Mariko Ashibe -- Private Friday（プライベート・フライデー）

 

From Tower Records

A few years back, I contributed an article regarding Hyogo Prefecture-born Mariko Ashibe（芦部真梨子）and her lone 1984 album "Street Scandal"（ストリート・スキャンダル）, and I did mention that I was slightly disturbed by the front cover. Calling The Equalizer!

fromjapan.co.jp

Yahoo.jp

However, looking at the inside of "Street Scandal", it appears that Ashibe held her own quite well, and in fact, she even had the wherewithal to relax on the cool night pavement later on. No idea where the assailant's body ended up.

To join her "Highway Dancer"（ハイウェイ・ダンサー） as the album representative on KKP, I give you "Private Friday" this Friday. With lyrics by Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）who also wrote "Highway Dancer", the City Pop melody was provided by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, and with those tight horns including a solo saxophone, images of Anri（杏里）and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）come flying along with the breezy feeling of driving along Tokyo Bay. Ashibe's vocals also remind me to a certain degree of Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）.

I don't usually lap up a song from YouTube that has just been uploaded on the same day since it seems a bit hasty and vulture-like, but the channel belongs to my near namesake Kayo Wave Plus and I've just read that they will be scaling back on their contributions due to various circumstances. The channel has had a lot of good songs put up there over the years and so it will be too bad that it will be slowing things down. However, I wish Kayo Wave Plus all the best in their future endeavors and thank them for the good music thus far.