Tetsuo Sakurai（櫻井哲夫）was the first bassist for the fusion band Casiopea（カシオペア）and his time ran from 1976 to around 1989, and one of the songs that I remember from Sakurai and the guys was their 1979 cover of "I Love New York".
I gather then that Sakurai kept his New York state of mind when he came up with his first solo album, "Dewdrops" (1986). It's quite a nature-sounding title but the cover has that sky-high view of Manhattan with a dapper Sakurai running out to meet us. Back in those days when it came to having an album with an urban contemporary theme in Japan, I guess, having the Big Apple in the background was never a bad thing. Have a look at Tadao Inoue's（井上忠夫）"Nijuu-ni Shoku no Shuumatsu"（22色の週末）, for instance.
Anyways, "Prophet Voyager" was the last track on "Dewdrops", and I just kinda went "This was the last track?!"; I could only imagine what the rest of the album is like. Usually I expect a slow ballad or a mid-tempo tune to finish an album off, but "Prophet Voyager" (sounds like a military operation) is more than six minutes of high-energy jamming starting with Sakurai's beefy bass and then having some horns and an electric guitar getting in on the action.
According to the Tower Records blurb on "Dewdrops", guitarist and singer Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）was involved in the album, so it could have been him. Sakurai was also joined by other City Pop lights such as Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）, Akira Inoue（井上鑑）and Cindy, so there is some temptation to find out what the rest of "Dewdrops" sounds like.
Always had a weakness for this particular track. On the one hand, it's so groovy, but on the other, there's album artwork, which inevitably feeds your imagination with New York cityscape. Tetsuo on the run cannot go unnoticed as well. I've always thought of this pose of his as a parody of salaryman who finally rebelled and skipped a day at work.
ReplyDeleteEDIT Reposted my comment due to grammar correction.