Welcome to the first weekend of December 2020. First, I'd like to mention that Rocket Brown has put up another Xmas-themed episode of "Come Along Radio" but this time with his special guest being Scott who has his own podcast specializing in J-Xmas songs from all decades called "Holly Jolly X'Masu". You can take a look at it on Rocket's Mixcloud site and you can also find out Scott's website there, too.
That's not the only commonality here in this article. I mentioned about Rocket's 3-hour Xmas episode on Chieri Ito's（伊藤智恵理）bright "Merry Christmas" song a few days ago. Well, the song here is also titled "Merry Christmas" but this time, it has been penned and sung by Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）. Scott actually told me about some of his YouTube cache of J-Xmas tunes that he's found over the years, and one of the videos is of this very song.
Inoue's "Merry Christmas" was one track on a collaborative effort among him and fellow folk singers Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）, Shigeru Izumiya（泉谷しげる）and Hitoshi Komuro（小室等）in the form of a special November 1976 album simply titled "Christmas"（クリスマス）. The album has also gotten some discussion in that conversation between Rocket and Scott today. As much as a lot of J-Xmas tunes have been about the hearty partying in the city and the lonely predicaments on December 24th, "Merry Christmas" is a bit different in that it's a quiet and heartwarming celebration of the Yuletide in the countryside. I can easily envision Inoue (and I'm assuming that it's indeed his fellow collaborators on backup) playing this for his dear guests at the country home in the woods with the fireplace and falling snow, and the video images are very apt.
Perhaps a lot of people in Japan also had the Christmas spirit back in 1976. "Christmas" reached No. 1 on Oricon.
That's such a great album, it's hard to pick a favorite. Unless you say "everything other than 'Blowin' in the Wind.'" Not that it's bad, but it's not a Christmas song. Their version of "Greensleeves" is one of my favorites.
ReplyDeleteHello, Scott. Will have to look at least a couple of more tracks before the year is up.
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