Yoshitaka Minami -- Poolside（プールサイド）

Ahhh...I finally get to taking a look at the third of those pre-debut influence songs for Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）that I had written about the other day in that special Creator article. So, as a reminder, those three Japanese tunes were "Kyou wa Nandaka"（今日はなんだか）by Sugar Babe（シュガーベイブ）, "Suna no Onna"（砂の女）by Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, and "Poolside" by Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）.

In that article for the musician/producer, I mentioned for Minami's "Poolside", which was a track on his September 1978 album "South of the Border", according to the original section on his pre-debut influences in J-Wiki, that it had represented a then-unattainable dreamland of sorts for the teenaged Kadomatsu. However, I think it then presented itself as a dare and a challenge for him to reach for that Valhalla, a place that he finally reached when he decided to head for The Big Apple in the mid-1980s.

"Poolside" was composed by Minami and written by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）. For me, after listening to it a few times now, I feel that it was an interesting song for Kadomatsu to fall for since from Minami's music, this isn't really depicting a high-class resort on the level of "Fantasy Island". That particular keyboard is nothing that I had ever heard before in an AOR tune, and it reminds me more of Minami as some seen-it-all heard-it-all journeyman entertainer doing the circuit of sparsely populated Holiday Inn in-hotel dining rooms across America playing well on a well-used instrument ("Thanks all for coming! Try the beef!"). There are Christmas lights strung haphazardly on the walls and plastic palm trees here and there, with the bartender making overly sweet and strong Mai Tais. Meanwhile, Kisugi's lyrics show a world which is shrunk all the way down to the immediate area around the Holiday Inn pool as a fellow falls for a lady, probably in a most appealing bikini nonchalantly enjoying her life in and out of the bright blue chlorinated water. The fellow could even be the entertainer a few hours before showtime.

Well, I have depicted what might be considered to be a fairly skeevy setting, but in twisting around a Shakespearean quote for my own usage: I have come here to praise Minami, not to bury him. "Poolside" works for me because it shows off a scene that perhaps a lot of young dream-filled Kadomatsus back in the 1970s in Japan could have swooned for: staying and enjoying the life in a typical Holiday Inn in the USA. Back then, when taking an overseas trip was perhaps still a fantasy for many Japanese, especially high school kids without a job or tons of income in a land which was on the way to become the second-biggest economy on Earth at that time, even that so-called mundane business trip may have seemed like a journey of wonder.

As a Canadian kid, I remember spending some vacations in the cheap motels and actively lobbying my Dad and Mom (much to their short-tempered chagrin) to hole up in a Holiday Inn or a Motel 6 for the night during a fishing trip. It was exciting! The last time I had a similar-enough experience was over a decade ago, when my Air Canada flight back to Japan from Toronto's Pearson Airport had been scrapped due to a snowstorm and I ended up staying at a hotel across the street. I had a perfectly serviceable room and a buffet all to my own (heaven for me back then) in the first-floor dining room. No pool and no entertainment, though.

Really, the only way for me to find out for sure what Kadomatsu was thinking back then on hearing "Poolside" is to ask him directly. But since that's pretty much out of the question, I can only guess that listening to the entirety of "South of the Border" must have generated that world that he sorely wanted to see and experience and then build through his music. Incidentally, I've put up one other track from Minami's album, "Hizuke Henkosen"（日付変更線）.