Pizzicato Five -- Lover's Rock

 

Looks like in recent days, the YouTube movie reactor brigade has caught the "Austin Powers" trilogy, and apparently one of the most popular scenes happens to be the opening credits for the first movie "International Man of Mystery". And what's not to love? Austin is gaily dancing and running through the streets of Swinging 60s London while having an entire army of women chasing him down like a pack of wolves. He may be a contradiction in profession as the world's most famous spy but his mojo is never in doubt. Plus, it's all set to Quincy Jones' "Soul Bossa Nova".

Of course, seeing all this had me thinking about the one group and one genre which emulates the joyful style of that decade from long ago, and that would be Pizzicato Five（ピチカート・ファイヴ）and the whole Shibuya-kei thing. I've already posted a lot of the big songs by the Divine Miss Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）and Yasuharu Konishi（小西泰治）such as "Tokyo wa Yoru no Shichi-ji" (東京は夜の七時）and "Baby Portable Rock".

But strangely enough, I never experienced the very first single where Nomiya made her presence known and that was "Lover's Rock", P5's 3rd single from May 1990 which came out about four-and-a-half years following their previous single in 1986. It's an interesting song for not only the fact that the above version is an extended mix which lasts over ten minutes, but with Nomiya making a surprisingly demure debut here, original P5 member Keitaro Takanami（高浪慶太郎）seems to be showing the young lady the ropes and easing her into the cold pool gingerly through both sets of vocals. "Lover's Rock" has that P5 touch but also has that "slowly slowly" approach with none of the usual brash panache that Nomiya would soon show via sound spectacular and music video.