Takeshi Kaga -- Morning Moon

 

Indeed, as one commenter noted for the above video of "Ryori no Tetsujin"（料理の鉄人...The Iron Chefs）, without the gloriously hammy Takeshi Kaga（鹿賀丈史）as the Chairman in the Kitchen Stadium, the show wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. His catchphrase of "If memory serves me correctly...", his handling of food as if they were all called Yorick, and the flair and flamboyance that he showed every week compensated for the seriousness and rush among the chefs trying to get a masterful dinner ready within one hour.

(Sigh...😔) Yes, I know. I start off every Takeshi Kaga article on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with a reference to his 1990s stint on "Ryori no Tetsujin" but I just can't help it. For better or worse, his status in pop culture on both sides of the Pacific Ocean has been sealed permanently as the Chairman...kinda like William Shatner and Captain James T. Kirk.

In any case, his musical status on YouTube seems to be sealed with that 1981 City Pop album "After Dark". I've already mentioned a couple of tracks from this Akira Inoue（井上鑑）-arranged release including "Act 1", and another one from it is "Morning Moon", which isn't to be mistaken for the Chage & Aska hit that wouldn't come out until the middle of the 1980s. Kaga's "Morning Moon" isn't even given the katakana treatment; it's just the romaji as the title.

As Inoue did for Akira Terao's（寺尾聰）"Reflections", he has also provided some buttery City Pop/AOR layers for the tracks on this album including "Morning Moon" which also possesses some of that tropical punch rhythm. Despite the title, the song seems to reflect various periods through the day and night especially in the middle when it seems as if Chairman Kaga is embracing his inner Tatsuhiko Yamamoto（山本達彦）crooning some sophisticated dinner music. Lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）even throws out some Campari soda which was part of the title for one of Terao's tracks on "Reflections". Kiyoshi Hattori（服部清）is behind the music here.