Arakawa Band -- Paradise's Dream

 

I do not know what life will be like in the 2050s. By that first year, I will be in my mid-eighties but I hope that I will be healthy enough to hopefully see some of those scenes that the most optimistic of futurists have imagined. Maybe those self-charging hovercars will actually exist and thrum down the highways.

If Japanese City Pop gets a third or even fourth wind by that time, perhaps something like Arakawa Band's（荒川バンド）"Paradise's Dream" could get a chance on one of those hovercar's stereo systems. A track from their February 1980 album "lena", it's quite the simultaneously languid and fizzy concoction of instrumental City Pop, jazz, rock and funk mixed up by Hyogo Prefecture-born saxophonist and songwriter Tatsuhiko Arakawa（荒川達彦）. Looks like the entire band really enjoyed jamming on this one. 

Arakawa debuted as a musician in 1964 and worked as a member of jazz bands Blue Coats Orchestra and the Arrow Jazz Orchestra. Then in 1970, he came up with the Arakawa Quartet before heading to the United States in 1974 to learn composition and arrangement. Returning to Japan in 1978, he assembled fellow musicians to form The Great American Music Band which was renamed to something a bit more humble: Arakawa Band. He has worked with people such as Masaki Ueda（上田正樹）, Pink Lady（ピンクレディー）and Saori Minami（南沙織）.