Tazumi Toyoshima -- Machibouke（待ちぼうけ）

Over the Holidays, I received a very nice gift from fellow contributor JTM in the form of a US-compiled City Pop album titled "Pacific Breeze". Was pleasantly surprised since I hadn't been aware of any such collections being created Stateside although I should have been due to the genre's rise outside of Japan in the past few years. Very City Pop cover, may I add.

The final track on this compilation is Tazumi Toyoshima's（豊島たづみ）"Machibouke" (Waiting in Vain), and from the title, I would say that the lyrics are probably not the happiest but the music is plenty funky. Both were supplied by Hiro Tsunoda（つのだ☆ひろ）(I used Daemonskald's technique of searching for image scans of album liner notes), so the funkiness is explained right there. One commenter wrote that the opening bars of "Machibouke" sounded like the theme for an 80s cop show (either in America or Japan) which I laughed it in understanding. There is that indeed that feeling of "Let's go get those scumbags, partner!" with those horns declaring the good guys getting into gun-toting action.

Originally, "Machibouke" was a track on Toyoshima's April 1979 2nd album "Tomadoi Twilight"（とまどいトワイライト）whose dreamier title track is arguably her most famous contribution. As for "Pacific Breeze", a lot of the tracks have already been covered in the blog but there are a few more for me to explore. Interestingly enough, there is even a Wikipedia article on the compilation so that you can find out what some of the other tracks are.