Ken Tamura -- A Little Bit Easier

Admittedly, we were pretty spoiled up to this point, meteorologically speaking. Aside from a surprise blizzard in early October, it had been gloriously mild to the extent that we ended up with a Green Christmas but it seems that not too many people really minded. But then, as we dug deeper into January, it started becoming more seasonal with the temperatures dipping lower and lower before we got walloped by another snowstorm last Saturday, and now it feels like a typical winter.

Plus, as I mentioned in this morning's article "Missing", our transit system today left an unannounced large steaming pile of woe for commuters coming in from the west end with a subway derailment, necessitating long waits and packed shuttle buses. I think a good ton of folks are probably more than happy to see winter take off although we are still only a third of the way through the season. Things could be a little bit easier.

Ahhh...segue again, you say. Yup, I offer "A Little Bit Easier" by Japanese-American singer-songwriter Ken Tamura（ケン田村）via his 1982 album "Fly By Sunset". I first wrote about Tamura back in the summer of 2016 when I found one of his songs, "Inemuri"（いねむり）, on one of my "Light Mellow" compilation CDs, and it's perhaps somewhat criminal that I haven't followed up on him until now in 2020.

So, allow me to redeem myself. "A Little Bit Easier", which was written and composed by Tamura, strikes me as a tune that is straddling that City Pop/AOR borderline and there is that background guitar riff which reminds me of AOR band Ambrosia. It's all light and mellow, and for any of you poor commuters who got caught in this morning's traffic horror, I can recommend "A Little Bit Easier" to make things, well, a little bit easier. Love the co-vocals between Tamura and that woman, although I haven't been able to identify her, and will always appreciate a good city sax solo.

I was able to confirm that Tamura was indeed behind words and music through the JASRAC database, although for some reason, the title was given as "Little Bit Easier A". Just wondering whether the person who transcribed the information was taking a poke at Canada.