Maria Minami -- Shonan Afternoon（湘南アフタヌーン）

 

I've walked along the beach at Shonan. Mind you, it was on the sidewalk overlooking the beach and the seashore but it was still enough to take a good look at all of the sun worshippers and beach buddies with their surfboards and other paraphernalia.

The YouTube channel Nameless Songs has been a treasure trove for all of those unheralded tunes by kayo kyoku singers who are barely known out there. And one example is "Shonan Afternoon", the debut single by Maria Minami（南マリア）from April 1982. There's basically nothing about her past known online and even the 70s-80s archive known as Idol.ne.jp basically has bupkis aside from "Shonan Afternoon". I have no idea why she's wearing what she's wearing on the single cover.

Written by Reiji Mizuki（水木れいじ）under his real name of Naoki Kasahara（葛原直樹）from Okayama Prefecture and composed by Hiroyoshi Oda（小田啓義）, who was once the keyboardist for the Group Sounds band Jackey Yoshikawa & His Blue Comets（ジャッキー吉川とブルーコメッツ）, "Shonan Afternoon" takes on the form of a gently lilting 1950s/1960s pop ballad with suitable chorus. Good ol' Connie Francis comes to mind. Maybe Richie and Laurie Beth are walking barefoot on the Shonan sand while the sun's starting to go down.