My Fantasy Pub Dinner

 

There was an article on December 12th provided by Noelle Tham titled "Noelle's Favourite Artists 2023" (我が推し達) in which KKP's resident expert on the early Showa era music spoke happily on her favourite artists from that time period. In the comments section below, she even half-jokingly challenged me to come up with something similar.

Well, I did give it the old college try over the past few weeks but the fact is that I believe I had come up with a number of my own favourite lists over the nearly dozen years that "Kayo Kyoku Plus" has been in service, so I had to be somewhat unconventional this time around. A few days ago, as I lay in bed, I did come up with one brain wave. There is a thought exercise which involves who one would invite to dinner, dead or alive but famous which could provide some insight to observers on what kind of person the thinker was.

Considering that this article is being typed on the final day of the year, I think I can afford to be a little more whimsical than usual. Initially, I had planned on making this a fairly big dinner in a proper dining room with a total of ten guests, but then I came to the conclusion that was simply not me because I've never been in that situation of a formal dinner outside of wedding receptions. Nope, my thing was simply having a few buddies and me head out to an informal place for brewskis and hearty pub fare. So my venue would be the Madison Avenue Pub right by the University of Toronto. I've been going there with friends since my days at U of T even before my first stint in Japan and although the place has gotten a bit frayed in the furniture department, I still enjoy going there. In fact, I went there back in late November to have lunch with a friend and I had those Chicken Parmigiana sandwiches, fries and gravy that you see at the very top. Yes, the potential cost was my cardiovascular system.

Anyways, I'm also keeping the number of guests small at the Mad, just three people and myself.

from Wikipedia

I'd first have music legend Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）since he looks like a beer-at-a-izakaya guy. Most likely, he would drink me under the table which admittedly wouldn't be too difficult for him to do. But the man since the 1960s has had his finger in just about almost every music genre pie in Japan. Obviously, his time with Yellow Magic Orchestra would especially be interesting but of course there are his experiences with Happy End and Tin Pan Alley in the 1970s and even his partnership with Miharu Koshi（越美晴）in Swing Slow in the 1990s among other projects.

Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）would also be welcome at the table. She's been around for half a century, providing listeners with a myriad of styles of songs, a lot of which have purportedly been inspired by her own listenings to other women on their triumphs and tempests. As with Hosono, I'd also be curious about her own thoughts on how music has changed around her over the past fifty years. Hey, and if she wants to bring her husband Masataka（松任谷正隆）, that would be fine, too. She doesn't have to worry, worry (inside Yuming joke).

Try as I might and I think Noelle will once again never let me live this choice down, but I just gotta have Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）at the table. She also loves her drink although I may have to dissuade her from pulling out a cigarette (as is the case in all restaurants in Canada, The Mad has no smoking). She can certainly give us the lowdown on what the aidoru scene was like in the 1980s and how she felt about making the transition from teenybopper idol to pop superstar. I saw her in some YouTube footage on a show with popular comedic duo Downtown and it looked pretty recent by all accounts. She looked completely fine and talked up a storm. 

But that is my modest little dinner. I may come up with another larger and younger guest list in the future, but let me ask everyone else about what their fantasy dinner would look like. Of course, what I really hope for is actually meeting up with all of my fellow bloggers here on KKP somewhere someday.