Off-Course -- Save The Love

 

Lest it be said that Off-Course（オフコース）was simply a folk group gone AOR/pop from the late 1960s into the 1980s, I found one song that might counter the earlier clause.

I've known for a while that the band consisting of Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）, Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）, Hitoshi Shimizu（清水仁）, Kazuhiko Matsuo（松尾一彦）and Jiro Ohma（大間ジロー）also possessed and exercised their rock chops. As well, I have heard of this song in brief snippets through TV and the like, but I hadn't been aware that "Save The Love" from their October 1979 7th original album "Three and Two" was quite on this level of an odyssey. Clocking in at over 8 minutes, vocalist and guitarist Suzuki's creation seems to go into a progressive rock direction just on the length of time alone. A song that alternates between intrepid guitar rock march and reassuring balladry, the song tells the story of a man who loves a woman from afar; he's been witnessing her repeated heartbreaks and has been quietly encouraging her to cry her eyes out but also to fight like Hell and know that there are far better men out there.

Folks have been telling me that if I am to get any original Off-Course album, "Three and Two" would be the one, and original purchasers seem to have agreed. The album peaked at No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies and not only ended up as the 48th-ranked release of 1979, it also went further up on the 1980 charts by ranking in at No. 37. "Three and Two" also has the folksy ballad "Ai wo Tomenaide"（愛を止めないで）which became the topic of my second article for the band all the way back in 2012.