Shinji Harada & Crisis -- Ame no Highway（雨のハイウェイ）

 

I guess we've been going on a meteorological theme over the past couple of days. I started off yesterday's duo of articles with Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Ame no Kyuujitsu"（雨の休日）, and I'm beginning Hump Day's session with another rainy title.

But unlike the soft and melancholy "Ame no Kyuujitsu", "Ame no Highway" (Rainy Highway) by Shinji Harada & Crisis（原田真二&クライシス）is much more of an urgent pop/rock thumper, feeling a bit like an old Billy Joel song from a few years earlier, despite its May 1983 release as a single. Although Harada took care of music and arrangement, it was Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）behind the lyrics of a man desperately driving through a storm to reach his girlfriend to resolve an even stormier crisis in their relationship. The single reached No. 71 on Oricon. The song was also included in the band's July 1983 third album "Save Our Soul" which ranked in at No. 43.

If the name Shinji Harada rings any bells for you fans of 1970s New Music, indeed it is the same adorable teen that you see at the top of the article from the cover of his 1978 debut album, "Feel Happy"(just wanna pinch his cheeks). Back then, with hits like "Candy", Harada was the boy wonder of whimsical piano pop along the lines of Gilbert O'Sullivan and Al Stewart. However, going into the 1980s, the singer-songwriter opted to create a band, Crisis, to bring out a pop/rock (and maybe AOR) sound. Shinji Harada & Crisis lasted between 1980 and 1984. 

There were two incarnations of the band depending on the record label. Its first couple of years were spent under Polydor with drummer/percussionist Takashi Furuta（古田 たかし）, bassist Masao Seki（関雅夫）and keyboardist/violinist Takashi Toyoda（豊田貴志）joining Harada as this group with a more progressive rock approach. The singer spent much of 1982 studying overseas in the United States after which Crisis was now under the For Life label with keyboardist/saxophonist Michihiko Ohta（太田美知彦）replacing Toyoda and then the late Nobuo Ariga（有賀啓雄）replacing Seki as the bassist later on. The For Life incarnation brought out a more theatrical flavour in live concerts with more elaborate sets, pantomime and even breakdancing. 

One last piece of trivia is that a young Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）was brought into one performance by the band in September 1980 at the time of their formation as an emergency keyboardist in the Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall. Komuro auditioned afterwards to become an official member of Crisis but didn't quite make the cut. But of course, there were no worries for him since he would become quite successful down the decade.