Tatsuro Yamashita -- Neo Tokyo Rhapsody（新・東京ラプソディー）

Earlier today, I had a nice session with Rocket Brown and his fellow City Pop buddies as we all took a look at Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）9th studio album, "Boku no Naka no Shonen"（僕の中の少年...The Boy In Me） released in October 1988. I have a few of his other albums but this one isn't one of them....not yet, anyways. It's definitely a barnburner and it has quite the variety of songs within which I've already written about one of them, the inspiring and soulful "Soubou"（蒼氓）while Marcos V. gave his article on the light and happy "Odoro yo, Fish"（踊ろよ、フィッシュ）. The interesting thing is that though "Boku no Naka no Shonen" is no longer within the City Pop realm that I've associated with him recently, it's still got plenty of his dynamism and his crooning.

I will eventually take care of the rest of the album, but I want to focus on the opening track, the scintillating "Neo Tokyo Rhapsody" which got its own release as his 18th single later in March 1989. The song is quite the super banger for "Boku no Naka no Shonen". As I said, the album is no longer a City Pop release but "Neo Tokyo Rhapsody" does wax wonderfully about being in Japan's capital, and it throws in a joyful jumble of a percolating and persistent chang-chang-chang synthesizer rhythm, a whizzing harmonica and Jon Faddis' epic trumpet. Also his wife, Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）, and his protégé, Kazuhito Murata（村田和人）provided background vocals.

When I was taking some notes in preparation for today's podcast, I found out through the J-Wiki article for the entire album that "Neo Tokyo Rhapsody" had been meant for Tats' 1986 album "Pocket Music" and the idea for it gradually coalesced as the singer-songwriter was driving on one of Tokyo's inner expressways. He ended up doing two loops on the expressway before getting off at an interchange, parking his car at a park and then jotting down the outline before heading home to fill it out some more.

For the kayo fans, if the title does sound familiar to you, then yep, it does have some tenuous connection with "Tokyo Rhapsody"（東京ラプソディ）, the classic song from 1936 that was originally performed by Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）. Yamashita had actually considered inserting a part of the song (whether it was an actual lyric or a rhythm, I'm not sure) into "Neo Tokyo Rhapsody" but considering the expense of the royalties (perhaps potentially putting the kids of the rights owners through college on Tats' yen), that idea never came to pass since I can't hear anything of the original "Tokyo Rhapsody" in the arrangement or a lyric placed in the newer song. Still the album has acknowledged using an excerpt so perhaps that is the title itself.

You can have another crack at the song but this time with some lovely scenes of Tokyo below. Ironic that Tats conceived of the idea for "Neo Tokyo Rhapsody" while on the road since this would be the ideal song to put into the car stereo.