shows. Something rather Manhattan Transfer in the execution whenever that legendary group goes for the old standards.
But Hattori wasn't the only one digging into that aspect of music back then. Light and mellow Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）came up with their own jazzy version of "September Valentine" on their lone album "Thru Traffic" and there was Ruiko Kurahashi's（倉橋ルイ子）take on torch song "Gas Tou"（ガス燈）in her album "Main Course".
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