Takashi Sato -- My Classic: In Your Action!（マイ・クラシック）

Of the five KKP articles that have so far involved singer-songwriter Takashi Sato（佐藤隆）, there has only been one that has actually had him behind the mike, and that would be the eclectic "Peking de Choshoku wo" （北京で朝食を）from 1980. Even as a City Pop song, it's not one of the more typical Japanese urban contemporary tunes.

But that's what makes the exploration all the more fun and intriguing. Here is my second article with Sato behind the mike in the recording booth, "My Classic: In Your Action!", his 6th single released in May 1984.

This was actually the campaign song for Daimaru Department Store in that year, and I couldn't find the commercial for it on YouTube, but I'm wondering if Daimaru had been aiming for one of those strange and exotic ads along the ones that Parco had done in the 1980s. The reason that I posit this is just how strange and exotic "My Classic" sounds. With Sato behind the music and Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）taking care of the lyrics, a couple of listens to this one has had me thinking Andrew Lloyd Webber  musicals. With those sweeping synth strings and the haunting keyboards, I just imagine the late set designer Eiko Ishioka（石岡瑛子）whipping up some sort of fantastic and retro-futuristic setting in an Eurasian mansion in the wilds of Mt. Takao in Tokyo. Now, could you imagine what it would have been like to have Webber and Ishioka working together on a project?

"My Classic: In Your Action!" was also the first track in Sato's 5th album "Otoko to Onna"（男と女...Un homme et une femme） which came out in June 1984. I've taken a listen to one more track on that one, and yep, it's pretty different and attractive. Perhaps it's something along the lines of Faye Dunaway biting into a hard-boiled egg for millions of dollars.