I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Looks like we've got the electro trio helping out here. The most recent of these acts that I've talked about was tofubeats when I posted his "Angels on the Dance Floor" at the end of May this year. 80kidz and AAAMYYY were last visited back in 2023.
Back in February 2021, the electro duo 80kidz came up with their 6th album, "ANGLE", from which we have their "Magic" today. A lovelorn collaboration with singer-songwriter and former potential Air Canada flight attendant AAAMYYY, I'd been expecting something fairly wild and dance floor-friendly, but, and I'm not complaining here, "Magic" is actually quite the chill tune and I should have known this considering AAAMYYY's whispery voice. I'd say that it qualifies for more introspective and sip-worthy contemplation between frantic dance moves.
A couple of months later, a tofubeats remix of "Magic" was released as an 80kidz' single. It's fortified with a bit more blip.
Welcome to the end of another work week. Hopefully, wherever you are, you are about to or are already enjoying some weekend R&R. I can do with a bit more sleep myself.
Although the electro duo 80kidz has been releasing singles and albums up to the present day, it's been a few years since I've put up their name on the byline. I think that the last time they were up there was back in 2018 for their 2010 "Weekend Warrior". Well, this time I get to hear them again for the first time in a long while in collaboration with singer-songwriter punipunidenki（ぷにぷに電機）.
In fact, I'm a little late to the game but their short-and-sweet "Night Session" was released a year ago. Written by punipunkidenki and composed by 80kidz, it's a boozy and woozy night out in the big city played against a background of Latin club dance rhythms and some old-style 80s synthesizers. We even get some vocoder scatting in the bridge. Plus, there is also the attractive smoky vocals by the singer herself. Nice of her to put up the short-and-sweet warning against underage drinking at the end. We can't let things get too out of hand.😋
Wow! Hard-rockin' nurses with black stripes over their eyes? Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）must be near by.
Not exactly, though. It's actually the band Heavenstamp with their first major single"Stand By You" released in May 2011. The vocalist/guitarist Sally#Cinnamon, though, did start listening to Shiina and the band Spitz（スピッツ）, before also being drawn in by Radiohead, according to a Tower Records Onlineinterview. At the time, Heavenstamp consisted of her, guitarist Tomoya.S, bassist Shikichin and drummer Mika, although the last two left in 2012 and 2013 respectively, so that it's a duo as of now. According to J-Wiki, Heavenstamp wanted to incorporate guitar rock, shoegazer and dance music into their output.
I do like the video with all of the colours and the nurses and "Stand By You" does have a catchy beat which somehow reminds me of some of the music from New Order back in the 1980s.
The single made it up to No. 39 on the charts. In April 2016, the electro duo 80kidz made a remix of the original song, and I see that the Dancing Baby is back! So far, Heavenstamp has released 4 major singles and 2 albums, along with one mini-album in 2014.
Back in 2012, I wrote about the 80s vocal group Sugar and their big hit "Wedding Bell" which I had known for its sweet melody but only found out many years later that the song hid a majorly jagged shiv within its lyrics. It was such that I now wonder how some of the audience at NHK Hall had felt when the young ladies of that trio sang those words at the Kohaku Utagassen. Mind you, I do remember from the 1982 broadcast that they did get a nice round of applause.
Well, about a decade ago, down-home duo Puffy did a cover of "Wedding Bell" as the theme song for the Fuji-TV comedy-drama "Kon Katsu!"（婚カツ!...Marriage Hunt!）which was about a guy who had no interest in getting married or even having a relationship getting pushed into the marrying game.
A track from Puffy's 11th album"Bring it!" from June 2009, Ami and Yumi's take on "Wedding Bell" has more of a slightly swinging 1960s feel, and the ladies try not to tax their vocal cords as the Sugar members did.
Plus, the intro sounds like it got a bit of that Disney treatment...all the better to hide the lyrical shiv. All in all, it's a nice update on the 1981 original song. "Wedding Bell" wasn't released as a single but "Bring it!" got as high as No. 17 on the Oricon weeklies. Speaking of Puffy updates on 80s tunes, Ami and Yumi did their take on another vocal group's classic.
Techno group 80kidz even did a remix of Puffy's cover.
Well, if the definition of a "weekend warrior" is someone who only takes part in an activity in their spare time, then I think I would certainly fit that meaning since I do the blog whenever I have plenty of free hours and minutes. I had always assumed that the term referred to folks who hit the basketball courts or paintball arenas on Saturdays and Sundays.
For Ali& and Jun of electro and nu-disco outfit 80kidz, "Weekend Warrior" is the boppy technopop title track for their 2nd album released in October 2010. Man, I'm not sure what inspired the band to come up with this one, but those must have been some pretty intensely bouncy games that those amateur athletes were playing. Actually in my head, "Weekend Warrior" provided the background music to the story of a high-flying young fellow racing through the airport so that he could make his flight down to Aruba for some major partying. Sports, nothing...this was about hitting the dance floor running!
One of the things that I like about a city is not only its night life but also its nightscape. The neon dancing around, the tall towers filled with lights and the cars buzzing around everywhere lend a punch to the urban sight.
Now I don't drive a car. As I may have pointed out in another article, knowing what kind of person I am, my dread (or phobia, if you will) is that if I ever get behind the wheel of a car, I would weaponize it immediately. As such then, I don't get much of an opportunity to see the wonderful bright lights of my city of Toronto at night from a car on the Gardiner Expressway unless I'm a passenger in a friend's automobile. These days, it's only my anime buddy who drives us around and that is almost always in the northern part of the city so a view of the downtown nightscape will probably remain a rarity.
During my 17 years living in the Tokyo area, getting that grand view of the megalopolis at night from a car never materialized for me...not that I can remember anyways. And if I were to harbour a regret about not driving, it would be that I never got to see how wonderfully lit Tokyo is. In fact, it wasn't until that trip back to Japan in October 2014 that I could finally get a car ride at night, and that was only because I was so tired after a late arrival at Haneda Airport that I just said "Screw it! I'm taking a taxi to the hotel!" It was a nice ride....and expensive, too, at 10,000 yen, but heck I really wanted to get to my accommodations in Asakusa after that delay.
One of the great things about seeing Tokyo at night while bombing down the highway (provided that it's not rush hour) is that the highways don't just run along the city, they permeate it. They criss-cross among and curve around the buildings which encourage the upload of videos like the one above. Watching that video, I was re-acquainted with the electro-rock group 80kidz via the first song, "Esquire".
One day, when I visited the Shibuya branch of HMV which struck me as being the cooler cousin to my other favourite CD shops of Tower Records and Yamano Music (could have been the pink-and-black colour scheme), I saw the display for 80kidz and their very first album, the bluntly titled "This Is My Shit" from 2009. I had a listen to a couple of the tracks from the album and thought it fun and funny hearing the title track with the title repeatedly being said over and over to a techno track.
"Esquire" which is a track on 80kidz' 3rd album"Turbo Town" (2012) isn't quite as scatological (never thought I would ever use that word in this blog), and it makes for a nice driving song on Tokyo highways such as the Wangan Expressway. Those guitars provide some added horsepower to those synths.
Although 80kidz started out as a threesome consisting of Ali&, Jun and Mayu, it's now just the first two as a duo act, and they seem to be rather camera-shy. They have helped provide remixes for other Japanese singers such as Ayumi Hamasaki（浜崎あゆみ）and Orange Range and also overseas acts.
Aw, heck...I'll leave you with "This Is My Shit" since I also like the cover of that album.
