Tunnels -- Honoo no Escargots（炎のエスカルゴ）

 

I can eat them but I'm not the biggest fan of escargots. My grandmother used to make the Japanese version of them from what she caught on the Wakayama coast and simmered the shellfish in a broth of soy sauce, mirin, sugar and other ingredients. The time that I actually had the French variety was at a place called the Keg Mansion in downtown Toronto, actually not too far from where I had lived the first decade of my life. As an aside, the Keg Mansion has had a long reputation of being haunted with apparently a 19th-century maid by the name of Lillian Massey skittering in the halls...among other spooky phenomena. Anyways, before we get too distracted, the above is the recipe for Escargots in Garlic Butter as created by Stephane at the French Cooking Academy YouTube channel. I've been subscribed to him for a few years now.

Well, I posted up an article a little over a month ago regarding comedy duo Tunnels'（とんねるず）"Arashi no Macho Man"（嵐のマッチョマン）, a song that finally bubbled up in my mind after many years down deep in my memories of 80s Japanese pop culture. At about the same time, another song by the zany Takaaki Ishibashi（石橋貴明）and Noritake Kinashi（木梨憲武）popped up as well that I used to see quite a lot performed on the music ranking shows.

"Honoo no Escargots" (Escargots Flambé) has nothing to do with French cuisine, has very little to do with Mexican culture outside of the lady Senorita Escargots and the boys dressed up on the single's cover like a pair of day-glo mariachi performers, and seems to be mostly a synthpop Brazilian samba about loving the titular Escargots with Ishibashi doing his usual "sales patter". Released in February 1988 as the boys' 14th single, this was another collaboration between lyricist Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composer Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）just like with "Arashi no Macho Man". 

For a live performance, I could only find this video up on YouTube. As fun as it is watching Tunnels dancing around at Tokyo Dome, I was hoping to find them creating their usual brand of chaos on "The Best 10" or "The Top 10". As it is, "Honoo no Escargots" hit No. 7 on Oricon. As for why I decided to translate the title into "Escargots Flambe", I wanted to be a bit cute and make it sound like a new dish instead of the more conventional "Escargots of Passion".