Castle & Gates -- Ohanashi（おはなし）

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Y'know...when I first saw the name Castle & Gates（キャッスル&ゲイツ）, I thought I was going to be in for a cute crime-solving couple show on Netflix. Well, that is simply not the case. Actually, Castle & Gates was a folk group that lasted between 1965 and 1972 in two incarnations.

The first incarnation consisted of guitarists/vocalists Yoshito Machida（町田義人）and Mamoru Tamura（田村守）who met at a high school reunion in Kochi Prefecture in 1965 and decided to form a folk music duo before Nagasaki native, bassist Kenichi Uechi（上地健一）, joined in 1967. In the same year, a song titled "Ohanashi" (Talk) was created by the trio for a radio program, "Vitalis Folk Village"（バイタリス・フォーク・ビレッジ）, but despite the accolades for it, it was never made into a single record. Tamura was responsible for the melody while Masahiro Endo（遠藤侑宏）* took care of the lyrics.

In fact, Castle & Gates became quite popular on the program but in 1968, it was decided that the group would disband with Machida and Uechi heading over to the Group Sounds band Zoo Nee Voo（ズー・ニー・ヴー）while Tamura found a regular job. Instead of fading into history though, Castle & Gates recruited a new lineup consisting of Mamoru's younger brother Kazuo Tamura（田村和郎）, Kazuhisa Yamashita（山下和久）, Kanao Mizuta（水田奏夫）and Akira Shimazaki（島崎章）.*

"Ohanashi", which had been left in limbo a couple of years earlier, was then finally released as the band's debut single in January 1969, the first of four singles that would be released until their final breakup in 1972. A short but mellow folk song, it's a love invitation from one to another to have a talk for the entire day on anything and anybody under the sun. As long as they are sitting together, everything will be copacetic.

.*Some of the first names of the members have multiple readings so I'm not 100% certain on those. If anyone can confirm the lineups for the band, that would be much appreciated.