Thursday, December 10, 2020

GREAT3 -- Ruby

 

A little more than a month ago, I introduced the band GREAT3 onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with their sunny vibes via "Summer's Gone". I'm still going through the rabbit hole with them.

Here is "Ruby" which was GREAT3's 12th single from December 2001. I mentioned in "Summer's Gone" that J-Wiki has shot off a long list of genres that the band has covered, wavering between different types of pop and rock. For "Summer's Gone", I thought that there was a bit of Shibuya-kei in there and perhaps some 60s Sunshine Pop thrown in to boot, but with "Ruby", there is something a bit jazzier and some feelings of the blue-eyed soul and sophisti-pop that The Style Council was making back in the 1980s, namely through "My Ever Changing Moods". I also love the delivery of the vocals.

GREAT3 collectively wrote and composed "Ruby" which seems to be about a fellow who seems to be coming apart at the seams due to a lost romance; my impression is that he's lucky to have survived his drive on the national highway that's mentioned in the lyrics. No mention of the title but perhaps this was the name of the lady who broke his heart. However, the video for "Ruby" has quite the different and artsy tack to it.

Unfortunately, the song didn't make it onto the rankings for some mysterious reason, but it was the opening track on GREAT3's 6th album "When you were a beauty" that came out in January 2002. That one had better success as it got as high as No. 60 on Oricon.

5 comments:

  1. First time listening to this group and digging their sound. Gotta love those horns. J, you're on a roll. Keep it up.

    Was checking out some of their other tracks and came across '「愛の関係」ミュージックビデオ'. I'm in my element. It's got an infectious groove that just won't quit and when the chorus hits... yeah, that's the stuff.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV_Eenh-8D8

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    1. My compliments to the music video director who got what the song was all about and made the video fit without needing to spend a whole ton of money. Very cool visuals with a very cool song and a clever delivery of the first two lines of hiragana to start things off.

      Thanks for the tip, Michael. The video has been cut a bit short but by only less than a minute apparently.

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  2. From what I gather the band moderate their own YouTube channel. My guess is they wanted a slightly edited version so that people would have to purchase the album to get the full experience. Only trouble is finding the album at a reasonable price. Right now their albums and EPs are going for quite a lot of money and some are not even available through cdjapan.

    Sure would be great if these artists made their music more accessible.

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    1. Ahhh...Great 3 is going the Japanese radio route, I see. I've been hearing that Spotify has continued to add more Japanese artists to their arsenal, but I'm always going to stick with hard-copy CDs. To be honest, CD Japan's stock is no longer that variegated. Tower Records has wider variety but then I have to deal with the middlemen organizations such as Tenso which increases the price of shipping.

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  3. Yeah, those import companies tack on expensive surcharges, typically around 30%, for every purchase. Why don't retailers cut out the middlemen and run their own import service? It can't be due to licensing issues because those import companies would be encumbered by the same restrictions.

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Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.