m.c.A-T -- Bomb A Head!

 

I was reminded of m.c.A-T's "Bomb A Head!" some days ago when commenter Fireminer brought the song to my attention.

The musician-producer-singer's debut single from November 1993 under the name m.c.A-T (he had released a previous single in July 1989, "Let's ABC", under his real name Akio Togashi/富樫明生) was a song that I'd heard at a karaoke bar in Toronto way back when. A couple of hip-hop dudes decided to take it on with all of the dance moves (I should actually say arm moves since space was pretty limited there), and though it was really active, I was trying to figure out what the expression "bomber head" was all about. I knew what a bomber jacket was, but...

In any case, according to J-Wiki, "Bomb A Head!" was not just m.c.A-T's first single but it was also his most successful and famous tune. Apparently, it had been first created by the Hokkaido native in 1992 as a theme song for a dance-action movie titled "Heartbreaker" with its director, Souichiro Komatsu（小松壮一郎）, asking m.c.A-T for some new Japanese dance music that one can actually dance to. Taking that image as well as listening to the music of Yoshiyuki Osawa（大沢誉志幸）for inspiration, he came up with "Bomb A Head!".

Although the movie itself didn't become a great hit, it did become a cult hit of sorts and helped establish the music-dance movie genre. Plus, its fame spread among the street dancer community across Asia, and "Bomb A Head!" with the choreography of a Hakata dance team named BE BOP CREW took things to a new level. Since then, the song has been used in a commercial and also as a theme song for a TV Asahi variety show "KISS X KISS".

"Bomb A Head!" peaked at No. 27 on Oricon. Although when I think of J-R&B, I often think of the late 1990s and early 2000s, I also have to remind myself that the genre was also popping up as early as the mid-1980s with folks like Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）and of course m.c.A-T. I also recollect even seeing a breakdancing-and-singing group appear on an episode of Fuji-TV's long-running "Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）, but I have no idea whatever happened to those guys.