TOSHITARO -- Tight Night

 

Welcome to Friday! The photo above is of the Toki no Kane (The Bell of Time), one of the landmarks in the city of Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture. My friend and I visited the area when I visited Japan in November 2017.

Now, the reason for the photo is because the fairly obscure singer featured here just happens to hail from Kawagoe. His name is Toshitaro Hiejima（稗島寿太郎）but at the time, he released this particular album "Chic" in 1986, he was going for that cool mononym of TOSHITARO (nothing like caps to get your message across while screaming in script).

I couldn't find much information at all about TOSHITARO except from what I could glean at the Japanese-language "Music Avenue". "Chic" was his 3rd album, and from it, I have "Tight Night" which was composed by him and written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）. It's quite the cool and smoky mid-tempo nighttime City Pop number, and I have to agree with "Music Avenue" author kaz-shin that it's the type of song that would belong on a car stereo tape while bombing down the highways in Tokyo. The late Kenji Omura（大村憲司）, who arranged everything, is handling the guitar solo.