Kyoko Omiya & Orange -- Mirage（ミラージュ）

 

In a rather grim way, remembering my first article for the folk/New Music group Kyoko Omiya & Orange（大宮京子＆オレンジ）which covered their songs "Melody" and "Season" is nostalgic since the first thing that I put down was that my province of Ontario was heading into the second wave of the pandemic in the fall of 2020. However, as I type this third article for the group, things seem to be going in the right direction as we leave our sixth wave. I am hoping that things will settle down for the rest of the summer at least, although there is that possible monkeypox outbreak to deal with now.

Anyways, on top of "Melody" and "Season", there is also the second article "Toki wo Modoshite"（時を戻して）that you can peruse about Omiya & Orange. Although some sites such as Hip Tank Records have considered the group as a City Pop band, I've seen them thus far as more New Music and AOR, more along the lines of Off-Course（オフコース）when they were transitioning from folk over to a more pop style in the late 1970s. Of course (no immediate pun intended), this isn't a slag against Orange since this 1980 single of theirs, "Mirage", is a spirited tune that would have had folks back then hop into their cars for a nice Sunday drive along the seashore. 

Unlike the other Orange tunes that I've profiled, "Mirage" wasn't created by any of the band members. Instead, it was lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer/arranger Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）who created this soaring number which I am also enjoying for its "Xanadu"-like sound and the background chorus. Going into this unofficial start to summer here in Ontario via the Victoria Day long weekend, "Mirage" does sound like quite the tonic.