Seri Ishikawa -- Ai no Bunryo（愛の分量）

 

Referring back to yesterday's article on the passing of composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, I also have to let you know of another loss but this time, it's in the form of a shop that I used to frequent often when I was living and working in the Kanto years ago. A good friend of mine informed me last night that RECOfan, a longtime seller of used albums and singles of all stripes (J-Pop, jazz, R&B, etc.) located in the BEAM Building in Shibuya closed its doors for the last time a couple of days ago due to the pandemic. He got his information from a "Japan Times" article so you can take a look at that, and then also you can take a gander at my own article for RECOfan in the Sites category. My biggest fear now is whether a number of other Tokyo music stores may follow suit and that may even include the big ones such as Tower Records.

Anyways, enough of the long faces. Let me start off Tuesday, and for those in Canada, the beginning of a shortened work week, with someone we haven't seen in a while, singer Seri Ishikawa（石川セリ）. Not having known her as long as I have known her husband, Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）, I have been accustomed to her kayo and City Pop fare from the 1970s, but of course, she also sang well into the 1980s, too.

This time, though, Ishikawa provided the track "Ai no Bunryo" (Amount of Love) from her September 1985 release, "Rakuen"（楽園...Paradise）, and this is more of a light synthpop number thanks to Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）vocalist Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）. Masato Tomobe（友部正人）wrote the lyrics which somewhat depict a sad scene of a woman getting ready to meet her husband or a longtime boyfriend although the feeling is that the relationship has gotten rather stale of late (certainly the arrangement hints at some uncertainty). Still, she seems to be willing to go through the motions. Not totally sure if I got the gist of the words right so click on the link and correct me if I'm off-base here.

"Rakuen" peaked at No. 57 on Oricon. "Ai no Bunryo" is also available on Ishikawa's April 2008 "Re:SEXY 〜Seri's Selection OLD & NEW〜", an album of self-covers.