Shogo Hamada -- Last Show（ラストショー）

 

Hopefully, the emerging (maybe?) romance between Tomo and Jun in "Tomo-chan wa Onna no Ko!"（トモちゃんは女の子！...Tomo-chan is a Girl!）will turn out more successfully than the bittersweet conclusion in the song below.

Still Shogo Hamada's（浜田省吾）melody for his 13th single "Last Show" from August 1981 really is sweet and perfect for the car radio. And there's plenty of mention for that car radio and the surrounding environment as a guy reminisces about an old romance that is truly over. There are memories of her, the beach, her former flame's father's car, their favourite hamburger stand and even a shoutout to Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" which could hearken back to those early 80s or even the mid 60s. I swear that Hamada's lyrics could be painting a Hiroshi Nagai（永井博）illustration.

But alas, all good things come to an end and the guy is off in his car to greener and happier pastures with the past falling away quickly in the back mirror. Kimio Mizutani（水谷公生）arranged "Last Show" to be a wistful rock n' roll tune that surprisingly only got as high as No. 94 on Oricon. The song was also a track on his 7th studio album "Ai no Sedai no Mae ni"（愛の世代の前に...Before the Love Generation） which was released the month after the single and got to No. 12 on the Oricon weeklies. However, a re-release of the album in June 1990 had new ears listening and liking it to the extent that it hit No. 2 on the charts and ended up as the No. 19 album for 1992.