Hello there and welcome to Friday which has meant that we go through the more urban contemporary stuff in Japanese music today. It's still nice and cool but it definitely feels like mid-summer in my room as it has for years. The fan is indeed on.
Twitter follower snav cottoned me on about singer-songwriter Ken Tamura（田村ケン）the other day. I actually have been writing about some of his works since 2016 when I first discovered his "Inemuri" (いねむり) from his 1981 debut album "Light Ace". But snav also informed me about how much he's loved his sophomore effort "Fly By Sunset" (1982), and in all honesty, I've covered a couple of his enjoyable tracks from that album already, the so-sparkly-it-hurts-so-good AOR "A Little Bit Easier" and the drive-inspiring City Pop "Odori na yo"（踊りなよ）. Therefore, I didn't need to have my arm twisted at all to tackle the entire album today.
But there is the matter of information on Tamura which has been surprisingly sparse. I've added some of what I did find onto at least some of the articles over the years. One of the earliest pieces of information that I got was that he was a Sansei who got into music while attending university in California; to give further detail, according to Tower Records, he was born in Fukuoka Prefecture to a 2nd-generation Japanese-American. A new piece of information that I discovered according to kaz-shin of the Japanese-language music blog "Music Avenue" (a site that I've often checked out for insight) was that Tamura may have learned his songwriting craft under the tutelage of the legendary Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）. Since then, he was providing music to other singers including Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）and Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）.
There is somewhat of an elephant in the room involving Tamura...namely the announcement of his death in 2021. At least for the last couple of Tamura articles on KKP, I'd known about it via a YouTube channel that had a couple of his songs, but it only said that he died without elaborating on any circumstances, and I couldn't and still can't find any other official announcements about his passing either in Japanese or English via the search engines, so at the time, I felt that I couldn't really say anything about his death officially (I can't seem to find that channel now). However, in the video above provided by swing48django ,which is the first video with him performing live that I've found, there was one commenter Cliff Works (Cliff Woolley who currently runs a human resource consulting firm in Japan) who has not only also stated that Tamura died last year, but he used to tour with the singer as a guitarist back in 1981.
Getting back to kaz-shin and "Music Avenue", I found out an interesting tidbit that "Fly By Sunset" was the very first album that the blogger had introduced when he began "Music Avenue" back in September 2005....years before Japanese City Pop exploded onto the music zeitgeist. The link to the blog above is actually for his May 2006 second article to re-introduce "Fly By Sunset" since he recommends it so much for the City Pop and J-AOR fans.
Anyways, let's get on with it. All of the tracks were composed by Tamura and most of them were also given lyrics by him, including the first one, "Long-Distance Call". Arrangements for the album were handled by former Happy End guitarist Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）and bassist Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）, and they also provided their talents as performers. I do agree with kaz-shin that "Long-Distance Call" is one to accompany a highway drive; it's a West Coast AOR dream and I'm assuming that is indeed Suzuki wailing on the guitar. However, I also detect Tamura injecting some beloved Hawaii as well.
Tracks 2 and 3 are the aforementioned "A Little Bit Closer" and "Odori na yo", so we go to Track 4, "Tsumetai Natsu"（冷たい夏...Cold Summer） which was written by Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）. For me, this was the first hint for me to indicate that Tamura was quite the modern-day balladeer. There is very much of the 1970s soft rock love song along the lines of what The Eagles and Michael Johnson ("Bluer Than Blue") had been singing back then.
"Footsteps" is another light and mellow AOR midtempo tune which Goto arranged. Once again, Tamura has provided some aural Orange Mimosa for listeners to sip upon.
Two great scoops of City Pop for "Futari nara"（ふたりなら...The Two of Us） which has included some beefy bass from Goto and the genre's ever-popular Doobie Bounce. Kaz-shin mentioned the bass and the bounce but I also have to compliment the keyboardist. Would love to hear this on the best stereo system available but I have yet to visit my anime buddy's house in the post-pandemic age.
Not sure whether the romaji for Track 7 should be "Gina" or "Geena"（ジーナ）, but it is a song that takes City Pop down to the richest areas of town at night. I think that the titular lass may be the luckiest young lady since she might be getting a mighty fine dinner, dancing and then a post-midnight drink at the top of the best hotel in Tokyo, just judging from Tamura's refined melody. The second lyricist is here for this one, Chinfa Kan（康珍化）. I also notice some more shoutouts to American singers with part of the music sounding like Bertie Higgins' "Casablanca". Ironically, in that same year, Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）had a big hit with his cover version of the song.
The penultimate track "Nagisa no Straw Hat"（渚のストローハット...Straw Hat on the Beach） is another Kan-Tamura collaboration which almost made me assume that it was going to be a Bobby Caldwell-esque ballad, but after the first minute, the song hits a new gear as it goes into jaunty summer sunset mode. Tamura's voice sometimes threatens to explode on the high notes, though. Still, there is something very pleasantly Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）about "Nagisa no Straw Hat" (most likely the strings); that singer would be starting his own solo career in 1982.
"Ai no Jikan wo"（愛の時間を...Time of Love） ends "Fly By Sunset" very much in the way that it began...with a slice of West Coast AOR. Kaz-shin comments that he likes the catchy melody that makes the song worthy of being its own single. I agree and perhaps it did.
"Fly By Sunset" would be a solid addition to my collection but from what I've heard from snav is that it's pretty rare. However, there seems to be that Tower Records Japan-limited edition of the album. Also, I'd like to mention that along with guitarist Suzuki and bassist Goto, there were some other big names in the recording booth including the late drummer Ponta Murakami（ポンタ村上）, guitarist Tsuyoshi Kon（今剛）and percussionist Motoya Hamaguchi（浜口茂外也）, according to Discogs.
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