Usually by this point in the afternoon, I'm already well into the blogging or the preparation for my lesson plan for my student later tonight. However, I got caught up in golf's U.S. Open so that I just had to wait to see how Patrick Reed and Justin DeChambeau started their day about 40 minutes ago. Let it be said though that I simply enjoy watching golf; I haven't actually played the pastime since gym class back in junior high school and that was with plastic clubs.
So with that, I bring you "Sleep On My Baby" by Ryuichi Sakamoto & The Kakutougi Session（坂本龍一＆カクトウギセッション）on their one and only album "Summer Nerves"（サマー・ナーヴス）from June 1979. Allow me to sidetrack a few lines here to say that if I were wearing that neck collar as depicted on the album cover, I probably wouldn't be laughing like Sakamoto is on the cover. I would most likely be in enormous amounts of pain while musing about my life choices. As for one more piece of trivia, kakutougi（格闘技）means martial arts.
It's a cover that I've seen enough times leafing through "Japanese City Pop" and I finally got to come across "Sleep On My Baby". Now in the description for "Summer Nerves", The Professor's 2nd solo album has been labeled as a fusion release with his own special touch, but "Sleep On My Baby" strikes me as an appealingly loopy technopop tune with a reggae beat and some Asian influences. And it was actually written and composed by Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）and she also supplies part of the vocals and background vocals along with Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）who's at his usual position at drums.
"Sleep On My Baby" has those exhortations of needing to make it so that I can imagine golfers such as Reed and DeChambeau muttering these very phrases to themselves to get them through the grueling course at the Winged Foot Golf Club.
Yano herself recorded a faster-tempo cover but still within the technopop world for her 1982 album "Ai ga Nakucha ne"（愛がなくちゃね。...Gotta Be Love）. Hmmmm....to be honest, I think that I prefer the original.
Hello J-Canuck,
ReplyDeleteNice find! I do agree that Ryuchi Sakamoto's version is more reggae-fied than Akiko's which makes it just sound better. However, her version is not too shabby. That being said I am totally in love with anything that comes off of Ai ga Nakucha ne" album.
Speaking of Akiko's album, I've tried to hunt that one down since I heard a cut or two on my Youtube wanderings but I always get distracted by something else. I guess we all have problems with our ADD when getting online.
By the way, you commented that Blogger has changed some things. I've noticed that the Youtube links from your last several articles do not show when I access this site using any browser on my phone.
However, the links will show up when I select the web-version of the page.
FYI.
Thanks!
Hi, Chasing Showa.
DeleteYeah, I like the fact that Sakamoto's version has got some more things going for it in the overall arrangement such as some of those synth flourishes.
To be honest, I'm still getting used to the changes on Blogger. One thing that I'm not too fond about is that there is no longer a Labels section on the main work page for the blog. I have to actually type in the Label and even then, it sometimes doesn't come up with the right list. It's a bit annoying.
As for not being able to see the YouTube links on the blog through your phone, are you saying that the imported videos don't show up? That would be a terrible inconvenience for you but at least you can still access them on your PC.
Hello J-Canuck,
ReplyDeleteYes, the embedded Youtube links in your articles don't show up in your posts since you mentioned the Blogger changes. And yes it seems this only applies to when I view the site through my browsers on my phone. This might be something on my end but I see everything fine on my PC and laptops.
My workaround is to click the Web Version option on the main page to see the links on my phone. Maybe the Mobile Version no longer does this by default?
Anyway, just a heads up.
That's a distinct possibility, CS, unfortunately. I've also noticed that putting up YouTube videos as thumbnails at the top of articles now won't show up on Facebook as well. Somewhat frustrating.
Delete