Usually when I hear the expression haru ichiban（春一番）, I think of two things: the famous warm winds from the south that hit the Japanese archipelago about a month before spring officially arrives and the famous Candies'（キャンディーズ）hit single from the early 1970s.
Now, I can add one more thing for haru ichiban to remind me of. There is The Chang's "Haru Ichiban ga Fuita Hi" (The Day the Haru Ichiban Came In). I have never heard of this band before, although that 1990s City Pop Japanese website states that it has commonalities with groups such as Sunny Day Service（サニーデイサービス）, Mamalaid Rag and even the legendary Happy End（はっぴいえんど）if their sound were filtered through some club jazz (jazz with beats?).
Personally though, I think that The Chang has some resemblance to another popular band from the 1990s, Original Love, in terms of its groove pop and/or rock. I couldn't find a J-Wiki entry for the band that started in 1995 per se, but there is an entry for the guy who helped found it, guitarist/music producer and vocalist Masayuki Ishii（石井マサユキ）. Two albums came from The Chang with the first one being the 1995 "Day Off".
The first track is "Haru Ichiban ga Fuita Hi", and with that appealingly liquid electric guitar groove, the flute and the high-toned vocals, I couldn't help but think Original Love. Written and composed by Ishii, the song even hearkens back to those 1970s (which are even mentioned in the lyrics) as the vocalist invites a lucky person to accompany him on a nice drive on that surprisingly warm day in late February. With that sort of lyrical theme and the arrangement of "Haru Ichiban ga Fuita Hi", I also thought that this would have made for the second coming of the 1970s New Music thing.
One of the things that I've benefited from this blog is meeting new people and coming across good bands that I had never heard of before.
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