Masahiko Kondo -- Eien ni Himitsu sa（永遠に秘密さ）

 

That's a pretty lithe Masahiko "Matchy" Kondo（近藤真彦）there doing his waiter thing with those dishes. Working in a restaurant part-time as a teenager is definitely paying one's dues.

Back in the heat of August last year, I wrote about Matchy's "One More Time", a B-side that has the cachet of being a redux of Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）alternate take on "Ride On Time". It definitely made quite the story when I first heard about this.

Well, the flip side for that B-side is "Eien ni Himitsu sa" (Forever A Secret), the boy wonder's 15th single released in September 1984. It may have gotten out onto the record shelves closer to fall, but there's no denying the summery feeling from this one, and that is due to the melody and arrangement by Tats himself again with Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）providing the lyrics about a couple very much in love taking that stroll along the beach, perhaps keeping the affair as sub-rosa as possible. Especially with that background chorus in there, it definitely feels like a Tatsuro tune.

"Eien ni Himitsu sa" was another No. 1 hit for Kondo and it ended up becoming the 49th-ranked single for 1984, selling close to 240,000 records.