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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.

Friday, June 19, 2020

Shoody -- Tokyo Melody


Ahhh...good ol' Roppongi Hills. I taught one of my students in a café there and I actually caught the premiere of "Revenge of the Sith" in the VIP theatre one Saturday morning in 2005. Bought myself a beer on the way to my armchair-like seat...as I was watching the last of the "Star Wars" prequels, I realized indeed that the beer helped.


Only discovered about this City Pop treasure within the last half-hour. Titled "Tokyo Melody" and sung by Shoody（シューディ）, I first found it on one of the many genre compilations and then went searching for the individual song. Luckily, I could find it as a video that was originally posted back in 2012.

Nothing better than a song like this for a City Pop Friday...tight horns, groovy keyboard and the cool vocals by Shoody. A lot of City Pop fans/commenters on YouTube have wondered aloud about traveling back in time to experience life in the late 1970s and 1980s while listening to their favourite tunes. I'd say that they would do worse than pop this in their magic Walkman while making the trip back. I myself have wondered what it must have been like to walk in West Shinjuku or Roppongi in the same year that I made that trip to Tokyo as a teenager. Heck, I wouldn't mind taking a walk around the Tokyo Prince Hotel near Shiba Park in 1981 once more.

As is the case with a number of these City Pop songs and singers, I couldn't find out a whole lot about them. From one source, I gleaned that Shoody is the daughter of a man from Mozambique while her mother is a Swedish-American. She released two albums, the first of which was "Tomorrow's Child" from 1981 which has "Tokyo Melody" as a track. The single version of the song was released ahead of the album. From another site, I found out that Shoody was backed by Tetsuji Hayashi's（林哲司）disco band, The Eastern Gang. Indeed, Hayashi was responsible for music and arrangement while someone named Gregory Starr wrote the lyrics according to the JASRAC library. Somehow, I don't think that it's the same guy who worked at the United Nations.
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7 comments:

  1. Chasing ShowaJune 20, 2020 at 11:05 AM

    Hello J-Canuck,

    Great catch! There are a lot of bands in this vein that I would love to find but are so obscure. You would have to be living in Japan and staking out every old record shop in the country.

    Now if someone could direct me to the Shaking Jigsaw Puzzly Band LP I'd be in their debt.

    Oh, on the Gregory Starr thing you can find out a little about him here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Starr

    And some of his voice work here:

    https://youtu.be/MppkRGuXZIM

    Although this is not his Youtube channel he did make a reply to this video in the comment section.

    Thanks.

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    1. J-CanuckJune 20, 2020 at 3:40 PM

      Hi, Chasing Showa. Yeah, it's nice to do some of that fishing in YouTube waters from time to time and see if I can catch that marlin. :) You're gonna have to educate me what this Shaking Jigsaw Puzzly Band is all about.

      Thanks for the Gregory Starr info. I just heard a bit of his voice work through the YouTube link you gave me. His voice on "Destroy All Monsters" reminds me of a particularly more gravelly-voiced Chris Evans.

      Delete
  2. Chasing ShowaJune 20, 2020 at 4:28 PM

    Hello J-Canuck,

    Thanks for replying! The Shaking Jigsaw Puzzly Band was one of those bands I heard on NJC. They had a sound that I hadn't heard before from a Japanese funk group. They sounded a lot like old Parliament/Funkadelic and that is something I haven't heard from the Land of the Rising Sun.

    But it was something I should have expected.

    I was also listening to a cut from Yoshihiko Narase "Bass Brawl" on NJC and he tapped into that sound also. Yes, you did do an article referencing him on another artist.

    Yes, that Yoshihiko Naruse that took over for Tetsuo Sakurai after he left Casiopea. He too had that P-Funk sound, at least in the cut I heard.

    Needless to say I searched for both albums. I found Bass Brawl reissued on CD for a little above standard price. However, I could not find a listing for the SJPB in either English or Japanese anywhere.

    Truly a lost and forgotten album. Speaking of lost/forgotten, Johnny Yoshinaga is another person I want to get into. Not P-Funky like the above artists but interesting never-the-less.

    Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. J-CanuckJune 20, 2020 at 10:52 PM

      Hi, Chasing Showa!

      Yes, I've been grateful to NJC for introducing all sorts of eclectic bands that I hadn't even seen in "Japanese City Pop"...completely out of left field. So I've been able to hear some very funky or reggae or New Wave-y stuff from the radio. Naruse did sound familiar to me.

      I always enjoy browsing through the various corners of YouTube for some of those Japanese rarities.:)

      Delete
  3. MichaelJune 22, 2020 at 9:52 AM

    Speaking of Casiopea, here's them with Inspirits performing A・RI・GA・TO.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkZYDoSpf5c

    Issei Noro posted another version of this song performed solo.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weIRYJhtM5c

    Amazing to think they've been around for over 40 years creating some of the best jazz-fusion anywhere.

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    Replies
    1. J-CanuckJune 22, 2020 at 1:50 PM

      Hi, Michael. Yeah, it's good to have Casiopea and T-Square still around. I'd like to think that AOR will remain somewhat eternal.:)

      Delete
  4. MichaelJune 22, 2020 at 6:17 PM

    Yup, AOR is the stuff. I don't see it fading away anytime soon as there's been a revitalized interest in it.

    ReplyDelete

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