Ginga Tetsudo -- Sekiyu Stove（石油ストーブ）/Omoidashite Goran（想い出してごらん）

 

Yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment at a clinic so I managed to escape a major morning downpour by getting there about fifteen minutes before the clouds opened up. Of course, being a doctor's office, there were magazines there probably dating back to the age of the Gestetner machine...I couldn't see the title initially due to the stratified layers of dust. Knowing this, I brought my copy of the Japanese-language journal "Record Collectors" with the special feature on City Pop between 1973 and 1979 to wile away the time before the doctor saw me. 

Surprisingly, the different entries and articles weren't that difficult to read and I was able to discover a few more artists that I had never heard of before. One band was called Ginga Tetsudo (銀河鉄道...Galaxy Railway), and no, it had nothing to do with the famed manga-turned-anime or the hit Godiego song. 

Amazon.jp

Ginga Tetsudo was a 1970s four-piece band consisting of Shuuji Honda（本田修二）, Nobuhiko Sato（佐藤信彦）, Yoshio Maki（牧良夫） and Daijiro Suzuki（鈴木大治郎）. Although I'm not entirely clear on how long the band lasted, it seems to be around the middle of that decade, specifically 1975. When at least some of them were still in high school, an indies album was released that was titled "Milky Way" but I'd like some clarification on this. Officially, the band released one self-titled album and two singles before they broke up.

Let's take a look at those two singles, shall we? I believe the first single was "Sekiyu Stove" (Kerosene Stove). One of the statements that stood out to me in the blurb for the band in "Record Collectors" was that Ginga Tetsudo sounded more like suburban pop than City Pop. Considering that other websites have described the band as a folk rock unit and as I hear the country side of things in both singles, perhaps the suburban pop tag might be a compromise term. Honda was responsible for both words and music for a song with lovely harmonies that indeed combines the folk rock of the great outdoors and a bluesy urban saxophone solo. Plus the other wonderful thing is that I have finally come across a song that targets one of the vital appliances of any junior high school in northern Gunma Prefecture where I used to teach. And isn't a kerosene stove the perfect thing to sing about if one's a folk band from the 1970s?

The second single below was "Omoidashite Goran" (Try to Remember) which is a short, sweet and zippy number by lyricist Hiroyuki Hayashi（林裕之）and composer Maki. It not only has me thinking of American roots rock but also the works of Happy End and Sentimental City Romance. In fact, one of the websites cited Ginga Tetsudo as the 1970s version of Sunny Day Service which is perhaps akin to saying that the Candies were the 1970s version of Perfume. In any case, it's been a while since I've had any one song pick up so many genres through a couple of listens. I have to indirectly thank my doctor for that.