CHAKA -- Call Me ~ Oboeteite Hoshii（覚えていてほしい）

 

Well, by this point on Saturday night, I would have already had my two articles up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and perhaps watching the NHL playoffs or doing something else. But weirdly, earlier this afternoon, for some reason, Blogger had a technical issue which didn't allow me to edit or create new postings, so I was left wondering whether after doing twelve years of KKP and the years of the earlier blog while I had been  living in Japan actually filled up all the space I could within the platform. However, I think an email with a screenshot sent to the Blogger administrators took care of things, so I'm back here now.

What I had been planning to post and what I am posting right now is something different from singer-songwriter and English teacher CHAKA (aka Mami Yasunori). Of course, fans including me remember her as the vocalist for the quirky 80s technopop duo PSY-S. With her partner Masaya Matsuura（松浦雅也）, they came up with some great songs that had more hooks than a fisherman's tackle box. 

However, once PSY-S' day was done in the early 1990s, I knew that CHAKA had gone the jazz route as part of her musical odyssey, but I only found out about this album and the opening track just a few short months ago. Her 1999 "I Found Love" begins with "Call Me ~ Oboeteite Hoshii" (I Want You To Remember Me), a tenderhearted piano pop ballad fronted by the familiar and sweet vocals of CHAKA. The arrangement was handled by keyboardist Satoru Shionoya（塩谷哲）, formerly of Japanese salsa band extraordinaire Orquesta De La Luz and an artist who has helped other singers such as Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）. Basically, Shionoya is one of the few names that I see in the details of a song that would immediately get my attention., and he's done it once again here.

"Call Me" could be tear-inducing. I haven't gone into CHAKA's lyrics but the tone of the ballad is reminiscent of a woman whose relationship with another has unfortunately ended but she still pines for her now-former significant other and asks kindly that she be contacted again once in a while. It's rather ironic that I had been planning to go with this song even before the Blogger issue occurred since I felt just like the title. Anyways, thank you Blogger for resolving the problem.