Kosuke Onozaki & Lovely Sounds Orchestra -- Green Love（グリーン・ラブ）/Yasuragi no Gogo（やすらぎの午後）

 

Indeed, it is St. Patrick's Day once more on March 17th and unfortunately once more, the parades and partying at the Irish pubs everywhere around the planet have had to be curtailed due to the scourge of COVID-19. However, our mayor is insisting that on a 17th day of a later month, folks will be allowed to raise that pint of beer once more.🍺

As such, I was looking around YouTube to see if there were any kayo out there with either the word midori or green to commemorate St. Patrick's Day☘. Well, I did find something there with the title of "Green Love".

It turns out that this "Green Love" was one of the theme songs for this long-running FM Tokyo radio program called "Kayo Variety"（歌謡バラエティー）that had a run of nearly 20 years between April 1970 and September 1989. Composed by Akita Prefecture-born composer and arranger Kosuke Onozaki（小野崎孝輔）, "Green Love" has that feeling of country-style light swing, replete with hammock and sweet tea. In fact, I think the song would have been ideal for some sort of slice-of-life Studio Ghibli anime feature. The performers here were known as Lovely Sounds Orchestra（ラブリーサウンズオーケストラ）.

The flip side of "Green Love" is "Yasuragi no Gogo" (A Tranquil Afternoon), another theme song for "Kayo Variety" that hoped to describe each and every episode since it always came on during weekday afternoons between 2:00 and 2:55 pm. There's a bit more of that Bacharach and Carpenters feeling with "Yasuragi no Gogo". 

It looks like "Yasuragi no Gogo" was up to bat for this August 1974 episode (just the first 18 minutes) hosted by Yoko Seri（芹洋子）, and the show was devoted to singer Yuko Nagisa（渚ゆう子）. The first song featured here is her "Kyoto Bojou"（京都慕情）which I have written about in a past article. Just listening to this excerpt made me feel as if I were eavesdropping on a friendly conversation between a couple of girl friends.