Welcome to the middle of May right after Mother's Day. Hope you all had a wonderful tribute to your Moms wherever you are. Sushi was the order of the day for our family.
Another mantra of mine since starting up "Kayo Kyoku Plus" years ago has been "Always check out those B-sides or coupling songs". There is a good chance that you may encounter something wonderful or at the very least intriguing there since that song may have never ended up on an original album or a BEST compilation.
Case in point: the lovely singer-songwriter and actress Miki Imai（今井美樹）. I've been more than happy to fill up the blog with her tunes ever since I began KKP back in 2012 and my thought was that I basically got all of my favourites of hers posted. Well, lo and behold, I did find a song that I'd never heard by Imai and it was indeed a B-side/coupling song for her 2nd single "Yasei no Kaze"（野性の風）, released in July 1987. Compared to her very languid ballad on the A-side, "Mikazuki no Saber" (Crescent Moon Saber) is quite the different animal.
Created by the same people behind "Yasei no Kaze": lyricist Masumi Kawamura（川村真澄）, composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranged by Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）, "Mikazuki no Saber" is something more for the dance floor...well, as much as a J-Pop song can be. In fact, I swear that Tsutsumi and Hisaishi had Bananarama's "I Heard A Rumour" on the brain when they came up with this one. I don't think I had ever heard Imai attempt something Eurobeat and her voice was getting close to cracking in those higher registers. Well, I can say that it's definitely in the intriguing department and as far as I know, it may not have gotten any other presence outside of the original single. I'll have to thank Crispy French for this post.
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