Had a nice conversation with Rocket Brown from "Come Along Radio" today in which we talked about the possibilities of me finally visiting him in the Los Angeles area someday once COVID has been wrestled under control. Sushi and ramen would be great; maybe even catch a City Pop dance party since I am keenly interested in observing how people would shimmy to City Pop. Of course at my age, if some of those young fans ever caught me on the floor, they would most likely go "Wow! He must have gone to school with some of those singers!".
Ooh! I think I'll just slink on back to my table and order another Metamucil with a cherry on top. 😦
As I said in "Happy 10th Anniversary, Kayo Kyoku Plus!", I've been happy to have become friends with Rocket Brown since we've been able to talk on our favourite genre, I've been able to be a guest on "Come Along Radio" a few times and also because he's been able to recommend some good new artists to me. One such band that he was able to introduce me to is SPARKLING☆CHERRY which can be considered to be one of the Neo-City Pop crowd along the lines of Hitomitoi（一十三十一）, Ryusenkei（流線形）and Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）among other contemporary groups.
But one interesting point is that the artistic people who have been involved with this Neo-City Pop band were involved with the original City Pop decades ago. SPARKLING☆CHERRY, which started up in 2014, has had music journalist Toshikazu Kanazawa（金澤寿和）, who has helped out on the "Light Mellow" CD project and has his own blog on the lighter and mellower stuff from both sides of the Pacific, has been the executive producer. Also, in the last 8 years, the band has had guest performers and songwriters helping out in any which way including guitarist Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）, Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）and Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）. The core of this band, by the way, consists of vocalist Cherry, bassist yoshiro and keyboardist Takashi Aoki with special member drummer Masahiro Miyazaki（宮崎まさひろ）.
Their 4th and most recent album is "Windy" which was released in December 2021, and I have here one of the tracks "Windy Rain". Written and composed by Cherry, the aforementioned Hamada and SPARKLING☆CHERRY handled the arrangement with Hamada even contributing his electric guitar skills to the song. As I informed Rocket, the first 14 seconds of the song got me hook, line and sinker! It just seems as if all of those various City Pop elements which I've encountered over the years assembled to create "Windy Rain": that thin veil of Steely Dan, the 80s AOR/soul/disco feeling, some PAZZ-ivity, the boppy bass, and Cherry's vocals that remind me a bit of EPO and Hitomitoi.
CD Japan has been nagging me again on those points. Use them or lose them! Well, I'll put them to good use tonight on "Windy" and a few more albums including Blue Peppers' recent "Symphony". We all raised KKP to pre-teen levels so I think that I deserve a little parenting reward in terms of new CDs.
Yeah, I've ended up parting with a couple of hundred bucks but it's all worth it.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of going to school with singers, have you heard of Tony Robinson? He played Baldrick in Blackadder, and has also presented history programmes since then. He's been adjacent to famous figures/incidents quite a few times in his life, such as being punched by John Wayne in a film, trying to chat up Liza Minnelli, getting an honest explanation for a tattoo on Helen Mirren, etc. (all of which happened before Blackadder).
ReplyDeleteThe incident I'm talking about is the Small Faces song Itchycoo Park, which has the chorus "It's all too beautiful". A lot of the lyrics is memories of the singer, Steve Marriott, of Valentine's Park in Essex, England. At least some of it is things he got up to with Tony Robinson when they were both kids playing in the musical production of Oliver! "What did you do there? I got high!" refers to them going to Valentine's Park for a smoke when they weren't old enough for cigarettes.
There was a high school near my final place of work in Tokyo called Horikoshi which had many students who went on to become entertainers of all stripes. Of course, not everyone who went there were showbiz-bound, so I sometimes wonder how those students felt about mixing in with these future stars.
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