BanBan -- Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido（『いちご白書』をもう一度）

 

It's interesting when I go down an especially deep and winding rabbit hole, figuratively speaking. This time, it's led me to a 1970 movie called "The Strawberry Statement" which was an American comedy-drama revolving around the 1968 Columbia University protests. It starred a couple of folks who I've usually associated with sci-fi: Bruce Davison who I've always seen in much later movies as these smarmy corporate/political types such as in the very first "X-Men" as Senator Kelly, and Kim Darby who had earlier guested in the first season episode "Miri" of the original "Star Trek". Never thought I would see a young Davison playing an idealistic good guy.

Well, what led me down to the burrow in the first place was this song titled "Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido" (The Strawberry Statement One More Time) that I heard performed on either "Uta Con"（うたコン） or "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）recently. It's a folk-rock song that was first recorded by the folk group BanBan（バンバン）as their 5th single in August 1975. And just to hold you off the pass for a minute, this isn't the other sibling folk duo Billy BanBan（ビリーバンバン）that I've spoken about in the past on the blog. Yep, same genre, similar name and same time period but BanBan and Billy BanBan are two different entities in the music industry.

Anyways, BanBan was actually a trio consisting of Hiroshi Takayama（高山弘）, Hiroshi Imai（今井ひろし） and Hirofumi Bamba（ばんばひろふみ）. Bamba has been on the blog ever since KKP's inaugural year due to his 1979 solo hit "Sachiko", but BanBan is getting its first due here. Incidentally, the name of the group came about from Bamba's own nickname. The group had been kicking around since 1971 and Bamba had been a popular late-night radio DJ but he was wondering about the state of his band since it wasn't making any hits. As a last resort before deciding to break the band up, he decided to see if up-and-coming singer-songwriter Yumi Arai（荒井由実）could create a song for them because he had been entranced by her works and he'd seen her as a one-of-a-kind. So, he pulled every string and met up with Arai's future husband and musician Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）who then had Bamba and Arai meet up.

The result was a song that, in Bamba's words, extended BanBan's lifespan by at least a few more years before they officially called it a day in 1977. It's a melancholy and bittersweet tune about a man seeing that his local movie house was showing the aforementioned "The Strawberry Statement" once more and then reminiscing about going there with a now ex-girlfriend during a pretty successful date. Personally, it's probably the most different Yuming（ユーミン）creation that I have ever heard although that may have been due to Ichizo Seo's（瀬尾一三）arrangement. There's quite a bit of rock in there that I wouldn't have expected a Yuming song to have. And the ironic thing is that Bamba was much more of a rock guy than a folk guy; in fact, according to the article on the song, he had found folk musicians to be no better than country hicks which led him to found BanBan just to supposedly show them how it's really done. 

"Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido" occupied the top spot on Oricon for about six weeks near the end of 1975 which probably meant it was quite the slow burner considering its release back in the summer. It ended up as the No. 13 single for the year and then at the end of 1976, it was even ranked No. 31. It sold a little over 750,000 records. It was also the lead track on BanBan's 2nd and final album "Kisetsufuu"（季節風...Seasonal Winds） which came out in November 1975.