Hiromi Go -- Hana to Mitsubachi（花とみつばち）

 

I guess I'm still on that "Uta Con"（うたコン）1974 tribute kick from a couple of days ago. There was another interesting slice of nostalgia that got onto the show.

The above was what we could all catch for a few seconds. Luckily (and I really hope that the video stays up), we can see the entire segment of what was the first meeting of the Shin-Gosanke（新御三家...The New Big Three） consisting of Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）, Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）and Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）, and it was right on the 25th edition of the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of 1974. The guys were really kicking it up a notch on the stage while the rest of the White team gave a hearty round of indifference.

Just like Da Capo's（ダ・カーポ）"Kekkon Surutte Honto desu ka"（結婚するって本当ですか）, Go's 8th single "Hana to Mitsubachi" (The Flower and the Honeybee) from March 1974 wasn't performed on "Uta Con". However, such was my interest in the brief few seconds of footage that I opted to cover the song here. Go may have been around 17 years of age at the time but he still looked and sounded like a boy who had yet to experience puberty when he sang this "nudge nudge wink wink" tune of scoring that honey of sorts. There's a bit of good ol' rock-and-roll here and doo-wop over there.

Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）was behind the lyrics while Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）took care of the snazzy melody and its arrangement. "Hana to Mitsubachi" hit No. 3 on the Oricon weeklies and it eventually became the 29th-ranked single of the year. It's also available on Go's 4th album "Hiromi no Asa, Hiru, Ban"（ひろみの朝・昼・晩...Hiromi's Morning, Noon and Night） which was released in June 1974 and hit No. 2 on the charts.