Hatsumi Shibata -- Party is Over

 

Yep, I'm going pretty long on this particular Urban Contemporary Friday trip on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" this week. But I'm still game for a few more articles...yep, even at my age.

This was a recent discovery on YouTube, and it's nice that I can have singer Hatsumi Shibata（しばたはつみ）back on the blog after a few years. Another wonderful thing is that she's singing a down-home City Pop tune in the form of "Party is Over", a track from her January 1981 album "Show Me the Way". Written by Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）, composed by Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常弘）and arranged by Toshiyuki Kimori（木森敏行）, this is the type of song to accompany any Japanese city hotel-top bar visit with a particularly cool-sounding cocktail.

From what I could understand of the lyrics, Shibata is singing about the great game of romancing on the fly...seeing if a one-night tryst can translate into something more substantial and longer-lasting. Just another story in the big city, I guess. As for the melody, a lot of it is enhanced by the jazzy trumpet and fluegelhorn of Chuck Findley. Findley had also handled the flugelhorn solo on the Carpenters' "(They Long to Be) Close to You".