Although I hung up my own dancing shoes decades ago in the name of good taste and sanity, I think that there are likely many folks out there right now who wished that they could get onto the dance floor with everyone else and boogey the night away. That's not possible at the moment but hopefully somewhere down the line in 2021, that could all come back.
Meanwhile we City Pop fans can live a tad vicariously and enjoy the sounds of songbird Hitomi Tohyama（当山ひとみ） through her "High-Heel Dancer" from her 1983 album "Next Door". On the same album as "Lovely Days", my first encounter with Penny, this is one happy-dance-in-a-Caribbean-nightclub sorta tune thanks to the melody by Yoshihiro Yonekura（米倉良広）.
Prolific lyricist Chinfa Kan（康珍化）was responsible for this story daring anyone to keep up with this eternally pirouetting beauty in her stilettoes as she holds up night after night. I certainly don't think Tohyama or the songwriter ever meant it to be so, but the lyrics almost sound like the ideal storyboard for a Dr. Scholls' insole commercial. That's not to take anything away from the song which is light and fun possibly like the dancer herself, and I do like the keyboard work.
I really like Penny. I was listening to her for a while, then found Tomoko Aran and Hiroshi Sato and everything else kind of fell to the wayside for a few months. I think I listened to "Just Call Me Penny" more than the rest of her albums, but "Next Door" has some really good songs on it.
ReplyDeleteHi, Scott. Yeah, I like her, too, but I can certainly understand why you started getting focused on Aran and Sato as well. At this point, I only have her 2-CD Best compilation but if I can hook it, I would try to track down "Just Call Me Penny" and/or "Next Door".
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