Zariba -- Kowareta Tokei no You ni（こわれた時計のように）

 

Happy Monday! As I was saying to Marcos V. earlier today, I'm getting the impression that summer in Toronto is starting to wind down a bit. It's still plenty warm out there but the temperatures have been gradually decreasing over the past number of days, and I'm expecting that the evenings may even demand a light jacket. Ah, as for the Ginza clock in the photo above, I'm not insinuating that it's not working (according to what the title of this song means); I'm sure that the timepiece is still doing well, but I couldn't track down another photo of a clock fast enough.

But I digress. Getting to that title, it's "Kowareta Tokei no You ni" (Like A Broken Clock) which was the B-side to short-lived band Zariba's（ザリバ）lone single from 1974, "Aru Hi"（或る日）. I wrote about that one back in 2018, and it was a revelatory tune since the lead vocalist was teenager Akiko Suzuki（鈴木顕子）who would later become much more famous as singer-songwriter Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）.

Additionally, back then, the vocal style of Yano was quite different. In fact, I compared her heart-on-a-sleeve delivery to that of a young Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and Akiko Kosaka（小坂明子）. With this B-side, "Kowareta Tokei no You ni", the New Music melody by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）takes on that contemplative late 60s-early 70s feeling thanks to that electric piano as this time, Akiko Suzuki's voice here reminds me of Mariko Takahashi's（高橋真梨子）vocals when she was with Pedro & Capricious（ペドロ&カプリシャス）at about the same time. As with "Aru Hi", the lyrics were written by Yoshiyuki Ishizu（石津善之）and the arrangement was handled by Makoto Yano（矢野誠）who ended up marrying Suzuki in 1974 although they would get divorced in 1979.