Happy Saturday! Hope wherever you are, you're enjoying the weekend. Right now, I'm trying to get through the typically hot and humid weather that is normal for the dog days of August. Had a nice brief conversation with Rocket Brown, and just like myself a couple of weeks ago, he will be co-hosting with Van Paugam soon on a podcast centering upon Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）so I'll be looking forward to that.
But for starters today, I'd like to get onto a track from Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）12th album from November 1981, "Sakuban O-Aishimashou" (昨晩お会いしましょう）. I wrote up an article about that No. 1-hitting release back in the early days of the blog, and as I will also mention here, "Sakuban O-Aishimashou" is arguably the most City Pop of Yuming's（ユーミン）albums although not every song is of the genre.
One track that I had yet to cover from the album rather straddles the line between regular pop and City Pop. "Yuyami wo Hitori" (Walking Alone In the Dusk) is definitely one cool cat of a Yuming track. It's about a woman heading home perhaps but without that young fellow that she aches for holding her hand. It's got quite a nice smoky rhythm with the goodly assistance of a thrumming keyboard and the horns, especially an urbane saxophone to finish things off. A lonely walk hasn't sounded so kakkoii.
Actress and tarento Yoshiko Miyazaki（宮崎美子）, who incidentally shares the same initials with Yuming, provided a cover of "Yuyami no Hitori" in her December 1981 album, "Mellow". The arrangement isn't too different from the original aside from some extra backing vocals, more Fender Rhodes and no horns aside from that bluesy sax. I've already covered one other track from "Mellow", the technopoppy "Ima wa Heiki yo"（今は平気よ）.
Thanks very much, Brian. Any particular favourites in terms of singers and songs?
ReplyDeleteThank you for linking that Yumi song, it's really good! I've been meaning to check her stuff out since she's so famous but what would be a good album for a newbie to start off with?
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure. For me, her earlier albums have always be a favourite of mine. The aforementioned "Sakuban O-Aishimashou" is great but a lot of fans also enjoy her first few albums when she was going by her maiden name of Yumi Arai. My favourite of those albums is "The 14th Moon"(14番目の月) from 1976 which has some of those wonderfully sunny 70s New Music/City Pop flavours. Then, another good release is a later one "No Side" from 1984. You can also take a look at her discography on Wikipedia and do a cut-and-paste of those titles onto YouTube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yumi_Matsutoya_discography
DeleteHappy hunting!
Thank you for the recommendations!
DeleteHi, Brian. Yeah, it was pretty much along the same lines for me as well, including "Macross" and "Cat's Eye". One particular radio program and a couple of Chinatown record stores also helped a lot.
ReplyDeleteJust for vacation or a job? I marvel at the realization that when I first got into Japanese music in earnest, there was no YouTube or Internet so I really needed that radio show "Sounds of Japan" and video rentals of "The Best 10" to help me figure out what was out there in Japan.
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