Kazuhiko Kato -- Just a Symphony（ジャスト・ア・シンフォニー）

 

I know that I've got this song coming up either at the end of this year or early in the next one for a Yutaka Kimura Speaks segment, so why not take care of it now before I hand it off to Mr. Kimura?

The late singer-songwriter Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）has often been represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" as someone in the back office, aka the creator of songs, rather than up front behind the microphone. In fact, the last time he was in the front office, it was for my posting of his "Today" from his 1978 4th album "Gardenia"（ガーディニア）back in 2017. 

Well, it's been over six years now, so let's have him sing once more and it's from something later and more conceptual. To explain, Kato released his 11th album in February 1991, "Bolero California"（ボレロ・カリフォルニア）, and as I hinted just now, it is a concept album which revolves on Kato's impressions of how those guests at the Eagles' "Hotel California" back in the late 1970s must have changed in the fourteen-year interval. Judging from the opening track, "Just a Symphony", the folks haven't been doing too badly. That's considering that the whole thing about the iconic "Hotel California" is about a tired visitor in a "Twilight Zone" type of situation where the people there are strange and every door he opens exposes a new reality. Motel Multiverse, anyone? 

All of the tracks were written by Kato's wife, lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）, and composed by Kato himself, with the backing of an orchestra providing a mixture of Latin and AOR. I gather that from "Just a Symphony", the visitor has found a reality that he likes and has settled for a heavenly retirement of Margaritas and yuppie-ness. Maybe the strange people have even mellowed out. Certainly the official music video has kinda kept the weirdness with the mixture of early computer graphics and old-style portrait people.