Twin Fizz -- Non-Stop!

 

From blog.livedoor.jp

Via the radio, I did hear of a British singing group called Bucks Fizz.

And then in Japan, I heard about a canned cocktail called Peach Tree Fizz by the good folks at Mercian.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1954y1H7Bw/

But until recently, I hadn't heard of a singing duo called Twin Fizz. A couple of high school friends from Osaka, Kaori Nishina（仁科かおり）and Aki Nakayachi（中谷内映）, formed the group during an annual culture festival at school. In their senior year, they entered and passed an audition held by Triangle Production, a company that also represented acts like Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe（杉山清貴&オメガトライブ）which got the two up to Tokyo following graduation. A year of voice training led to their debut in 1990 with 3 singles and 2 albums before the breakup.

From their second album, "November Summer" from January 1991, I give you the first track "Non-Stop!" which was written by Nakayachi and composed by Nishina with arrangement by veteran Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）. With a melody that sounds like a more pop take on Tetsuya Komuro's（小室哲哉）music later on, "Non-Stop!" may not be a City Pop tune, but it does come across as a fairly rollicking drive into and throughout the megalopolis.

"Non-Stop!" was used as the opening theme for a four-night TV special titled "Ojodan"（お嬢だん...The Lady Gang）, a live-action dramatization of the original manga by the late Yutsuko Chusonji（中尊寺ゆつこ）. She was the manga artist who created the whole sensation of the Oyaji Gyaru（オヤジギャル...Old Man Gal）, where the usual quiet and demure office ladies smoke like chimneys, have become much more aggressive in personality and have hobbies such as horse racing and golfing, similar to their middle-aged bosses.

Unfortunately, I could only find one YouTube video from over a decade ago which has any sign of "Ojodan". It's only thirty seconds but it starts off with a Lotte Gum ad starring Chusonji herself and then a promo for the show.

As for Twin Fizz, once they broke up, Nishina, along with her own singing career, became involved in recording sessions and concerts for a whole plethora of singers and bands including SPEED, Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）, Ayumi Hamasaki（浜崎あゆみ）, AKB48 and Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）.