First off, I was happy to see 80s aidoru Iyo Matsumoto（松本伊代）on a recent episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン） after she had suffered a fairly serious back injury in a game show stunt gone wrong several months ago.
Well, just returning to her discography in the 1980s, Iyo-chan really did come a long way since her chirpy "Sentimental Journey"（センチメンタル・ジャーニー）debut in 1981 after listening to the opening track of her 10th album, the January 1989 "Private File". "Private file wa Aketa Mama de..." (Leaving My Private File Open...) is the story of a twentysomething in Japan getting her opportunity to be an independent and free-spirited sprite in one of the major cities (I think the Bubble Era was still intact at that point). The pumps are on, the makeup is on and she's in her car possibly flirting with the toll gate attendant.
Good ol' kaz-shin wrote a review on the entirety of "Private File", and it seems that he was quite smitten with the then-24-year-old singer and that folks ought to give her album a second listening. With those characteristic high and nasal vocals tackling a dancing R&B tune, I thought about another singer, Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）, handling "Private file wa Aketa Mama de...", although I think Matsumoto acquits herself well on this first track. kaz-shin isn't quite as complimentary about the singing quality but he does say a few sentences later that the aidoru-level attack on this one contrastingly works here. I'll just say that as a casual fan, I'm getting along fine with disco-era Iyo-chan.
The first track was written by Kouiki Kokubu（国分広域）and composed by Tatsuya Nishiwaki（西脇辰弥） who was a member of the AOR/R&B group Pazz. As for the lyricist's name, I couldn't get a confirmed reading of it so once again, if anyone can confirm or correct the proper pronunciation, I would be very happy.
Her injury reminds me of the one that the former porn star and current streamer, Adriana Chechik, had from jumping into a too thin foam pit at a convention and smacking her butt on the concrete floor . There was a startling video of her seizing up after breaking her coccyx.
ReplyDeleteIt made international news and it seems like it happened two months before Iyo's accident.
Two bad that this incident, which in the west seemed to tighten up safety standards, did not help her out in time.
The other injury that I'm reminded of also regards a televised incident in Japan when a Fuji-TV morning show announcer was supposed to make a supervised and supposedly secure jump from the 5th or 6th floor of a building onto a large cushion. She went hard onto the cushion which wasn't effective enough to absorb the impact and she just lay there unconscious for several seconds which forced the camera back to the studio to the hosts who kept their professionalism but only barely. She suffered several fractures and maybe some mental trauma according to some of the bizarre behaviour she exhibited later on in her career.
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