This particular Off-Course（オフ・コース）single comes under the question of "Why hadn't I put this up sooner?".
After all, "Boku no Okurimono" (My Gift to You), which was the band's 4th single from February 1973, has an intro filled with Off-Course's familiar sublime harmonies that has been known to me for years and years. Written and composed by Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）, it's a gentle folksy ballad about a truly smitten poet type who offers this particular song to a young woman during the seasons of spring and autumn, the times when love has its biggest transitions for good and bad. Apparently, the song fills the gaps for what's missing in those transitions within those seasons which have also been placed in between the major seasons of summer and winter to fill in the gaps. Take some time to let that soak in. But let it be said that this is a lovely song by Oda with those key changes and then the string coda that takes things into a more uncertain way; if there had been more of those strings, I would have also classified "Boku no Okurimono" as a Fashion Music tune.
Apparently, some fifteen years later, Oda as a solo artist opted to do a self-cover of "Boku no Okurimono" as a March 1988 single. Perhaps taking the more fantastical essence of the lyrics into consideration, he basically made the song into a more kid-friendly version (with a kids' chorus, to boot) with even some contemporary funky syncopation placed into the arrangement. It can also be found in his second solo studio album "BETWEEN THE WORD & THE HEART" which was released in the same month as the single.
Oh, my gosh, what an adventure this was! I enjoyed listening to Off-Course's rendition of Boku no Okurimono, but not only did YouTube not let me listen to Kazumasa Oda's self-cover of Boku no Okurimono, when I went to YouTube and the rest of the internet to search for it, it was really, really, difficult to find! The powers that be do not want me to listen to this song for free for whatever reason.
ReplyDeleteFor the first several years of KKP, finding Kazumasa Oda's solo efforts was like looking for the Holy Grail. Whatever Oda original (and not karaoke/cover version) was up on YouTube was quickly taken down. However, recently, I guess Oda may have surmised that "if you cannot beat them, join them" and set up his own YouTube channel. I'm just surprised that he won't let anyone in his own nation watch it.
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