Bread & Butter -- Cruising On（クルージング・オン）

Monday morning...and (knocking on wood hard) there's more hope in the air as the economy begins to ever so carefully unfurl its sails once more and infection rates continue to drop. I went out to the local supermarket earlier today to get the week's groceries only to be greeted by wet snow. Yup, you read that correctly. There was a brief but intense flurry of the white stuff as I walked over to the Metro. Fortunately, though, there was no lineup and I had plenty of space to get the food, including a few steaks that I'd assumed would be in short supply (actually, beef is in short supply but I still could get some tenderloin for my folks).

I thought that I ought to start off this new week on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with something appropriate for this Monday morning by getting a track from AOR duo Bread & Butter's（ブレッド＆バッター）1980 album "Monday Morning" (staring at that cover of the Iwasawa brothers against the ocean is therapy in itself). In tandem with the title track that I've already written about, here is "Cruising On" created by the same pair behind the song "Monday Morning", Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）on lyrics and one-half of the B&B duo, Satsuya Iwasawa（岩沢幸矢）.

Compared to the really relaxing title track, "Cruising On" has a bit more Margaritaville jump in the melody, as it should, since the Bread & Butter boys are singing about leaving that stifling company to enjoy some wonderful sailing off the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture. There are even a couple of shout outs to the islands in the area including Jogashima. Nothing like the wind at your back and the calm blue ocean under you as you race by in your sloop, and "Cruising On" ends with that famous genre Twinkle Riff/Perrier Pour.

Along with its insertion in "Monday Morning", "Cruising On" became the B-side to Bread & Butter's 15th single, the classic "Ano Koro no Mama"（あの頃のまま）from 1981.