Masatoshi Nakamura -- Omoide no Cliffside Hotel（想い出のクリフサイドホテル）

 

Wow! Love, fighting and tragedy all in one video above. This would be the 1985 NTV drama "Hokori no Houshuu"（誇りの報酬...Pride's Reward） starring actors/singers Masatoshi Nakamura（中村雅俊）and the late Jinpachi Nezu（根津甚八）as police detectives, a show that lasted virtually a year between October 1985 and September 1986. Yup, it lasted long enough that it had three ending themes, all sung by Nakamura.

The final ending theme is the focus here. "Omoide no Cliffside Hotel" (Cliffside Hotel of Memories) is Nakamura's May 1986 single, and I had assumed from the beginning synthesizer riff that it was going to be a synthpop number, but it actually straddles the line between City Pop and some hard-driving pop. In fact, it fairly races along at a good clip like a police cruiser on pursuit status although the subject of the song is some stately accommodations. 

Masao Urino（売野雅勇）took care of the lyrics with Kisaburo Suzuki（鈴木キサブロー）handling the music with Jun Sato（佐藤準）on overall arrangement. "Omoide no Cliffside Hotel" does sound like an ideal theme for a cop show and if it had been used as the opening theme, some pretty snazzy opening credits would have been in order; I gather that may have been cutting it too close in terms of the production budget. There's also something about the song that makes me feel that Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）or even Omega Tribe could have easily covered it. The single managed to hit No. 29 on Oricon, selling 630,000 records.

To think that Nakamura would tackle something with a City Pop beat. Then again, never did I imagine that 70s aidoru Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）would do that either but 80s songs such as "ROOM NUMBER 3021" have proved me wrong...happily so.