Tunnels -- Ikki!（一気!）

 

The comedic duo Tunnels（とんねるず）do have their representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" although some of their early stuff was taking the piss out of enka/Mood Kayo, and they did have a huge hit out of "Nasakenee"（情けねえ）in 1991. But basically, I've always seen them more as one of the most anarchic pairs in the geinokai rather than singers.

Last night, I was watching the 8th-anniversary special of "The Best 10"（ザ・ベストテン）from 1986 and one of the highlight scenes that the show put up was Tunnels' onstage rendition of "Ikki!" (Chug-A-Lug). I then realized that after all of those other Tunnels' songs on KKP, I had totally forgotten to put this one up. For one thing, Takaaki Ishibashi and Noritake Kinashi（石橋貴明・木梨憲武）had placed their names into eternal showbiz notoriety very early in their careers due to one incident on live TV.

To explain, the nutty guys were performing "Ikki!" on the January 19th 1985 broadcast of "All-Night Fuji"（オールナイトフジ）, and Taka-chan got a little carried away with his prancing about on set. He started tugging on a TV camera simply to horse about...only for him to bring the entire thing crashing onto the floor to everyone's shock. Now I used to watch the guys go crazy on their own show and everywhere else, so nothing fazed them but the faces that I saw on Taka-chan and Nori when they witnessed several of the production staff struggle to hoist up zillions of yen of equipment told me that even they were thinking "OMG! What the heck did we just do?!".

I wouldn't be surprised if the two had wondered whether their time in the limelight was at an end and I'm sure that they got the dressing down of their lives after the broadcast. Even in the video above, the Tunnels admitted that they'd gotten the glare of death from the cameraman at the time of the incident. But obviously, they escaped a major bullet and went on to have a long and very successful career.

Well, at the very least, their "Ikki!" got the best promotion ever. After all, as the saying goes, any promotion is good promotion. The song was actually Tunnels' first bona fide single from December 1984 although they had put out a couple of demo songs beforehand, and the timing couldn't have been better since it was coming on the cusp of the annual bonenkai（忘年会...year-end party） season when some major drinking takes place.

During any performances on TV, Tunnels and their backing dancers showed up as punk high school students in the formation of the school cheerleading club but the lyrics by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）were all about enjoying copious amounts of alcohol and food, presumably at the local izakaya. Knowing some of the middle-aged mothers that I used to teach, they were probably far from happy to have this connection between high school kids and drinking, but these are the Tunnels that we are talking about. 

The music was made and arranged by Akira Mitake（見岳章）. As it starts out sounding like "Dance on Your Knees" by Hall & Oates, it's mostly a bass synthesizer and other keyboards providing some minimal existence (aside from some parodic AOR in the middle) while Taka and Nori have fun with the vocals, especially the latter guy who sounds like he owns a bar in Shinjuku Ni-chome. With all behind this song, "Ikki!" made it up to No. 19 on Oricon.