Summer officially arrived here in Toronto at 5:14 am this morning and although it was still pretty fresh this morning, the season really roared in from the afternoon, so the temperatures were up to 28 degrees Celsius with a Humidex close to 40 degrees. I was out with a few friends for lunch today and I did my fair share of walking so I'm aching all over as I type this. I could really use that Peach Banana smoothie that you see above.
Well, since it is the first day of summer and therefore the longest day of the year, let's have something seasonally apt. Last year, I wrote about Shogo Hamada's（浜田省吾）old group from the 1970s, Aido（愛奴）, and their "Natsu no Futari"（夏の二人）. Strangely enough, though, that 1976 song was created by band guitarist Tohru Aoyama（青山徹）following Hamada's departure from Aido.
Today, though, I have Aido's debut single "Futari no Natsu" (Two of Us in Summer) ...yeah, just flip a couple of words around. Released in May 1975, unlike the later mellower and perhaps closer to AOR "Natsu no Futari", "Futari no Natsu" has more of that gentle 1950s Richie-and-Mary Beth romantic melodiousness, thanks to Hamada who wrote and composed it. Indeed, it's all about a couple in love just lying on the beach at night and enjoying the moment. I can hear a lot of Beach Boys and "Theme from A Summer Place".
Hamada would cover his creation as his June 1987 21st single, getting up to No. 25. It was also included in his 2nd mini-album from the same month "CLUB SURFBOUND" that hit No. 1. The above imaginative video has that very song as part of a video collection that Hamada provided titled "SHOGO HAMADA Visual Collection "FLASH&SHADOW"" from August 2005. Man, it's so "American Graffiti"!
Actually, I decided to kill two birds with one stone with ZARD's own "Futari no Natsu", but the only similarity is the title. Otherwise, it's a wholly different animal created by lyricist Izumi Sakai（坂井泉水）and composer Seiichiro Kuribayashi（栗林誠一郎）, and it didn't even come out as a single but as the final track on the singer's July 1993 4th original album "Yureru Omoi"（揺れる想い...Shifting Feelings）.
The lyrical content also differs from Aido's "Futari no Natsu" in that ZARD's "Futari no Natsu" is a wistful re-encounter between two former lovers at a bus stop one hot day, with all of the feelings remaining in the lady's side. "Yureru Omoi" hit No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies and became the No. 1 album for the entire year, and it still hung around to become the No. 54 album for 1994.
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