The Drifters -- Go West（ゴー・ウエスト）

 

Very sad to say, but there was another death of someone that I used to see all the time on Japanese TV. In fact, actor/comedian Koji Nakamoto（仲本工事）was with the comedy team The Drifters（ザ ・ドリフターズ）, and over the past twenty years, the group lost leader Chosuke Ikariya（いかりや長介）due to cancer in 2004 and the crazy man of the troupe, Ken Shimura（志村けん）, in 2020 from COVID-19. According to the Mainichi Newspaper, on October 19th, Nakamoto was involved in an accident in Yokohama when he was trying to cross a street and was hit by a car. He was 81 years old.

Nakamoto joined The Drifters in 1965 once he graduated from university. This is just my own impression, but when I used to see their long-running television show on TBS, "Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo"（8時だヨ！全員集合）on the ancient VCR, I thought that the main players of the group were Ikariya, Shimura and Cha Kato（加藤茶）in a lot of the zany skits while the bespectacled Nakamoto and final member Boo Takagi（高木ブー）were usually in the support role and doing a lot of the reactions. But as you can see in the above skit, Nakamoto (and I'm assuming Takagi as well) did have their moments playing directly off of members such as Shimura.

I will always associate The Drifters with "Hachi-ji da yo!" and even when the show came to its eventual end in 1985, the group went their separate ways to gain their own fame and fortune, especially Shimura and his line of variety shows. What I hadn't known was that during the run of the successful music and variety show, the comedy group also had their own brief kids' show (October 1977~March 1979) on TBS which was a Tuesday night puppet program titled "Tobe! Songoku"（飛べ!孫悟空...Fly Songoku!）with Ikariya and company portraying the characters.

The theme song was actually performed by Pink Lady (I'll have to cover that one soon enough), but an insert song for "Tobe! Songoku" was recorded by The Drifters called "Go West" which has nothing to do with the Village People's "Go West" that came out later in 1979. Serving as the group's 12th single and released in April 1978, this was a country-western tune written by the producers of the show, Kei Shimoyama and Takashi Tamura（下山啓・田村隆）, and composed by Akihiko Takashima（たかしまあきひこ）.

Seeing the guys all up there singing happily away along with their puppet avatars is pretty poignant. My condolences to Nakamoto's family, friends and fans.