Presents -- Feeling Like a Child (Part 1)

 

To give credit where credit is due, City Pop specialist and good friend Rocket Brown of the podcast "Come Along Radio" recommended this group to me several weekends ago when we were chatting on Discord. Fortunately, I was able to take a close gander at their website information in the days leading up to this first article since I hadn't been sure which words were the band's name and which ones were the album title.😁 Well, for the record, the band's name is Presents and their one-and-only album is "Feeling Like a Child" from 1980.

Some years ago, I wrote up on the band So Nice and their 1979 album "Love". A band that showed their admiration and love for the earlier group Sugar Babe with Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）through the various sunny tracks, I was surprised to discover that "Love" had been created by a bunch of university students who simply wanted to commemorate their amateur band days by wrapping things up in a bow with "Love" which had never been meant to be sold publicly but given out to family and friends as a present.

Well, guess what? Lightning can strike twice. The band Presents consisted of a group of childhood friends from Nerima and Nakano Wards in Tokyo who also had mutual associations with music, so they decided to make their own one-and-only album for distribution to their loved ones. What became "Feeling Like a Child" would be their 1980 creation just before they all headed out to the working world from university.

Keyboardist/percussionist Fumio Miura（三浦文夫）, guitarist Kiyoaki "Kiyo" Nakamura（中村清明）, guitarist/percussionist Shunya "Chabo" Hashimoto（橋本俊哉）, bassist Takeshi Nakajima（中島猛）, drummer/percussionist Tadashi Noguchi（野口匡）, backup singers Reiko Hibino（日比野礼子）and Yuriko "Yurippe" Yamazaki（山﨑有里子）made up Presents. All of the band members except for Yurippe had their opportunity behind the microphone, and apparently the rule was that each member had to come up with one song and a set of lyrics.

"Feeling Like a Child" was indeed given out to family and friends and then quietly left alone. Then, 42 years later, it was unearthed once more and with the resurgence in City Pop outside of Japan over the last few years, the album was given a new production shine before it was put onto the market from November 3rd 2022. I was happy to see that it was readily available on CD Japan and after hearing a couple of tracks on YouTube, I pulled the trigger and bought the album. 

One more thing before I get into the first three tracks for Part 1 of this "Presents" series. It's wonderful that there is an all-English version of the band's website so everyone can find out about what made Presents tick and how "Feeling Like a Child" was produced, right down to the equipment used. I don't think that I ever been to a website that is as welcoming and homey as the one for this band is. It's almost as if I was going to be offered a cup of coffee and a massage chair when I hit the site. Heck, there is even one photo of some of the band members as kids.

"New York Nante Ikanai"（ニューヨークなんて行かない...I'm Not Going to New York） starts things off and indeed as it's written on their website, the song is mainstream Tokyo City Pop that was created and sung by Kiyo Nakamura. There is some nice groove going on here, accompanied by mellow brass that seems to be de rigueur for any City Pop song that has to do with the Big Apple. New York City isn't being especially slammed here by Nakamura; all he's saying is that there's no need to take the plane over to enjoy the big city life. As long as the significant other is present, then any nearby Japanese metropolis including Tokyo is perfectly fine for him.

Incidentally, the hospitality of the Presents site includes a page which provides a brief paragraph on each of the tracks. Therefore, you can get the band's take on what was going on when the songs were being produced.

Nakamura was also wholly behind Track 2, "One Night Darling", a relaxed but still rollicking tune about spending a night with that young lady. As mentioned in the commentary, Chabo Hashimoto leads the charge with some funky beats and Miura provides gliding keyboard support including a trip-the-light-fantastic solo on his Fender Rhodes.

The next track is "Forget and Forgive", written, composed and sung by bassist Nakajima. It's another languid slow jam which has been pictured by Nakajima himself in the commentary as an ideal driving song. I do agree with the bassist that it's something to be played in the wee hours past midnight. He also pointed out that he came up with the title when he saw the famous phrase in a dictionary, but from his lyrics, I also like to think that the setting is a man driving his car on the highway to let off some steam following a kerfuffle with his girlfriend.

The first two Fridays of 2023 will cover the remainder of "Feeling Like a Child", but I can let you know now that I think the album is a good get for any City Pop fans.