Mayumi Ohnishi -- Saikai Yawa（再会夜話）

From YouTube

 

This album is a bit of a mystery to me. I would put it up as an APB with the apple pie photograph, to boot. However, this 1981 production has all the names and all the titles so they are identified. The problem is that I don't know any of the artists involved and I could only recognize one musician, Chuei Yoshikawa（吉川忠英）, on the credits.

I'm talking about "Good Season ~ New Original Songs" which has been described by YouTuber Ren as a compilation album of New Music and City Pop. Ren was kind enough to put up the album in the summer of 2023. As I mentioned above, I have never heard of any of the singers or bands involved so I'm wondering if they may have been university students recording as part of their music clubs or amateur acts that didn't last too long.

One track at 30:39 is "Saikai Yawa" (Meeting Again for an Evening Conversation) by singer-songwriter Mayumi Ohnishi（大西まゆみ）. I couldn't find anything on her at all although she has two tracks on "Good Season" including this one. It's too bad since her kittenish vocals enhance the feeling of the good life in her own creation here. Although 1981 was still a few years away from the flying-high Bubble Era, from personal experience, I already knew that Japan was already in a golden age and I can hear it in Ohnishi's light and playful bossa-influenced "Saikai Yawa". Images of fancy restaurants, champagne flutes and shameless flirting (or re-flirting) abound among the City Pop here.

If anyone, including Ren, can provide any further insight into "Good Season" aside from the one lonely page at "Rate Your Music", that would be much appreciated.