Haruyoshi Yamashina -- Osake to Joke（お酒とジョーク）

 

I guess whether it be Cliff and Norm at the famed Boston bar where everyone knows their name on the classic sitcom "Cheers" or the barfly who always shows up at the neighbourhood nomiya in Yurakucho a few times a week, hearty and alcohol-fueled companionship isn't long in coming at a watering hole. Didn't drink all that much myself despite colleagues' attempts to entice me into their world, so I never experienced that, although I have a few dining buddies. I would have been a poor partner anyways since I tend to drift off into REM sleep after a few glasses.

Well, I may have come across a musical description of that recently, and happily it is a 1970s City Pop tune. "Osake to Joke" (A Drink and a Joke) was written, composed and performed by Tokyo-born singer-songwriter Haruyoshi Yamashina（山科晴義）who goes by the name Harry Yamashina these days. A track on his April 1979 second album "Sayonara Kokoro No Lullaby"（さよなら心のララバイ...Lullaby of the Goodbye Heart）, it has that sunny disposition and a hearty fellow-well-met jauntiness in its arrangement so that it could accompany that walk over to the bar or even following the visit and on the way home (provided that the drink wasn't in excess). Yamashina's lyrics seem to reveal a bar regular's thoughts on life.

Yamashina made his debut in 1972 under the name Seisuke Matsuyama（松山晴介）as a 20-year-old with a single "Akai Hana Moyō no Fuku"（赤い花模様の服...Red Flower Clothes） and an album "Seisuke"（晴介）. Interestingly enough, he's got his own YouTube channel, harrygws, where he's put up a new straight pop version of "Osake to Joke" under that first stage name. Over the decades, as a lyricist and composer, he's provided music for singers such as Mako Ishino（石野真子）and the folk duo Furudokei（古時計）.