Takayuki Inoue -- Kentoushi（遣唐使）

 

Happy Monday to you all. Finally caught "Black Widow" this afternoon. I had read that this particular Marvel movie was somewhat of a bust financially, but I enjoyed it quite a lot for the dysfunctional family comedy angle, and I think Florence Pugh as Yelena and David Harbour as Alexei almost stole the show. I will be catching up on a number of Marvel properties over the next few weeks.

Anyways on to the music. It's been a few years since I reported on the fact that singer, guitarist and songwriter Takayuki Inoue（井上堯之）had passed away at the age of 77. I knew that he was with The Spiders and PYG before he established his own group, Takayuki Inoue Band（井上堯之バンド）. What I hadn't known was that the band was backing up Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）early in 1971 and then the band itself changed its name slightly to Takayuki Inoue Water Band between 1975 and 1976.

There was then a bit of confusion on my part when I encountered this track from an October 1981 album that I had initially read as "Wagon" by the Takayuki Inoue Water Band. Well, that was an error. Forgetting that Inoue also put out officially solo albums, it actually reads "Water Band Wagon" by Takayuki Inoue. Still, looking at the lineup on Discogs, a number of his old bandmates were helping out, so I gather that it was still the Water Band in play.

Seeing a tuxedo-sporting Inoue joyfully jumping in a tunnel on that cover, I gather that the album would contain at least some catchy and whimsical pieces, and I think "Kentoushi", written and composed by Inoue, is a good example. When I looked up the term on Jisho.org, I found out that it means "An Envoy to Tang China"; yeah, that's pretty whimsical. What really puts the point on it is the quirky melody including a loopy guitar that sounds like something that any of the Yellow Magic Orchestra fellows, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）, Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）or Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, or Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）or Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）would do at the time. It's unusual but very approachable for the ears and it makes me wonder what other goodies could be contained within "Water Band Wagon".