Presents -- Feeling Like a Child (Part 3)

 

We've come to the final part of the trio of articles regarding Presents' "Feeling Like a Child" after Part 1 and Part 2, the 1980 labour of love involving Fumio Miura（三浦文夫）and his good buddies from childhood. Let's get into the final three songs.

Guitarist/percussionist Shunya "Chabo" Hashimoto（橋本俊哉）finally gets his time behind the words, music and microphone to perform his "Morning Beach". From reading his own commentary on the making of this fun track, it appears that Chabo was beginning from scratch when it came to crafting a melody and lyrics. He could have done a Bocchi and self-destructed but instead, I imagine that he rolled up his sleeves, declared "All right! Let's make the donuts!" and got to work.

And it's a great work. He said that he couldn't really come up with a pop melody, so he went with a T-Bone Walker blues intro and then incorporated something new in a Michael Franks vein. "Morning Beach" swings jazzily and there's even the keyboard interlude which had me thinking Steely Dan, and sure enough, the CD's liner notes make the reference to that legendary band. Chabo's lyrics originated from his own surfing experiences on the Shonan beach during his college days. In fact, along with "Bocchi the Rock", I'm also reminded of the anime "Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out!" in that a cooler-than-thou surfer dude is trying to (pretend to) ignore a persistent beach lass.

"Nettaimu"（熱帯夢...Tropical Dream） is a way-south funky tune that gets me hints of Junko Yagami（八神純子） of the late 1970s and perhaps fusion bands such as Casiopea and The Square. Miura and Hibino go behind the mike to take the former's creation and fly through a whirlwind romance somewhere in the Caribbean. Although I mention Yagami, Hibino's delivery is once again quite reminiscent of Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）with her high pitch. Chabo provided the instrumental soloing in which he was very modest in the website commentary as he gave a critique of his own performance as if Mr. Spock had been a musician.😆

The final track of the original album is "Cloudy Bossa Nova" which was officially given words and music by drummer Tadashi Noguchi（野口匡）although the commentary states that Miura, Kiyo and Chabo helped out with their parts. The drummer also sings the finale for "Feeling Like a Child", a song that involved strumming out the chords while humming out those favourite bossa nova songs. Noguchi sings about a view on a cloudy day but the music feels as if the weather isn't totally overcast; more like a plethora of clouds out there with some sunny breaks. The liner notes posited that "Cloudy Bossa Nova" can be compared to an urban and urbane Michael Franks song.

"Feeling Like a Child" the 2022 CD also has three more tracks which are the original backtrack mixes for "New York Nante Ikanai"（ニューヨークなんて行かない）, "Dim" and the title track. Also to let you know, although most of Presents were able to give their comments on "Feeling Like a Child", unfortunately Kiyo Nakamura（中村清明）passed away in 2006 at the age of 49 according to the Profile page and there's also a touching tribute to him by Yuriko "Yurippe" Yamazaki（山﨑有里子）.

I guess for me, listening to "Feeling Like a Child" had me feeling like a teen again when music akin to what Presents' had made was the freshest thing out on the radio waves and in the clubs, thanks to all of the groovy West Coast sounds that were coming out back then. This has been a great find and I'm grateful to Rocket Brown for keying me in on this successful labour of love by these college kids and also to those college kids themselves for daring to go big and small. Along with Presents and So Nice, I'm left wondering with potential anticipation about what other groups of university students were ambitious enough to cut their own urban contemporary projects back in the day. Before I finish off, I ought to lead you back to the band's homepage which has a brief testimonial by singer-songwriter Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）.