Motoyoshi Iwasaki & WINDY -- Natsu no Tsubasa（夏の翼）/PARKING

 

To start off this week's round of urban contemporary music on KKP, I've put up a photo of Mr. Calico driving Kayo Grace in a Toyota Cressida during a rainy afternoon, although I was aiming to have them actually parked in a lot somewhere...the photo doesn't make that really clear. I've only been in a Cressida once and that was back in 1981 when my host father was driving her daughter and me to their home in Nara.

Back in 2018, I posted a couple of songs by the band Motoyoshi Iwasaki（岩崎元是）& WINDY, another wonderfully summery addition to my Japanese pop-addled mind which already has TUBE, Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）and Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）on board. As I also mentioned there, Iwasaki & WINDY only hung out together for a couple of years in the late 1980s but they enjoyed a pleasant summer of sorts.

Their first single was "Natsu no Tsubasa" (Wings of Summer) which was written and composed by Iwasaki with the band arranging everything. Coming out in May 1986, it's as summery as the Shonan beach and I think with the twanginess and the harmonies coming out of the speakers, I get some Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）but at the same time, Iwasaki also reminds me of yet another summer-singing fellow, the late Kazuhito Murata（村田和人）. By the way, that is one lovely video above.

The reason that I've come to pick WINDY up once again is that the B-side to "Natsu no Tsubasa", "PARKING", is going to be next week's entry on Yutaka Kimura Speaks (which is also why I put up that photo with Mr. Calico and Kayo Grace). The entire band worked on this one, too, and it's a slightly more relaxing Resort Pop or even City Pop medium-tempo tune, and as Kimura will also explain, there seems to be some inspiration from Ohtaki's famous "Ame no Wednesday"（雨のウェンズデイ）.