LEON -- Shonan Memory（湘南メモリー）

 

Six months ago, I talked about a song "Aoi Natsu ni Mi wo Makase"（青い夏に身をまかせ）recorded by Litz Co., aka actress-singer Ritsuko Tanaka（田中律子）, which became the ending theme for a 1993 TV Asahi drama "Shonan Joshi Ryou Monogatari"（湘南女子寮物語...The Story of Shonan Girls' Dormitory）. Tanaka, who also happened to be one of the stars on the show, gave her all on her final single which had some hints of Maki Ohguro（大黒摩季）whose star was in the ascendant at the same time.

Well, this time around, I've got the opening theme song, "Shonan Memory" by the duo LEON. If I could say that "Aoi Natsu ni Mi wo Makase" is a bit Ohguro-esque, then "Shonan Memory" is a TUBE song that TUBE was never involved in. It's summery, soaring and so upbeat as to entice listeners into heading to the beach immediately...even in the depths of winter. Mind you, I also get vibes of any of the Being bands such as DEEN and even some feelings of Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三）in the vocal delivery.

Speaking of those vocals, the duo behind LEON consists of Makoto Ito and Yudai Takaoka (read the romaji off the CD single cover, but no kanji), and along with that fact, the only other information that I could get on this pair was that they released this single and one album "7 Dayz Avenue" which was also released in 1993. LEON was behind words and music with Reo Rinozuka（里乃塚玲央）also helping out on the lyrics. From the Oricon page, I found out that it reached No. 46 in the rankings. And that is all she wrote about these guys. I couldn't find anything else.

If anyone out there has any further information on LEON, let me know. They did a great job with "Shonan Memory" and it's something that can happily represent the Shonan area in Kanagawa Prefecture. It just seems too bad that they only released that one single and one album.

Yahoo.jp