Tin Pan Alley & Chu Kosaka & Minako Yoshida -- Apple Knocker（アップル・ノッカー）

 

Last week, I translated the liner notes of Hiroshi Sato's（佐藤博）classic "Awakening" album from 1982 for Rocket Brown from "Come Along Radio" and he has put it up on his blog in the last few hours so if you're interested in giving that a gander, please do so. As I let Rocket know when I handed him the translation, my work is admittedly just 90% accurate by my reckoning, so if any of you think that there are errors in there, please let me or my friend know. The liner notes consist of an interesting interview with the late keyboardist and songwriter about what went into the making of this album.

I can't quite remember whether it was Rocket who led me to this video or if it was somebody else or I just stumbled upon it by accident. However, I am very grateful to the uploader, Masahiro Seto, since it shows a 1975 concert with the iconic rock and pops band Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）and singer-songwriters Chu Kosaka（小坂忠）& Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）. I think that I can say that it's pretty rare to discover early concert footage of either Tin Pan Alley and/or Yoshida, so to come across this video is indeed a precious find.

The song here is "Apple Knocker", a funky instrumental composed by the aforementioned Sato who was a later recruit to Tin Pan Alley, and it's a marvel and a delight to see this lineup of Japanese contemporary music (of the time) royalty up on the stage jamming away. And just before vocalists Kosaka and Yoshida toot (and strut) away, the former graciously introduces the members: Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）on the beefy bass, Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）on drums, Motoya Hamaguchi（浜口茂外也）on flute and percussion, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）on guitar, and John Yamazaki（ジョン山崎）and Sato on keyboards. Kosaka looks especially adorable looking like a preppie university student.

Listening away to "Apple Knocker" for the second or third time, I tried to search for whether this song, which sounds like the perfect accompaniment for a New York City-based comedy scene from that same decade, was actually an official song for a single or an album or just something that Sato whipped up for concert play. It took some minutes while I looked up Sato's and Tin Pan Alley's discography but as it turned out, the song is on Yoshida's live album "MINAKO II –Live at Sun Plaza Hall October 3,1975–" which was released in December 1975.

Strangely enough, according to what I see on the Discogs website, in addition to "Apple Knocker" written in katakana that is Track 8 on "MINAKO II", there is also the final track which is "Apple Knocker" written in romaji, but the music is supposedly by Jun Sato（佐藤準）. Not sure if that is a totally new song.