Just had to go for that 80th article before the month was up...
1. BTS BTS, The Best
2. Snow Man Snow Mania, S1
3. SixTONES 1st
4. King & Prince Re: Sense
5. Seventeen Attacca
6. Kanjani 8 8 Beat
7. Kis-My-Ft2 Best of Kis-My-Ft2
8. Hey!Say!JUMP Fab! -Music Speaks.-
9. Seventeen Your Choice
10. Johnny's WEST rainboW
Now, why did I put up this photo of me cooking up a big thick slab of unagi in my frypan in my old Ichikawa apartment? No particular reason, but it was tasty with rice that night.
Just the prologue that I needed to introduce this totally bonkers song by techno unit Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）. Even for a Denki Groove tune, "Edisonden" (Edison Power) comes down as a truly nonsensical seven minutes of electronic pleasure. A track from their 8th original CD album in February 2000, "VOXXX", this whole attempt at incorporating a bit of Dadaism into your listening day was created by the band and DJ Tasaka, and rumour has it that at least some radio stations refused to play it on air lest they unnerve too many of their listeners.
Yeah, I have to admit that it's tremendously weird but "Edisonden" to me sounds more like a song that was whipped up after Takkyu Ishino（石野卓球）and Pierre Taki（ピエール瀧）had gone on a major bender through Roppongi and improbably made it back to the studio to have a bit of insane sampling fun. The song seems to be centered around what sounds like either a Bollywood soundtrack or a kayo orchestra on an ancient television variety show. The site Boshi/Jusei has its own explanation for "Edisonden" along with the translation of the lyrics, and nope, they lost me at Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）. As for "VOXXX", it hit No. 5 on Oricon.
Apologies...this awkward photo above is that of a shot through a window at the top of the Shiodome City Centre in between the neighbourhoods of Shimbashi and Ginza. I don't think that I've visited the facility in my two visits to Japan in the last decade so, it has been over ten years. I'll have to make it a point to take another look the next time I'm in town.
This is quite the snazzy pop tune (that synthesizer used there had me waxing nostalgic) with hints of the urban contemporary by stage actress, singer and seiyuu Masami Suzuki（鈴木真仁）. "You're Mine" is from her 4th and final album to date "Futsuu."（ふつう。...So-So.） from July 1999. And it looks like she wasn't the only Suzuki involved in the making of this dynamic song since according to the JASRAC database, Kayo Suzuki（鈴木佳蓉）provided the lyrics while Hiroyuki Suzuki（鈴木啓之）took care of the melody (Suzuki is a very common family name in Japan so it's likely that none of them are related).
Along with her four albums, Suzuki released four singles between 1995 and 1997. I don't recall ever seeing her name in any of the anime that I've seen but she did play the title character in "Akazukin Chacha"（赤ずきんチャチャ...Red Riding Hood Chacha） from 1994. The title does ring a bell, though.
Unfortunately, I never got all that many opportunities to visit the famous roadside service areas of Japan (similar to those gas station/convenience store combinations here) since neither my friends and I got together in cars. My only chances were through the occasional bus tour that I got to go on including a trip to Yamanashi Prefecture one time with fellow teachers and students.
From what I've read and seen through translation assignments and variety shows like the above with popular tarento Matsuko Deluxe（マツコ・デラックス）raiding the Ebina Service Area after midnight for some of her beloved melon buns. Those facilities can be huge and I didn't even realize that they can be open past midnight, although the COVID situation may have changed opening times dramatically.
In recent days, I discovered this enigmatic band called Tokyo Mokuyo Gakudan（東京木曜楽団...Tokyo Thursday Band） which identifies itself as a multi-pop band. Not quite familiar with the term multi-pop but I can assume that they may take on genres such as indies pop, City Pop or pop/rock. There's barely any information about them anywhere although they have put out several singles and albums since the late 2010s, but there is a Twitter account for them that has been up since 2018. As for their name, apparently it's because they hail from West Tokyo and they meet every Thursday.
My first song by them is "Mayonaka no Service Area" (Midnight Service Area), a groovy and comfortable pop tune although I'm not sure whether I would put it in the genre of Neo-City Pop despite the use of a car in the music video. Mind you, they're not in the city per se as would be logical since the title refers to the rural service area along the highway. If I've got it right, the song came out in late 2019 and it has its moments of determined driving and dream-like rest stops with a rumbling piano and electric guitar that takes me and perhaps other listeners back to the 1970s, so "Mayonaka no Service Area" definitely has my attention.
Now, what would I get if I ever had the chance to stop at a service area past midnight? I'm OK for melon buns, but they wouldn't be in my Top 10. A nice hearty bento would be my best bet even though post-midnight indigestion would be a definite possibility.
Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）, true to their reputation as being one outrageously fun-time legendary band, has also come up with some very notable album covers over their career. One such cover was the one for their July 1981 release "Stereo Taiyo-Zoku"（ステレオ太陽族...Stereo Sun Tribe） with the junior high school girl wearing a very stylized mask. I've got no idea what the significance of it was, and when I read the J-Wiki article for "Stereo Taiyo-Zoku", leader and singer Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）himself in 2015 even said that the cover looks horrible. Well, it's a cover that I first remember seeing decades ago, so I think that it did its job.
Anyways, Rocket Brown introduced me to the first track on the album when we spoke last weekend, and it's quite the pleasant and slightly atypical Southern All Stars tune. "Hello My Love" begins with strings that almost had me thinking AOR then it evolves into a surprising Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）arrangement, complete with those horns. But Kuwata's distinctive vocals reassured me that this was indeed an SAS tune as the song continues to change into its main form of cheerful Dixieland jazz although the Tats rhythm comes back now and then.
Kuwata took care of words and music. I remember from one KKP article about the band in which I mentioned that it has been standard operating procedure for Kuwata to inject some sex into the lyrics. I had thought that considering the old-timey nature of "Hello My Love", maybe an exception was made for this track, but when I took a look at the lyrics, it turned out that ol' Keisuke was still getting that knocking for knocking boots. And hey, the following second track is "My Foreplay Music".😮
Incidentally, "Stereo Taiyo-Zoku" was at the No. 1 position on Oricon for 6 straight weeks before finishing the year as the 13th-ranked album. I guess that it really stayed up.😜
When I went to visit Japan again in 2017, my friend Hiro and I got to go to a section in Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture called Koedo（小江戸）which features a lot of historical architecture including the building in the above photo. It apparently was a bank back in the day. But aside from that municipality, the only other city that I've visited in Saitama was the capital, Saitama City.
Indeed, I've heard of Kasukabe City in Saitama but alas I never had the opportunity to visit it. Apparently, it's home to the famous anime character of Crayon Shin-chan（クレヨンしんちゃん）and his family. By the way, the video is by the channel Virtual Walk/All Over Japan.
Earlier tonight on the news, the anchor reported that Carnaval has started up once more in Rio which I'm happy about, and that one of the first things to get under way was some sort of samba festival. So I thought that I could find something samba-esque among the kayo.
Well, I did find "Kasukabe Samba" but it really doesn't sound like a traditional Brazilian samba at all. Still, it's very pleasant listening although I was surprised that this was actually a single provided by the folk duo Cherish（チェリッシュ）in 1990 as a promotion for the city of Kasukabe. The reason that I was surprised was that in spite of the release year, it certainly sounds more like something that came from the 1970s, around the same time that the duo's arguably most famous hit, "Tento Mushi no Samba" （てんとう虫のサンバ）was released. This was written by Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）and composed by Shunichi Makaino（馬飼野俊一）.
When I first heard about the initially terrifying and terrifyingly talented singer-songwriter Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）just around the turn of the century via friends, my impression of her at the time was that she wasn't one to cross...ever. Shiina seemed to have this thousand-kilometre glare in her performances back then that said "Hi! My hobby is vivisection!". But then, I discovered this YouTube video and realized that she can goof about like the rest of us.
But heck...back in those years, she certainly made an impression from her music, singing and visuals via those music videos. And so is the case with "Yami ni Furu Ame" (A Driving Rain in Darkness) which was a track on her March 2000 2nd album "Shoso Strip"（勝訴ストリップ...Winning Strip）.
Looking at the translation of her lyrics at Anime Lyrics, I gather that she has been seduced by a darker entity of the real rather than the falseness of the light and happy. Fair enough, but dang, I love the music. With the strings in there enhanced by the music video images in that huge mansion (a treat for both Ringo fans and psychoanalysts), I can imagine this as being Shiina's rock version of Fashion Music, kayo kyoku's take on baroque pop...with some Beatles-like psychedelia with what sounds like a sitar.
And yet, I was surprised to read in the blurb for "Yami ni Furu Ame" on J-Wiki that Shiina stated that this was the song where she gathered all of the classic enka tropes for it! In fact, when she listened to the complete product, she declared that this was so Masako Mori（森昌子）. I guess that I'm going to have to listen to this some more. In any case, the originating album hit No. 1 for three weeks in a row and ended up as the 3rd-ranked album of the year.
Personally speaking, I can't say that I am a particularly good traveler. I never developed the wanderlust or the smarts or the financial supply to head on out to a different country to explore, so I do have the admiration for those (and they include some of my friends) who have taken that jet, ship or car to take the risk to go around that unknown country, meet new people and learn new things.
Kayo kyoku has plenty of examples where such folks have gone onto new pastures within and outside of Japan, but usually not on a mission of learning but one of forgetting, namely that romance that has dried up like autumn leaves in late November. The one example that comes immediately to mind is enka veteran Sayuri Ishikawa's（石川さゆり）trademark "Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyu Geshiki" （津軽海峡・冬景色）.
I found another example, and this time, it's a sad straight kayo titled "Sasurai" elegantly sung by Yukari Ito（伊東ゆかり）. According to Jisho.org, the term means "wandering alone in a strange country", and the lyrics by Ou Yoshida（吉田旺）clearly illustrates this as the protagonist walks around in a new town with no people she knows as she searches for someone to unload her story to. Perhaps that town might be located way out on the other side of Japan, but the melancholy melody by Shosuke Ichikawa（市川昭介）under his pseudonym of Akira Nishi（西あきら）indicates that the man or woman may have gone as far afield as France or Spain (mind you, the last minute of the song gets overlaid with some boppy 70s kayo percussion).
"Sasurai" was released as Ito's 21st single in October 1970...perfect timing in kayo terms since that is when the romance falls as much as those autumn leaves. In a way, although I think that Ito delivers this wonderfully, this is also a song that could fit the discographies of either Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）or Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）in her diva period.
All right, I'll have to confess. I do play the lottery once a month here in Toronto through things like Lotto Max and Lotto 649 although I have a very Vulcan attitude toward the whole concept since there is a certain illogic of thinking that one could win a lottery despite the millions to one odds. Yet, in a Captain Kirk moment, people still do win the millions of dollars.
The recent commercials for Lotto 649 have had a smooth-sounding announcer enticing folks to get their numbers since as he says "Somebody will win. It could be you", or something along those lines. Well, enjoying my snark like all cynics and based on what a University of Toronto statistician once chortled, I can add "Somebody will win. It WON'T be you".
But all that preamble ramble about my lottery experiences...and no, the most that I've won is $20...is because the title of this song is "It Could Happen to You" as performed by the late jazz pianist Ryo Fukui（福居良）. This was a track from his debut album "Scenery" from July 1976 and it's a winning number (no pun intended considering that ramble) because of that expression of bounciness and joy from his performance. When I first heard Fukui's version of "It Could Happen to You", I rather felt like Snoopy when he was dancing around while Schroeder was jamming away on the piano in "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Yup, any contemporary of Vince Guaraldi will be a contemporary of mine.
My previous article was on Saburo Kitajima's（北島三郎）"Kita no Daichi"（北の大地）and that was all about the wonder of Hokkaido nature. Well, Fukui hailed from Japan's northernmost prefecture and his career was based there, frequently playing at a club in Sapporo until his untimely passing in 2016. In addition to "Scenery", he put out three more albums up to 2015 and a couple of live releases. Below is Fukui's performance of the song at that club, Slowboat.
Composer Jimmy Van Heusen and lyricist Johnny Burke first created "It Could Happen to You" in 1943 and actress/singer Dorothy Lamour first sang it in the musical comedy "And the Angels Sing" in the following year.
The Wikipedia article behind the song shows a paragraph several lines deep of other singers and bands who have covered it over the decades, so it has definitely become a beloved jazz standard. One of those artists is Miles Davis who took it on in his 1958 "Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet".
I was watching NHK's "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた...Songs of Japanese Spirit） earlier this afternoon, and I saw enka singer Takeshi Kitayama（北山たけし）performing his father-in-law's New Year's Day 1991 single as a tribute to the late composer Toru Funamura（船村徹）.
Of course, when that father-in-law is the legendary Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, there's a lot to live up to, but Kitayama did him proud today. "Kita no Daichi" (The Great Land in the North) has got that quintessential Sabu-chan sound: the grand and muscular enka stomp, the epic chorus and Kitajima's proud proclamation about his home prefecture of Hokkaido as this vast area of nature and goodness, thanks to the lyrics provided by Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）. It doesn't surprise me that the single was released right on New Year's Day since I could imagine if it had been a sunny day up there in Hokkaido on January 1st, the blue sky, the snow-capped mountains and the sea of white would have been spectacular.
Peaking at No. 33 on Oricon, "Kita no Daichi" won a Grand Prize at the Japan Record Awards that year and Kitajima made his appearance on the 1991 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen to perform the song. The paper snowflakes must have been in especially great supply during that performance.
1. Snow Man Grandeur
2. Snow Man HELLO HELLO
3. Naniwa Danshi Ubu Love
4. Snow Man Secret Touch
5. Nogizaka46 Boku wa Boku wo Suki ni Naru
6. Nogizaka46 Gomen ne Fingers Crossed
7. Nogizaka46 Kimi ni Shikarareta
8. King & Prince I Promise
9. INI A
10. Hinatazaka46 Kimi shika Katan
Source: Oricon
I don't quite remember how I found out about this January 2004 2-disc album which features the Yokohama-themed kayo called "Yokohama Fantasy". All I know is that I just had to have it and I did get it as part of my shopping spree recently. Although of course, the album had been released years before I launched "Kayo Kyoku Plus", it still reminds me of that rather little Yokohama-based kayo article that I came up with early in the blog's history.
Ironically, neither Hiroshi Itsuki's（五木ひろし）"Yokohama Tasogare"（よこはま・たそがれ）nor Ayumi Ishida's（いしだあゆみ）"Blue Light Yokohama"（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ）shows up in this collection although both of them can be considered to be the crème de la crème of Yokohama kayo. Rocket Brown posited that copyrights may have come into play while I think perhaps that those two had been assumed to be just a bit too obvious (however, there's a very rearranged version of the latter song by singer-songwriter Tomoko Tane（種ともこ）on Disc 2).
One thing that I noticed was that the booklet inside the CD case seemed unusually thick, but as it turned out, the reason for that was the presence of a map of Yokohama centering upon the famous Yokohama Bay. That's rather magnanimous of Sony and especially now when international tourism is rather vital for Japan, it gives me some inspiration to definitely visit the Japanese port city again and maybe even spend a few days there on my next trip.
Without further ado then, I would like to feature a few tunes from Disc 1 today because I'd never heard them before. Still, it's quite evident that Yokohama kayo has made for a good part of KKP since I have already covered them in the past, although I've also noticed that there isn't any Mood Kayo on either disc. I gather then that Sony was going more for the pops part of the kayo. As for the tracks on Disc 1:
1 Ima Mezameta Kodomo no You ni -- Momoe Yamaguchi (いま目覚めた子供のように)
2 Doll -- Hiromi Ohta (ドール)
3 Yokohama Eleven -- Midori Kinouchi (横浜いれぶん)
4 Koibito mo Nureru Machikado -- Masatoshi Nakamura (恋人も濡れる街角)
5 Yokohama AKUMA -- Akina Nakamori (ヨコハマA・KU・MA)
6 Beautiful Yokohama -- Miki Hirayama (ビューティフル・ヨコハマ)
7 Minato no Yoko, Yokohama Yokosuka -- Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band (港のヨーコ・ヨコハマ・ヨコスカ)
8 Machikutabirete Yokohama -- Yoshie Kashiwabara (待ちくたびれてヨコハマ)
9 Fly-Day Chinatown -- Yasuha (フライデー・チャイナタウン)
10 Minato Scope -- Machiko Watanabe (港スコープ)
11 Yokohama Cheek -- Masahiko Kondo (ヨコハマ・チーク)
12 Yokohama Boogie-Woogie Musume -- Rie Nakahara (横浜ブギウギ娘)
13 Yokohama Chinese Doll -- Judy Ongg (横浜チャイニーズ・ドール)
14 I Came From Yokosuka -- Momoe Yamaguchi (I CAME FROM 横須賀)
15 Beautiful Yokohama -- IN THE GROOVE (ビューティフル・ヨコハマ)
You may have noticed that there are two songs by 70s aidoru Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）in the mix but I'll be doing those as a twofer in the near future. For that matter, I'll be doing the same for the remaining tracks aside from the three that I'll be covering here today.
Let me start with Hiromi Ohta's（太田裕美）12th single "Doll" from July 1978. Created by the songwriting dream team of lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, Ohta sings this smooth if jaunty song of slightly melancholy intent in the setting of Yokohama.
If I've interpreted Matsumoto's lyrics correctly, the young lady here may be recovering from a broken romance while feeling somewhat out-of-sorts just like a doll without any strings or owner to love her. I was a little confused by the repeated statements of celluloid initially; was she referring to her life being like a film (melodrama is part and parcel of the kayo experience, after all)? However, I figured out that celluloid in katakana refers actually refers to a certain type of doll as pictured on J-Wiki.
"Doll" peaked at No. 21 on Oricon and has been included on Ohta's 8th studio album "Elegance" from August 1978 which went as high as No. 13. The singer also performed this particular tune on the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of the year.
From the brassy Miki Hirayama（平山三紀）, I have the just-as-brassy "Beautiful Yokohama", and this one is an especially auspicious tune because the song happened to be Hirayama's debut tune released in November 1970. Tsutsumi was once again the composer but back at that time, his lyrics-writing partner was Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）, and as I recall from doing other articles, those two were quite the tandem, too.
Hirayama was all of 21 with that husky voice of hers when she recorded it as this worldly young woman who made Yokohama her oyster and her men her pets tightly wound around her finger (two of the many men's names that she mentions happen to be the songwriters' sons). According to the J-Wiki article on this song, Hirayama had been attending the Takarajima Music Office for singing lessons at the Hotel New Japan. It just so happened that both Hashimoto and Tsutsumi had founded the organization and offered her "Beautiful Yokohama" as her first original tune. The cover of the single was also photographed with Hirayama at Yamashita Park right by Yokohama Bay. Ranking at No. 64 on the singles chart, the song was placed in her debut album "Beautiful Album"（ビューティフル・アルバム）from November 1971.
My final example is Machiko Watanabe's（渡辺真知子）"Minato Scope" (Port Telescope). When I saw that katakana for the second word in the title, I'd first thought that it was the translation for "scoop" which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But then on reading Akira Ito's（伊藤アキラ）lyrics, I realized that Watanabe's protagonist was looking through a telescope on a cruise ship entering the harbour in Yokohama to see if she could improbably spot her old flame and probably her memories with the guy. Watanabe came up with the City Pop melody punctuated by the buzzy electric guitar.
It certainly comes across as another fresh City Pop discovery and Watanabe's vocals sound as wonderfully resonant as ever. "Minato Scope" was the B-side to her 12th single from February 1982, "Suki to Itte"（好きと言って...Tell Me You Love Me）. Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）arranged everything.
As mentioned, I'll take a look at some of the other tracks in individual articles in the coming weeks and months, but otherwise, I'll see if I can get Disc 2 up here in March.
It's been a while since we've had City Pop chanteuse Hitomi Tohyama（当山ひとみ）with us, so it's nice to bring her in to finish up tonight's usual urban contemporary tasting plate.
And interestingly enough, this is one song that's further down her discography timeline since it hails from her November 1989 album "After 5:00 Story". Usually up to this point, I had usually been tackling Penny's songs from the early to the mid 1980s. The track is "Namida no Night Game" (Night Game of Tears) which was written by Mari Kayano*（萱野真理）and composed by Shingo Kobayashi（小林信吾）as this slick and groovy City Pop or soul tune of the late 1980s going into the 1990s. Maybe it's even a J-Quiet Storm number as well. There is also some essence of a sophisticated pop arrangement in there, so of course I'm far from complaining.
*The kanji for the lyricist's family name has several readings according to my usual source, so I'm not sure what the proper one is. If anyone can let me know what the proper reading is, I would be eternally grateful.
Since the above video fades away rather abruptly, I'm wondering if we only got three-quarters of the song but I'm still enjoying it. When I heard Rumiko Koyanagi's（小柳ルミ子）"Lady Lonely" for the first time, I began getting images in my head about wandering the streets of Roppongi or Akasaka back in the 1970s when the economy was pumping away as well as the hips at the discos there. I can certainly understand the new City Pop fans when they say that they would love to go back in time to Tokyo of that decade.
And this is very much the 1970s style of City Pop with the disco strings and horns, the bouncy bass and the dancing Fender Rhodes behind Koyanagi's high-toned vocals. I almost absentmindedly asked myself what the table charge at the nearest Roppongi dance hall was. Written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, "Lady Lonely" (and yeah, despite the fact that Koyanagi sings "lonely lady" throughout the song, the title is accurate), was a track on her May 1979 album "Spain no Ame"（スペインの雨...The Rain In Spain）.
Come to think of it, there is something in the funky arrangement for "Lady Lonely" that hits me as if this could have been a good theme song for an action show starring Koyanagi herself as a female tough-as-nails detective in the hard city. For some reason, I'm thinking of either the Japanese equivalent of "Policewoman" or "Get Christie Love". Indeed, I'm showing my age here.
There was a running gag on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show". Whenever anyone complained about the summer temperatures in Los Angeles, Johnny would snidely say "But at least it's a dry heat".😎 We weren't even that lucky in the Tokyo area. Basically from June to late September, we were assaulted with heat and humidity. Many was a day that I woke up leaving a major J-Canuck-shaped sweat stain on my sheets. But I endured. How I endured.
Maybe singer-songwriter Yumi Murata（村田有美）was luckier than most and she ended up recording her 1983 album "Drywindasian" in Los Angeles with its dry heat. With lyrics by her and music by Masanori Sasaji（笹路正徳）, the opening track "Kanpoo" (Dry Wind) is quite the R&B stomp and the style is pretty reminiscent of some of Minako Yoshida's（吉田美奈子）material back around the same time. It's also got quite the funk in there so there will also be strutting among the stomping at the same time. Love the guitar and the horns, too.
An English version of "Kanpoo" was also made into the B-side for Murata's single "Pigtail" from the same year. For that version, Chris Mosdell provided the lyrics. According to Jisho.org, though, the proper reading for the kanji of the title is karakaze.
Yesterday, I wrote an article on Ryuichi Sakamoto's（坂本龍一）October 1978 "Thousand Knives"（千のナイフ）album and mentioned that the year was a fairly busy one for the members who would become the legendary Yellow Magic Orchestra: Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）. Along with Sakamoto's debut solo album, Takahashi had his "Saravah!" and Hosono had a couple of albums earlier that year: April's "Paraiso" and then "Cochin Moon" in September.
Referring back to yesterday's article, I noted that the liner notes in "Thousand Knives" also mentioned that some of the tracks there hinted at what Sakamoto was going to do as part of YMO with the technopop flourishes and all that. I then saw a similar thing written about Hosono's "Paraiso"（はらいそ）on its Wikipedia article in that he also brought in some of those electronic sounds that would characterize that band's own material.
Maybe then, that is what I'm hearing from one track on "Paraiso" (which is officially under the name of Harry Hosono and the Yellow Magic Band), "Shimendouka" which I tried to translate as "Four-Sided Ethical Poetry". The Wikipedia entry on the album stated that although it continued to show off Hosono's tropical New Music style from the 1970s, there were those bloops and bleeps as well. I gather then that "Shimendouka" is fairly representative with the tropics coming in via those steel drums followed by some of that technopop through some tinkly synths.
It's definitely very cheerful and laid-back, and it was written and composed by Hosono. As for that title, a douka（道歌）, according to Jisho.org, is an ethical form of tanka poetry with a lesson at the end, so I gather that it's the Japanese equivalent of a fable. Harry's lyrics happen to hint that a fellow is walking off to a much happier land, perhaps the paradise mentioned in the album title, and that he's more than willing to shove any devils out of the way. In each verse, he mentions that he will be going through a door in the west, an ocean in the south, a sky in the east and finally an island in the north, so that would explain the four-sided part.
You can also take a gander at "Tokyo Rush"（東京ラッシュ）which begins the album.
1. Kenshi Yonezu Stray Sheep
2. Arashi This is Arashi
3. BTS Map of the World: 7 ~ The Journey
4. King & Prince L&
5. BTS Map of the World: 7
6. King Gnu Ceremony
7. Mr. Children Soundtracks
8. Seventeen 24H
9. Sutopuri Strawberry Prince
10. Official Hige Dandism Traveler
The stats come from here.
Your mission, if you choose to accept it...
I may have been less than a year old when the original "Mission: Impossible" series came on CBS in September 1966, but my earliest television memories are the opening credits montage sequence, the tape recorded message and Jim Phelps looking over who was going to be in on this week's mission. Oh, of course, there was also the theme song by Lalo Schifrin for which my mother told me with no lack of mirth that I had a very visceral reaction. Apparently, I was bouncing in my Pampers when that iconic theme came on, but I guess even back then, I had an ear for the coolest tunes.
And so for this week's ROY article, I'm going with another beloved American lawman show theme to join the themes from "Dragnet" and "Peter Gunn". But unlike those articles which had the avant-garde group Art of Noise do their cover versions, I'm sticking with the original Schifrin version. Indeed, it is one of the most recognizable themes on television no matter the nation and as soon as one hears it, I'm sure that those famous repeated scenes, mask-ditching, espionage derring-do...and Tom Cruise come to mind, although for nostalgia's sake, so do Peter Graves and Martin Landau.
These pieces of information haven't appeared on the Wikipedia article for the song, so I'm wondering if they are apocryphal. However, one piece is that Schifrin had actually originally created the theme as background music for a particularly intense scene in an episode of "The Man From UNCLE", another 60s spy show; Schifrin was involved with at least a few of the episode scores. The other trivia point is that the "Mission: Impossible" theme was played presumably once on ABC's "American Bandstand", that popular music-and-dance show hosted by Dick Clark, only for things to come to a screeching halt because the kids couldn't figure out how to dance to it.
Ah, yes. Tom Cruise. There was the late 1980s return of the series on ABC with Graves once more which started out well but petered out (no pun intended) fairly quickly. However, I was in Japan when Paramount Pictures decided to bring "Mission: Impossible" to the big screen with the actor who would become the world's most famous stunt man with the first of the movie franchise coming out in 1996. Even though I was no longer bouncing around on my butt in the theatre, it was still a thrill to catch the trailer with the famous catchphrases and the original Schifrin theme. When I first saw the movie, though, I had to admit to some disappointment since the production team decided to break two M:I commandments: they killed off the team, making Ethan Hunt the overarching one-man IMF team with a few recruits helping out here and there; plus, they made Jim Phelps a bad guy. In the quarter-century since that first movie, though, I've been much more accepting of it, and I have to say that Brian DePalma put in a lot of style and Danny Elfman put out a bristling version of the theme song.
In the leadup to the release of the 1996 movie, I was at Tower Records in Shibuya when I saw a counter selling Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen's dance remix take on the Schifrin theme. Yeah, I think that I was spending an inordinate amount of time at the listening post for that one.
Since the DePalma movie, we've had a total of six "Mission: Impossible" movies with Cruise up to now with different directors and composers. Plus, we should be getting another couple of them coming down the pike in the next few years. With all of the intrigue and "Can you top this?!" stunts (I'm guessing that Cruise will have to crawl around the International Space Station before jumping onto a Space X capsule to get back to a yurt in Mongolia in the next flick), I still look forward to the opening credit montage and how the Schifrin theme is handled. No more bouncing around, though.
Although a single of the Schifrin theme was released in 1967, I'm going to go with the debut year of the original series in 1966. So, what were the award winners at the Japan Record Awards back then?
Grand Prize: Yukio Hashi -- Muhyou （霧氷）
Best New Artist: Ichiro Araki -- Sora ni Hoshi ga Aruyou ni（空に星があるように）
Best Composer: Kuranosuke Hamaguchi/浜口庫之助 for Mike Maki -- Bara ga Saita （バラが咲いた）
This is another one of those bands whose origins were extremely hard to trace and they remain so. I wasn't even quite sure how to transcribe their name into romaji. I'd thought that it was Keiko to Endless which was unusual but not out of the realm of possibility considering some of the weird names that kayo groups could have.
But indeed, it was Keiko to Endy, Lewis (けい子とエンディルイス/Keiko and Endy & Lewis) from what I could find in very small print on one of their singles. As it turned out, another small grain of information that I could garner from this site is that the two guys, Endy Yamaguchi（エンディ山口）and Lewis Takano（ルイス高野）, were two of the members from Mood Kayo/pop group Pinky and Killers（ピンキーとキラーズ）who had that big 1968 hit in "Koi no Kisetsu" (恋の季節）with them in bowlers and ties.
Pinky and Killers broke up in 1972 after which Endy and Lewis teamed up with Keiko to form a far more relaxed trio in the folk genre. I couldn't track down how many singles exactly they came up with, but there was at least one album titled "Tonari no Futari"（隣りの二人...The Couple Next Door） created in 1974, and so I'm assuming that this particular song "Kaze" (Winds) came from there since I wasn't able to find it on any of their singles, either on A or B sides. I wasn't even able to find out who the songwriters were behind "Kaze", but it's a very pleasant tune accompanied by harmonica and guitar with the high and light vocals of Keiko and Endy and Lewis providing their own harmony.
I'd like to start off this article with the initially ruefully humourous reaction to "Sen no Knife", Ryuichi Sakamoto's（坂本龍一）debut solo album from October 1978. According to the liner notes for the 2016 reissue of the album via J-Wiki, the very first pressing of 400 copies got sold...only for 200 of them to be returned to the record stores.😱 Well, that reminded me of one particular movie scene.
Yeah, I guess The Professor was indeed ahead of his time. That's what avant-garde is all about after all. I picked up "Sen no Knife" (Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto) as one of the purchases in my recent shopping spree, and putting it into the stereo for the first time last week, I thought it is pretty avant-garde now. I could only imagine what those 400 first purchasers back in the late 1970s must have thought.
However, whereas those people were probably taking a chance on the fairly unknown Sakamoto with "Sen no Knife" just some weeks before his first collaboration with drummer Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）and bassist Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）would spark a future legend in synthpop music via Yellow Magic Orchestra, I made my purchase of the album after decades of getting to know him through YMO, his works with other singers such as Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）, Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and Miki Imai（今井美樹）, his acting performance with David Bowie in "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", his Oscar win for "The Last Emperor" and other solo works in various genres (dang, I think I just broke a record for longest sentence). In other words, I was long ready to try out "Sen no Knife", especially after having seen the cover in record guides over the years. Incidentally, it was his YMO buddy, Takahashi, who came up with the idea for the photo of the album cover and perhaps the fashion for Sakamoto. I guess it must have taken quite an imaginative mind to have a good friend pose in a sudsy bathtub with a live electric lamp. Moving on...
As I said earlier, I had all those years of Sakamoto music playing around in my head to know that what I was probably going to hear from "Thousand Knives" was going to be pleasantly out there and Sakamoto-esque. In fact, I'd already heard the first (and title) track in its YMO form when I got that audiotape of the band's BEST collection in 1982 and then through the source album "BGM". I mentioned in the article for "BGM" that I found it even more alien and weird than the songs that I'd heard from the guys at the time. YMO's "Thousand Knives" struck me as being something the band came up with to show some more rock chops.
With the original "Thousand Knives" though, after that intro involving The Professor intoning Mao Zedong's "Jinggam Mountain" through a vocoder, there is something far more epic and adventurous as if the listener had accepted that invitation into a Tokyo that was one-half Edo Era and one-half high-tech 22nd century. At over 9 minutes in length, it would have to be. At the same time, there is something everyday about "Thousand Knives" since Sakamoto's additional melodies have that bubbly and percolating feeling of pots and steamers cooking up breakfast, lunch or dinner for the local hoi polloi while the antigrav vehicles whiz by. Meanwhile, there is also a hint of minor-key space jazz at 3:16, so perhaps the neighbourhood also has a hole-in-the-wall club that's just closing in the sunrise hours with the employees groggily heading for bed or one of those yatai with the steamers cooking.
I also mustn't forget the bristling guitar solo by Kazumi Watanabe（渡辺香津美）. Maybe that could represent the dangerous street urchins lurking about, getting ready to steal a fruit from one of the shops. Anyways, by the end, it's obvious that "Thousand Knives" is all about the visit and not the stay since we're all taken away into something a little more sparse. It's quite the introduction by Sakamoto into his new world of computers and pop.
"Thousand Knives" the track is something that I was already familiar with, though. Now I was going into new territory. "Island of Woods" is taking me into the bizarre and sylvan via a tropical island run by Philip Glass (on Alpha Centauri?), it seems. Perhaps this is where those 200 naysayers had started thinking "I wonder what the refund policy is like at that record store?". But luckily for me, I already have that sense of Sakamoto. "Island of Woods" is less a song and more a soundscape. Some of those sounds include Motoya Hamaguchi（浜口茂外也）on a Brazilian bird whistle, a heart beating away and a dog barking along with the waves that finish this even longer track.
"Grasshoppers" melds the classical and the synthetics with a piano duet involving Sakamoto and Yuji Takahashi（高橋悠治）. It almost describes a movie plot on its own and I'm thinking of Pixar's "A Bug's Life" if it had been made as an unknown Studio Ghibli anime of that time with Sakamoto behind the score. There are a couple of different movements in there with the overall arc being happy-go-lucky with the grasshoppers just skipping all over the place while one part is contemplative as if the main character is handling an internal issue.
The writer for the English liner notes in "Sen no Knife", Paul Bowler, gave me the impression that "Shin Nihon Denshi Teki Minyo/DAS NEUE JAPANISCHE ELEKTRONISCHE VOLKSLIED"（新日本電子的民謡...New Japan Electronic Folk Song） is a Kraftwerkian delight delving once more into a traditional Japanese quarter like Asakusa. I can understand his sentiment completely especially with that repetitive gloppy synthesizer rhythm from the start which seems to be an aural equivalent of Gonk, one of the droids from the very first "Star Wars" film in 1977, walking all over the place.
Although that last word of minyo is in there and it's been seen as a most Sakamoto-esque minyo, Sakamoto himself has rather scoffed at it being a Japanese folk song by saying "That is nothing like a minyo. It's totally Western music". Whatever anyone thinks of it though, it was a song that was played at YMO concerts in their early years.
One other interesting point of trivia regarding "DAS NEUE JAPANISCHE ELEKTRONISCHE VOLKSLIED" is that a good friend of Sakamoto for whom The Professor helped out in his own works and concerts was dropping by the studio almost every day during the album production. Sakamoto decided to put him to work for this particular track by arming him with the castanets and indeed I do hear them. That old buddy? Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）.
In the title track, I heard some of the bloops, bleeps and the fluttering butterfly-like synth sounds that I would later hear in the brief musical bridge between "Tong Poo"（東風）and "La Femme Chinoise", two tracks on the very first YMO album. Bowler points out that "Plastic Bamboo" also has that embryonic feeling of what Yellow Magic Orchestra would have in store for us for the next few years. It does have the familiar bloops and bleeps from the songs of their early years along with a funky main melody. Not surprisingly, "Plastic Bamboo" also got performed at YMO concerts in the early days.
The final track, "The End of Asia", has actually already been covered by me in its own article but since I wanted to make this a complete set, I'm still throwing in a performance video by YMO here.
For all those synthesizer fans who want to know which instruments Sakamoto put into play when creating these most marvelous tracks, I will just transcribe what I found from the J-Wiki article:
Moog III-C+Roland MC-8 Micro Composer
Poly Moog / Mini Moog / Micro Moog / Obertheim
Eight Voice Polyphonic + Digital Programmer /
ARP Odyssey / KORG PS-3100 Polyphonic /
KORG VC-10 Vocorder / KORG SQ-10 Analog
Sequencer / Syn-Drums / Acoustic Piano / Marimba
As the commercial pitchman would say, "But wait! There's more!". Last night, I discovered this recent video by Doctor Mix that introduces his choices of Top 10 synthesizers since I was rather fascinated about some of these magical music machines after reading the above shopping list for Sakamoto. Think of this as a cool-down video.
Off the top, I pointed out that "Sen no Knife" had a rather mixed result among its first listeners back in 1978. But I think that sentiments have grown a little more fonder among folks since that time (I've got a feeling that buyers are hanging onto their copies), and I think that for any Sakamoto fan, "Sen no Knife" is a must-have now, at the very least to find out how the YMO sound had been developing and how a studio musician was able to ambitiously marry music and computers. It was certainly an interesting time for Sakamoto, Takahashi and Hosono since YMO's first album came out exactly a month after "Sen no Knife" which was released a few months following Takahashi's "Saravah!" album and Hosono's "Cochin Moon".
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| Please kids! Don't try this at home. |
2/22/22 at 22:22. Just about perfect for the phenomenon known as Twos Day today. Yep, within some minutes, we'll be reaching that exact time so I'm hoping that I'll be able to finish this article by 10:22 pm. It would have been even more perfect if today was actually February 22, 2222 at 22:22 but I'm not quite willing to wait another couple of centuries. And incidentally, I brought the above image in but I forgot the source so I do apologize if the owner does see it. Let me know if you'd like me to take it down or at least have me acknowledge the originating website.
Well, I was thinking about how I would commemorate Twos Day tonight and so I thought about kayo involving the word two in the title. I quickly figured that a lot of such kayo would involved romance with the protagonists being a couple, and sure enough, I did find one via Miyako Otsuki's（大月みやこ）"Osaka Futarizure" (Osaka Party of Two) which was released as the enka veteran's 60th single in December 1982.
"Osaka Futarizure" is quite the gallant and peaceful enka as the titular couple in love stroll somewhere in downtown Osaka under an umbrella. Of course, sharing an umbrella in Japan has that huge connotation of romance blossoming. With Mizuho Ashihara（芦原みづほ）providing lyrics and Yukihiko Ito（伊藤雪彦）as the composer, it's buoyed by Otsuki's strong yet silky vocals and that Latin guitar.
I got these from the relevant page on the Oricon site.
1. SixTONES Imitation Rain/D.D.
2. AKB48 Shitsuren, Arigato
3. Arashi Kite
4. Nogizaka46 Shiawase no Hogoshoku
5. Snow Man KISSIN’ MY LIPS/Stories
6. SixTONES Navigator
7. Hinatazaka46 Sonna Koto nai yo
8. King & Prince Mazy Night
9. Twenty★Twenty smile
10. SixTONES New Era
Earlier today, I received a pen-and-paper letter from an old friend who lives in Okinawa. We haven't seen each other in almost 30 years but we've been able to keep in touch annually through Xmas and stuff. He and his family had lived briefly here in Toronto where we first met. I think that the last time that we met was during the early years of my second stay in Japan when we and some other mutual friends met up at a ramen joint just across the street from my NOVA school in Asakusa.
I'll have to send a reply as soon as possible, but reading the letter this afternoon had me thinking of this song by the late singer-songwriter Johnny Yoshinaga（ジョニー吉長）, "Zero Comma Zero". Honestly, I don't know what the title is all about although I start thinking about geographical coordinates, but there is Yoshinaga's lyric "Time goes fast, time goes on" which is kinda my internal observation on my relationships with friends as I approach my sixties.
A track from his 1983 album "Love Child", this was his own creation which has its ingredients of mellow funk, light rock and perhaps some blues rolling around in there. Plus I think that the genres are all hiding under a thin veil of City Pop because of the arrangement. It does make for the ideal song of contemplation about life and all that happens within it while nursing that drink at a bar.
I have to confess sheepishly that I would never have imagined a title like "Okorinbo no Ningyo" (Short-Tempered Mermaid). For one thing, I had never heard of the cutesy word okorinbo before (usually, my term for short-tempered has been tanki), and for another, I had never even considered the concept of a crabby mermaid. Up to now, my impression of the half-humanoid/half-fish had been that mermaids and mermen were pretty serene types.
Well, the more you know, right? Anyways, "Okorinbo no Ningyo" was the June 1987 debut single for Chiba-born aidoru Yuko Nito（仁藤優子）. Graduating from the famous Horikoshi High School in Tokyo, she opted to sing Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）hit "Shojo A"（少女A）in the Horipro Talent Scout Caravan in 1986, won a prize and entered show business.
I do like "Okorinbo no Ningyo" for the AOR-like intro, the sparkly aidoru melody by Ken Sato（佐藤健）with lyrics by Jun Natsume（夏目純）, and Nito's clear-as-a-bell vocals which remind me of those by a young Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）back in the early 1980s. It's got that winning summery vibe as this mermaid-human male romance plays out. Her first single peaked at No. 13 on Oricon.
According to J-Wiki, up to 1990, Nito released five singles along with one original album. However, ongoing issues with her throat led to her eventually slowing the pace in the music part of her career to its end, so for a while, she focused on becoming a baradol（バラドル...variety show aidoru） along with another up-and-comer Miyuki Imori（井森美幸）and then went along the acting route.
