Flying Kids -- Koi no Shunkan（恋の瞬間）

 

Just as an update on the transition from TV Japan to Jme that I'd noted over a month ago, well, the Jme website is now up and running so I registered our family onto the service and sure enough, I can see NHK Premium and NHK World on the computer. Since those two are live streaming, we'll have to adjust to the new schedule. 

Now as for the rather exotic image at the top there, I figured that since it is Hump Day today, I'd do something whimsical and ask the Bing AI art generator to give me something from my instruction of "a moment in love done in Picasso style". The above is what I got.

And the whole reason is that I wanted to post this song by the eclectic band Flying Kids. It was over a decade ago when I wrote about their 12th single, "Tomadoi no Toki wo Koete"（とまどいの時を越えて）, a catchy and somewhat swinging 60s/sophisticated pop tune that they had released in April 1995. Well, many months earlier, the Kids introduced their 9th single, "Koi no Shunkan" (Moment of Love) in October 1993.

I noted in the article for "Tomadoi no Toki wo Koete" that Flying Kids had started out several years previously as a funkier band and I believe that "Koi no Shunkan" is a reflection of that earlier time. The intro even sounds like something from an old Jackson 5 song. With vocalist Takashi Hamazaki（浜崎貴司）behind the lyrics and guitarist Shiro Maruyama（丸山史朗）taking care of the horn-blessed melody, "Koi no Shunkan" comes across as a rather action-packed episode of a rom-com as it seems to describe love popping out of a group of young and hale swingers out to paint the town red. Maybe the Bubble era had already died by that point, but tell that to the whippersnappers in the song.

Strangely enough, the first time that I ever heard this song was through the remix version supplied as the coupling song to the aforementioned "Tomadoi no Toki wo Koete". The fellow responsible for this new take probably loved his dance beats. I only heard the original version for the first time less than ten minutes ago. It scored a peak ranking of No. 89.