Hiromi Go -- Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai（比呂魅卿の犯罪）

Ironic when I consider it. I've known Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）since 1981 when I first really got into kayo kyoku due to his dynamic appearance as the young man about town on that year's Kohaku Utagassen performing "Oyome Samba"（お嫁サンバ）. He's done quite a few more appearances on the NHK special since then, and he was a fairly regular presence on the CHIN-FM radio show "Sounds of Japan" with his hits. But this month, when I got his April 1983 album "Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai", this was actually the very first Go album that I ever purchased in my life after close to 40 years listening to kayo and J-Pop. I had been expecting to get a BEST compilation as my first purchase but never got around to it, so it was pretty special to get this particular original album.

Doing the blog over the past 8 years, I realized that despite his very uptempo material that he provided on the Kohaku and other music shows during the 1980s, he was also exploring some other genres, most notably City Pop. Come to think of it, though, he would have been a natural fit for the Japanese amalgam of Latin, soul, disco and other urban contemporary-themed tunes since coming out from his aidoru 1970s, his music as a young man of the 1980s tended to go that way.

But what got me to buy "Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai"? Well, it was that City Pop-themed "Kimi no Na wa Psycho"（君の名はサイコ）from the album, and there was something about that rather dramatic album cover which made young Go truly look like some court noble of intrigue.

Then I heard the title track on YouTube. "Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai" starts off with what sounds like a first scene from a film noir threatening to go into a lot of flashbacks as Hiromi very haltingly but coolly describes his presumably guilty partner-in-crime, a mystery woman who has flown the coop leaving poor Hiromi in the interrogation room. Mind you, he doesn't sound too panicky with the third degree on him.

Following that comes the music...and it soars. No sign of any street-level 1940s jazz. Instead the frenetic soundscape conjures up images of a Jetsons-style saucer flying through the spires of a future utopian city but with perhaps that level of Mickey Spillane suspense following it and perhaps Go inside. So, suddenly we've got three different settings here: 1) the cover for the album which, by the way, means "Lord Hiromi's Crime" with the image of court intrigue, 2) the film noir narration by him at the intro and in the middle, and 3) that future utopia.

Yup, "Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai" the opening track has really done a number on me. And as it turns out, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）was the person behind the sound production. In fact, The Professor's bandmates from Yellow Magic Orchestra were helping out with Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）on bass and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）on drums. Immediately, I started wondering whether this album was a cousin of sorts to Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）comeback release of sorts "Romantique" from 1980. The guys from YMO were on hand to help her, too. With "Romantique", I remember reading either the liner notes or the information on J-Wiki and Ohnuki saying that she really didn't want to have "Romantique" sounding simply like a YMO album featuring her. And it wasn't...the synthpop was definitely in there, especially in its opening track "Carnaval", but Ohnuki was most definitely calling the shots with the creation of the songs.

Not sure what the circumstances were with YMO and Go when this project was launched. I haven't known the latter to write his own songs (although the final track on the original release was indeed created by him), and as I said, "Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai" is my first Go purchase, so I can't make any comparisons about the overall sound for this album. But I do figure that Sakamoto's distinct sound is imbued into this one, just like it was for "Romantique".

Indeed, Sakamoto composed the title track and Miyuki Nakajima（中島みゆき）was behind the lyrics about the mystery woman enticing Go into her web and then taking off. In a way, the story reminds me of the original "The Thomas Crown Affair" with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, except that the roles are reversed. Considering how much I've already written on this one track, it and "Kimi no Na wa Psycho" finally had me pulling the trigger on my money.

Making another comparison with Ohnuki, both "Romantique" and the preceding album "Mignonne" were not total immediate hits with me. It took some time for me to embrace all the tracks but I eventually got there. I'm hoping that this will be the case here since I'm not completely on board with all of the songs on "Hiromi-kyo" just yet.

Case in point: "Ai no Kuuchuu Buranko"（愛の空中ブランコ...Mid-Air Swing of Love）which was composed by Sakamoto and written by Shigesato Itoi（糸井重里）. When I listened to this one for the first time, I kinda twisted my face since I wasn't sure whether they and Go were aiming for a really dramatic polka as a tango. However, Itoi's lyrics also speak of some sort of spy activity, perhaps a dead drop. All in all, though, the song is starting to grow on me, and the interesting thing is that Jake H. Concepcion is on the clarinet this instead of his saxophone!

"Bibou no Miyako"（美貌の都...City of Beauty） just happens to be Go's 45th single released in March 1983. The album version has that air of mystery as if the story were taking place in a postwar European city. There's a lot of class and honour among the spies but when something has got to be done, the weaponry will come out...but have at least a glass of the finest champagne. And yet, Sakamoto has arranged it so that there's that sort of techno-jazz along similar lines as Kazuhiro Nishimatsu's（西松一博）"Bouekifu Monogatari"（貿易風物語）. Nakajima provided lyrics for Kyohei Tsutsumi's（筒美京平）melody. The original single peaked at No. 18.

(full album)

"Muchuu"（夢中...I'm Into You） at 13:34 is a creative collaboration between Sakamoto and the late rocker Kiyoshiro Imawano（忌野清志郎）, and it sounds like something that Imawano would handle even better than Go. I can get the New Wave feeling from it as Go plays a sleazy Lothario putting his sights on his next target. Maybe there's even a bit of Elvis Costello?

As I mentioned earlier, Go did write and compose the original final track on "Hiromi-kyo", "Dakara Spectacle"（だからスペクタクル...So It's Spectacular） which begins like something almost Vangelis in its dreamy and haunting intro, but then it progresses into some cool City Pop funk as the singer invites his potential partner for a more exciting life. From the arrangement, I'd say that there will be a fast car and rich food involved. Not too bad, Hiromi.

Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）wrote and composed "Mainichi Boku wo Aishite"（毎日僕を愛して...Love Me Everyday）, a happy-go-lucky number about once again going after that young lady. From those bright and bouncy opening bars, I could feel that this is indeed a Yano creation...and she does come in at the end to back up Go. But at one point, it almost crosses the border into Steely Dan territory.

The last song that I will put up here is the single version of "Bibou no Miyako" which, for the lack of a better word, sounds more kayo without the Sakamoto influence. I think it's those fast strings. And the original even has an accordion for more of that French effect.

My overall impression of "Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai" is that all of these bigwigs in the Japanese music industry got together to craft an album that seemed to fit the Hiromi esthetic: the young and cocky bon vivant who's searching for love everywhere and usually finds it. In addition to the people that I've already mentioned, Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）, Tsuyoshi Kon（今剛）and Masaki Matsubara（松原正樹）also contributed their instruments to the cause. But when it comes right down to it, I did get the album because I saw that headline in my head: "YMO and Go work together!"