Spinach Power -- Style

 

Happy Sunday! It's another hot one in the city.

Found this one only some minutes ago but the back story behind this band was fascinating enough that I've decided to start today's round of KKP with them. Never heard of Spinach Power (and yep, Popeye was an inspiration) which lasted between 1978 and 1981 and according to their J-Wiki profile, they never came up with the hits which would explain their brevity of existence. Part of the fascination lies in the series of main vocalists they had. The first one was Tetsuo Nishihama（西濱哲男）who had been the lead vocalist for the band Tranzam（トランザム）. Then came famed singer-songwriter Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）who naturally handled the song creation. And the third and final vocalist was a fellow named Shuuichi Teranishi（寺西修一）who would later become Kyosuke Himuro（氷室京介）, the singer for the band BOOWY in the late 1980s and a soloist with the hit "KISS ME" in 1992. There was never any mention of this in Himuro's own article in either J-Wiki or Wikipedia.

Also, according to the profile, Spinach Power released seven singles and three albums with the magazines identifying the band as a disco group, although it was seen that only half of their discography was really in that genre. Certainly, the song "Style" in their third and final album "In and Out" from September 1980 doesn't come across as a disco song at all. And despite the cover of the album showing the members looking all New Wave (well, aside from the 70s rock hairdos on most of them...it's more the outfits), "Style" sounds more like a congenial guitar pop tune with some rock at the end. The other part of the fascination is that "Style" was written by Tomoko Aran（亜蘭知子）and composed by the aforementioned Oda; those two would later work together to create songs for the summertime band TUBE.

If, by chance, anyone else has any other information on Spinach Power, let me know. As well, one more bit of trivia I can leave with you is that the band's drummer Mamoru Kimura（木村マモル）would become the first drummer for BOOWY.