Miki Matsubara -- In The Room

 

Well, now that local public events in Toronto are coming back online following the pandemic, one such event is taking place this weekend. The Doors Open project has certain facilities opening up to the public when they usually aren't. I took a gander at four places this morning, one of which was the highlight, the small atrium for the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, as you can see above. It kinda either looks like the Console Room for the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS or Main Engineering in the Enterprise-D. Yup, I still have my sci-fi on the brain.😵

But I'm realizing that it was my first time walking this much in many, many months so right now I've aching all over and I'm probably going to need some heavy dollops of Voltaren later today. Will need to exercise some more in the weeks and months to come.

Anyways, since I was visiting a number of rooms that I wouldn't usually enter, I thought perhaps "In The Room" would be an ideal song to start this broadcasting day of "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Sung by Miki Matsubara（松原みき）, this is a snappy and upbeat song which was composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, the same fellow who came up with her classic "Mayonaka no Door"（真夜中のドアー）, many years earlier, and it's interesting because just like with Akira Terao（寺尾聰）tackling something more late 80s City Pop through "The Stolen Memories" with its sophisticated pop sense, Matsubara is also doing the same here with the synths and horns. 

The arrangement was done by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）and Ichiko Takehana（竹花いち子）handled the lyrics. Despite the upbeat night-on-the-town feeling of the music, the setting of Takehana's lyrics is within a room of a woman who is quietly and bitterly kicking herself after losing her guy to another woman. Apparently, the breakup was very cordial but she's regretting that she didn't even have a chance to pour some anger onto him. "In The Room" was Matsubara's final single coming out in May 1988 and it was also a track on her final album from the same month "WiNK".