SURFACE -- Going my Ue e（ゴーイングmy上へ）

 

While doing the article for Charisma.com's "Otsubone Rock"（お局ロック）last week, I noticed that in the video, MC Itsuka was carrying a ladder and walking down like she owned the factory which was most likely a shoutout to the turn-of-the-century J-Drama "Shomu-Ni"（ショムニ...General Affairs Department, General Affairs Section 2）.  As I had mentioned in that article, the show was about a team of office ladies thrown into the dreaded Black Hole of Calcutta of a certain Tokyo corporation known as Section 2 with an ineffectual section chief as their leader in name only.

Officially, Section 2's only duties seem to be the most mundane of tasks throughout the company including the replacement of fluorescent light tubes. However in reality, the attitude and abilities of the OLs assigned to this dungeon put them on the same level as a Special Forces unit, Ocean's Eleven and the Impossible Missions Force. There is the ladder-sporting tough leader, her loyal No. 2, the intellectual, the staffer with the feminine wiles, the stoic fortune-telling lady and the innocent newbie who seems to act as the eyes and ears of the viewers. Every episode, they usually win the day and save the corporation while battling their unctuous and oft-greedy superiors and merely tolerating their meek boss.

 The first season of "Shomu-Ni" premiered in 1998 but there was a second season in 2000 (and other sequels), and it's in that season from which I really liked the opening theme. "Going my Ue e" which can be directly translated as "Going Up" but is a pun on "Going My Way". The band SURFACE was responsible for the creation of this punchy tune and it's well within its range of rock, pop, soul and funk as intimated in their J-Wiki file.

"Going my Ue e" was their 8th single released in April 2000, and the duo consisting of lyricist/vocalist Yoshiharu Shiina（椎名慶治）and composer/guitarist Takao Nagatani（永谷喬夫）had also provided a song for that first season but I actually prefer this second contribution. If you can try to imagine the band B'z with a disco bent, then "Going my Ue e" might come to mind. In any case, it's quite the fun tune for me and paired with the opening credits for Season 2, "Shomu-Ni" opened with a bang each week. The song peaked at No. 13.

Debuting in 1993, it looks like a lot of their singles (the first of which was released in 1998) were used as TV themes. Their first run lasted between 1993 and 2010 but after a hiatus for most of the last decade, SURFACE re-surfaced in 2018 to commit to live shows once more. As of 2008, they've released 21 singles and 7 original albums (with that last one released in 2019, their first in 11 years). They also have their own website.