Yaen -- Sakebi（叫び）

 

Slightly over 4 years ago, I wrote up the first article for the relatively short-lived group (1998-2001) called Yaen（野猿）, spearheaded by the comedy duo Tunnels（とんねるず）. In "Get Down", I mentioned that for a band that consisted of Takaaki Ishibashi（石橋貴明）, Noritake Kinashi（木梨憲武）and a bunch of Fuji-TV technical staff, they didn't do too badly with the song and dance.

"Get Down" was Yaen's debut single and here is their 2nd single from September 1998, "Sakebi" (Yell). Again, like the first song, "Sakebi" kinda-sorta straddles that line between earnest pop song and pop pastiche, although that scream at the beginning threatens to pull things straight into comedy. It helps that none of the singers including Taka and Nori aren't too bad at their second jobs. Also, another plus is that the song has a decent rhythm track so give thanks to the songwriting team of lyricist Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composer Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）with Otohiko Tahara（田原音彦） behind the arrangement.

According to J-Wiki, the music video was filmed out on a dry lake bed in the United States. "Sakebi" did even better than "Get Down" on the Oricon weeklies by grabbing No. 2 although it did much more modestly on the yearly charts by placing in at No. 97 compared to the No. 20 ranking for the debut single. Those first two singles are on Yaen's debut album, "Staff Roll", released in March 1999. The album peaked at No. 3 and ended up as the 48th-ranked release of that year. Intriguingly enough, Jason Scheff of the band Chicago actually covered "Sakebi" in English.