I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
Pizzicato Five -- It's a Beautiful Day
Well, I couldn't deny that it was a sunny day today. However, we're on the cusp of getting majorly snowed up tomorrow and then to top it all off, we'll be going into a deep freeze on Friday. The winter keeps on plowing on.
My years as a toddler were in the final period of the American network variety shows, so although it's hard to remember a lot of the singing performances at this point, I still possess a vague memory of what was going on through programs such as "The Ed Sullivan Show". I remember singers or bands on a big wide stage with go-go boot-wearing women dancing in the background as the general structure. Of course, I also remember Tom Jones and that he did have his own show for a while, but here he is above on "Ed", and I have to marvel how fluid his hip joints were back then. It wouldn't surprise me if the near-octogenarian could still put everyone younger than him to shame with his moves.
Well, here's a fine how-do-you-do! The good folks of Pizzicato Five brought back some of my childhood memories in the form of their music video for "It's a Beautiful Day". Ed and Tom and Austin Powers may be properly approving of theDivine Ms. Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）and Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽）along with the rest of the group as they bring back images of the Swinging '60s.
However, "It's a Beautiful Day" was P5's March 1997 single which was written and composed by Konishi. Furthermore, it also got onto the band's 10th studio album"Happy End of the World" from June of that year. The recorded song also starts off and is interspersed with a cheerleading chant that wasn't in the music video version. See how your hips feel after grooving to this one. Ah, I almost forgot to mention that the song is also included on P5's most recent BEST compilation, "The Band of 20th Century: Nippon Columbia Years 1991-2001".
The song that introduced me to Pizzicato Five. Still probably my favorite from them. I first saw this on a performance on the Comedy Central show Viva Variety, which had them dressed in cheerleader outfits, despite the lack of the cheer spelling out the group’s name like on the album version.
The song that introduced me to Pizzicato Five. Still probably my favorite from them. I first saw this on a performance on the Comedy Central show Viva Variety, which had them dressed in cheerleader outfits, despite the lack of the cheer spelling out the group’s name like on the album version.
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