I was having a short conversation with commenter May Lily over the past couple of days on SMAP's old Monday night Fuji-TV music-variety show "SMAP X SMAP". It wasn't must-see television for me, honestly speaking, but I did enjoy the Bistro SMAP segments where KimuTaku, Nakai-kun and the rest of the group concocted some delicious recipes for celebrity guests.
Well, in a case of "the more you learn", I found out that one of SMAP's trademark singles "$10" from 1993 was actually a cover of the composer's original. Indeed, singer-songwriter Kenji Hayashida（林田健司）had recorded it in his May 1992 2nd original album "Unbalance" with Hiromi Mori（森浩美） co-writing the lyrics. I gotta say that I enjoy the original "$10" even more than the SMAP cover because of the dance-funk arrangement by Hayashida and CHOKKAKU. The singer may not be up there with James Brown, but I think his "$10" does its share of cooking.
Yeah, there's some of that disco feeling in "$10". "Monkey Magic" was really disco back in the day.
ReplyDelete"It wasn't must-see television for me"
ReplyDeleteOh wow, the watercooler conversations must have been fun the next day, lol.
"Hey, did you see last night's SMAP X SMAP?"
"Nah, I missed it."
"Oh, ok."
No watercooler in my school, so that was OK. :)
DeleteI didn't know $10 was a cover song. i always thought SMAP sang it first. I wish blogger has some feature for me to read back my comments as I sometimes forgot which entries I left comments. this original version is more jazzy and funky to me than SMAP's version as you wrote too.
ReplyDeleteHi, May. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm all alone in Blogger after a decade of doing this. There doesn't seem much in the way of special features anymore.
Deleteif this makes you feel better, I love to leave comment on this blog as I know there will be a reply from you or the author of the entry. it's rare to see that these days somehow. I think blogger was bought and abandoned by google. that's a shame since I initially used it more than wordpress. google seems to have many failed attempts for blogs and social networks.
DeleteThanks, May. I answer most comments except for terse ones that just say something like "Good". At this point, I think Blogger is pretty much a somewhat isolated appendage of Google, just like an appendix is an appendage of the intestine.
DeleteHowever, I do remember when one article was taken down from the blog for no good reason and I complained to the mysterious administrators with a screenshot of the so-called offending article. It was back up without any reply from them within 24 hours, so somebody is obviously still keeping an eye on it, at least from time to time.