Hiromi Go -- Feel Like Goin' Home

 

On the way back to Haneda Airport

Living in Ichikawa all those years, I was always torn between my apartment over there and home over here in Toronto. During Xmas holiday time when I often but not always headed back to Canada, there was that certain feeling in the days leading up to departure for my home country but also when the day approached to return to Ichikawa for my Japan life and work. It was the feeling of going home so it wasn't so much the regret of leaving but the anticipation of getting back to my comfy base. Mind you, now that I've been back in my hometown for more than a decade, home is most definitely home now although I sometimes miss my old third-floor walkup south of Minami-Gyotoku Station.

And thus, I come to this particular ditty by heartthrob singer Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）, "Feel Like Goin' Home" from his December 1979 album "Super Drive". Contributor nikala has already provided one other track on this LP of City Pop/J-AOR treats that predates Go's Shin-Gosanke brother Hideki Saijo's（西城秀樹）dive into the urban contemporary by several years. The mellow and groovalicious "Irie Nite"（入江にて）was a definite revelation of Go and City Pop when nikala first introduced it back in 2015, a few years before even "Plastic Love" exploded through cyberspace.

"Feel Like Goin' Home" was taken care of by the same trio behind "Irie Nite", namely lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）, composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and arranger Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）. The finished product definitely sounds like how I used to feel whenever it was time to head back to either Canada or Japan. There was that already mentioned feeling of anticipation and also some wistfulness; mind you, with Hiromi Go and Ryu's lyrics, it's actually all about getting back to not so much a place but that person you love. And like that titular super drive, the journey home is fun and filled with expectation. Certainly Go sounds like it in his vocals.

I'd actually translated some liner notes for this group's record for Rocket Brown recently, but The 24th Street Band with Hiram Bullock, Clifford Carter, Will Lee and Steve Jordan backed up Go on "Super Drive".