Summer Dream -- Summer Dream

 

Welcome to another urban contemporary Friday! Nice day out there in Toronto with some seasonal temperatures and sunny skies. Just the environment to enjoy the day and night.

Well, how do I begin? Commenter Nano brought this 1987 album to my attention earlier this week. I knew about the hit song "Summer Dream" by that summery good-time band TUBE which came out in the same year, but I had no idea of an actual band by that same name which released a one and possibly only self-titled album. After some more correspondence, Nano and I agreed that this is not only a rare and fine release but also one that has very little information. In fact, the only source of information that I could find was at Discogs which listed the year and the genres involved which were rock, funk/soul, pop in the City Pop style. Even the JASRAC database had nothing on this group.

So, this is not quite up to the level of an All-Points Bulletin since we will know the artist and the titles involved but if anyone out there knows some more about "Summer Dream" by Summer Dream, please let us know.

Regardless, let's take a look at all of the tracks on "Summer Dream". The opening track happens to be my favourite, "Fall in Love with Me", with a lovely vocalist and some Perrier-worthy arrangement bringing feelings of sun, sand, surf and city. Wonderful guitar solo, too. The title itself seems to truly invite the City Pop fan to fall in love with the album.

The second track at 4:18, "Je Sens", seems to cut in several seconds into the intro but it's quite the hard left from the first track. There is something of the frenetic New Wave touch to this one. Track 3 at 8:06 is "Kanojo ni Naritai"（彼女になりたい...I Wanna Be Your Girl） which swings things back to upbeat AOR with that Doobie Brothers riff and a vocal performance by that same singer which sounds almost EPO-like. In fact, I'd say that EPO could cover it as well.

Track 4 at 12:08, "Umi..."（海...Ocean）, is a gently swinging love waltz that skims the border of a jazz torch song. What follows at 16:51 is "Fake Love", a City Pop number with some of those champagne keyboards of the time, another blistering electric guitar instrumental bridge and a slightly lower register in the vocalist's delivery which has me thinking City Pop-era Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）. According to Discogs, these tracks make up Side A of the original LP.

"I Wanna Be the Girl on Your Mind" at 21:29 begins Side B or Track 6 on the CD. This happens to be Nano's favourite track, and it's an easygoing mid-tempo AOR song that once again brings up memories of Kokubu. And to be honest, after listening to this one and "Fake Love", I actually checked her J-Wiki file to see if she was actually involved with this project. Apparently not.

"Onna ga Otoko wo Ai suru Toki"（女が男を愛するとき...When A Woman Loves A Man） at 26:24 begins with some corny dialogue before a 1970s laconic Leon Russell piano riff flows in followed by a country-blues tune. The penultimate track at 31:59 is "Reeling on Love", an 80s West Coast dance pop song (although halfway through, there is a City Pop detour for a block or two) that could fill the speakers of any aerobics studio. The final and longest song on "Summer Dream" at 36:11 is "Stars & Stripes". It is a somewhat elegiac tune with an oh-so-softly delivery that nearly transforms into a power ballad in the second half, but the arrangement has a measure of restraint even with the electric guitar.

So, it sounds like "Summer Dream" has a little bit of everything among its nine tracks. Glad to meet it and grateful to Nano for letting me get to know it. Of course, I still have those questions about the album, chief among them being who the vocalist is. Also, please let this stay up at YouTube for a good long time.