Johnny Yoshinaga -- Zero Comma Zero

 

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.