Tunnels -- Arashi no Macho Man（嵐のマッチョマン）

 

Ah, yes. Where would Japanese television be without those agents of chaos, Takaaki Ishibashi（石橋貴明）and Noritake Kinashi（木梨憲武）, aka the comedic duo Tunnels（とんねるず）? For an industry that plans their programs down to the second and hates surprises, Taka and Nori were the enfant terrible of comedy in the 1980s with one legendary example involving an expensive television camera while they were performing their 1984 "Ikki!"（一気!）. You can read about the incident in the article for that song, but up above you can witness it with your own eyes at around 4:55. 

Recently, there was a tweet by a friend relating a supposed incident (also mentioned in the relevant J-Wiki article) involving the Tunnels and their February 1987 10th single "Arashi no Macho Man" (Macho Men of the Storm). During recording of the song, at least one of the chorus singers tearfully threatened to leave the recording studio because she or they found what they had to sing so stupid or maybe they just got frustrated about having to do take after take of singing the lyrics which largely consisted of the titles and lyrics of famous disco tunes of the past such as Van McCoy's "The Hustle" and Dschinghis Khan's (ジンギスカン) title song. The chorus does pop up prominently throughout "Arashi no Macho Man". Frankly speaking, consternation surrounding the Tunnels especially Taka-chan doesn't surprise me. 

"Arashi no Macho Man" is fully invested into the disco. Taka-chan even acts as the cordial host of the festivities within the song, encouraging the attendees to help themselves to the free food and drink. Sounds a bit like my old disco, The Copa, in downtown Toronto. Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）wasn't only slapping that bass but he was also responsible for the hard-driving melody while Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）took care of the lyrics. Apparently, there was an 80s disco boom at the time in Shinjuku which inspired the creation of the song which hit No. 2 on Oricon and ended up as the 67th-ranked single of 1987.

For the record, the video below with Tunnels performing "Arashi no Macho Man" onsite somewhere has them parodying Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）and actor/singer-songwriter Asei Kobayashi（小林亜星）. The woman who is making a cameo dance appearance in the first several seconds is singer-actress Naoko Ken（研ナオコ）.