Akiko Mizuhara -- Burnin' Night

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Akiko Mizuhara's（水原明子）"Love Duet", the cover of Michael Franks' 1982 song, and looking at the article again, I did mention off the top about the COVID-19 situation in my city. Well, in terms of new infection rates, we've happily further plummeted into double digits consistently since then although I still think there's gonna be some sort of bounce up going into the autumn, and we got a premature kick in the side to remind us of that. Apparently, about 550 patrons of a strip club downtown may have been exposed to the virus because of an employee who tested positive and the management wasn't following all of the restrictions.

In any case, getting back to happier stuff with Mizuhara, I also mentioned in "Love Duet" that there isn't much in the way of information about her except that she did release two albums: "Love Message" in 1982 and then "So Crystal" in 1984. Well, some kind soul has put up "So Crystal" and I wanted to cover the second track at 0:41 titled "Burnin' Night".

Whereas "Love Duet" reflects the soft rock/disco of the late 1970s through the City Pop/J-AOR screen, "Burnin' Night" has a distinctively different tone although I would still categorize it as a City Pop tune, albeit one that also goes into straight pop. The tempo kinda takes things into Michael Sembello's "Maniac" territory while the melody has me thinking of some of Ian Thomas' "Hold On" which was famously covered by Santana. Even the keyboards give a whiff of uncertain times in a 1980s Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）way. The lyrics were provided by Yukari Sato（沙東由香利）and the music was by Mizuhara herself. In fact, Sato was responsible for the lyrics for most of the tracks on "So Crystal".

Taking a listen to the rest of the album right now, and I'm getting those "Buy it!" vibes in my head. Allow me to cross my fingers and hope that it's within reasonable access.

Akiko Mizuhara -- Love Duet

The first Hump Day of June sees the new daily infection rates take another swan dive into the low 300s. It's rather like seeing the government and medical experts acting like that fisherman trying to wrest that fighting muskie representing the rates into submission. Meanwhile, I'm starting to wonder what's happening in Japan, especially Tokyo and Kita-Kyushu.

Anyways, the subject of this article is another one of those obscure-but-grand City Pop finds. There's perhaps a thimble's worth of information on Akiko Mizuhara（水原明子）aside from the fact that she released at least two albums: "Love Message" in 1982 and then "So Crystal" in 1984. I couldn't even find anything on her in my "Japanese City Pop" guide.

Regardless, the track "Love Duet" is a splendid introduction to Mizuhara within "Love Message" which has been described as an album of cover songs. Indeed, "Love Duet" was originally performed by singer-songwriter Michael Franks and S. Renee Diggs from Franks' 1982 album "Objects of Desire". Franks is already on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for his duet with Anri（杏里）on a cover version of his own "Antonio's Song". Listening to both original and Mizuhara's cover, there doesn't seem too much daylight at all between them in arrangement. There's that great meshing of keyboards and violins along with the sax solo; for Mizuhara, Yasuaki Shimizu（清水靖晃）was behind the solo.

The only other information that I could find about Mizuhara is that she was also responsible for a couple of songs in the movie version of the anime "Densetsu Kyojin Ideon"（伝説巨人イデオン...Space Runaway Ideon）in that same year. But getting back to the album "Love Message", there are a few more tracks listed on YouTube, so have a listen to those and let me know how you feel about them, if you can.