Takako Uehara -- Blue Light Yokohama（ブルー・ライト・ヨコハマ）

 

Rocket Brown and I were having a very cordial conversation earlier today regarding Yokohama-based kayo since one of my recent purchases was the January 2004 2-CD set known as "Yokohama Fantasy"（横浜幻想）which is chock-filled with those very songs. Strangely enough, neither disc has "Yokohama Tasogare"（よこはま・たそがれ）by Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）or even the original version of the classic "Blue Light Yokohama" by Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）, both of which I had covered in a KKP article of a decade ago. I guess maybe they were seen as being too obvious although "Blue Light Yokohama" is at least covered by singer-songwriter Tomoko Tane（種ともこ）on Disc 2, albeit in a heavily rearranged version.

If "Yokohama Fantasy" had held off on its release by several months, it could have included another cover of the evergreen "Blue Light Yokohama" as ably recorded by Takako Uehara（上原多香子）, former member of the 90s girl group SPEED. This version of the Jun Hashimoto and Kyohei Tsutsumi-penned（橋本淳・筒美京平）classic kayo was Uehara's 9th single released in February 2004 and it's a comforting and straight-ahead cover with the arrangement amped by synthesizers and a touch of soul.

This cover peaked at No. 33 on Oricon. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a look into "Yokohama Fantasy" in the coming days since there are tracks by some pretty familiar faces that I hadn't know about, although there are also some famous representatives, too. I'd actually written about her previous single, "Make-up Shadow", itself a cover of a Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）tune.