Furudokei -- Roadshow（ロードショー）

From Amazon.jp

Always amused by the Japlish that I've encountered and used over the decades. Take for example, the term "roadshow". Even when I was a kid, I didn't hear it all that much in conversation and my impression was that it was used to describe a band or an acting troupe performing out on the road with the destinations being the various municipalities, big and small. But in Japan, it wasn't a band or an acting troupe but actual movies. Basically it has the same meaning as "theatrical release". There was even a Japanese-language movie magazine that I bought occasionally with that very title.

Well, "Roadshow" also did find itself as a title for the debut single of the folk duo Furudokei（古時計）. I wrote about Hirokazu Ohba（大場弘一）and Masahiro "James" Nishida（西田昌弘）back in early September as my introduction of them on the blog. The calm and slice-of-life "Roadshow" was released in March 1976 with Kei/Megumi Itami（伊丹恵）as the lyricist and Tatsuo Yamamoto（山本達夫）as the composer, and it deals with a man admiring a young lady from afar at the local cinema one day. 

I already let the cat out of the bag in the posting on their second single "Kisetsu Hazure no Soumatou"（季節はずれの走馬燈）, but "Roadshow" was Furudokei's big hit by selling 600,000 records and earning a few awards. The song also ranked in at No. 16 on Oricon.