Men Without Hats -- The Safety Dance

 

Happy Canada Day and all that! I'm hoping that my fellow Canadian viewers of KKP are enjoying their July 1st from coast to coast to coast. Of course, being a statutory holiday today means that I've got a special round of Reminiscings of Youth.

This all starts with my regular bus ride to high school all the way back in 1982. One of my classmates hopped onto the TTC and saw me. We often commuted together and he always nattered on something irrelevant like one of those "Seinfeld" side characters. This time around, he asked me whether I had ever heard of this song called "The Safety Dance" and proceeded to speak out the first verse:

We can dance if we want to

We can leave your friends behind

'Cause your friends don't dance

And if they don't dance

Well they're no friends of mine

He was rather obsessed about those lyrics as I recall. Anyways, it was some time later when this Montreal-based band called Men Without Hats who had recorded "The Safety Dance" showed off their music video.

In the years to come, whenever I have seen the video, I always wondered whether my university's Society for Creative Anachronism had anything to do with it. Anyways, this was Men Without Hats' 2nd single released sometime in that year of 1982 and at the time, I wasn't all that impressed with it. I guess I was no friend of theirs.

But then as I got more into extended remixes and began hearing them on Saturday night radio broadcasts, I realized that the remix version of "The Safety Dance" sounded pretty good with the focus on the underlying rhythm, the famous bleeping riff (I'm not trying to be profane here) and the singers spelling out "SAFETY". After that, I became a convert to the cause. America became even more of a convert than Canada did in its initial release, since Billboard recorded it reaching No. 3 while in Canada, it didn't even crack the Top 10...it just scraped by at No. 11.

"The Safety Dance" is also one of the best pop culture examples of turning a negative into a positive. Songwriter and singer Ivan Doroschuk had apparently been ousted from a dance club for doing some pogoing or slam dancing one time which he felt was rather unfair. So, in what would perhaps be a form of revenge and therapy, he created "The Safety Dance". As a personal aside, a bunch of us tried some pogoing at a university dance. The results were unfortunately mixed and painful...especially when I jumped in to move my weight around. But in any case, Doroschuk's creation became his band's most famous song...something whose popularity and fame has continued right to this day.

It's been given the affectionate mention in cartoons on either side of the Pacific.

There was even a Men Without Hats conversation channel on Conan!

Heck, even movie and TV dance compilation videos have used it. "The Safety Dance" may have become the most famous Canadian song to be utilized on social media. Wouldn't it be nice if the song got some coast-to-coast-to-coast tributes tonight?

In any case, since I couldn't find out in which month "The Safety Dance" was released, let's just go with July 1982 to find out some of the singles that were released back then.

Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

Hidemi Ishikawa -- Yu-re-te Shonan（ゆ・れ・て湘南）

Akio Kayama -- Hisame （氷雨）

Gary Portnoy -- Where Everybody Knows Your Name (Theme from "Cheers")

 

There was a place that I used to call my home away from home and that was the International Student Centre at the University of Toronto. I started there as a volunteer to help out with the welcoming of foreign students in the fall and ended up as the main receptionist there for a few years. In between those two positions, I was the usual Tuesday night guy behind the front desk where I took care of things after the main staff had gone home. There were the usual clubs (such as the Society of Creative Anachronism) that booked rooms in the ISC so I got to know them well, and even better, some of my friends from the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association dropped by to hang out by the desk. Even when I did lock up, we sometimes went out for a late dinner in Chinatown 10 minutes' walk away. Good times!

I appreciated being part of a social hub like that, but perhaps the seed for that idea came years previously with an NBC sitcom called "Cheers" that had a run of more than a decade starting from September 1982. I remember the original commercial for the series; it just had one amiable fellow who looked like he was about to hit a classy downtown bar on a dark stage simply describing this upcoming situation comedy called "Cheers" which promised to be something a little out of the ordinary.

And it turned out to be so. "Cheers" was about the humourous goings-on within a Boston bar run by former Bosox pitcher Sam "Mayday" Malone. For the first several years, everything basically took place within the comfortable old-style trappings of Cheers the bar among the regular customers who came in for a pint or ten. The above video shows the very first scene from the very first episode, and I still had to catch myself laughing.

One absolutely faithful barfly at Cheers was the lovable Norm Petersen played by George Wendt. He would always burst through the door and then everyone in the bar would yell "NORM!!" in greetings before a brief snarky exchange. It was sad to hear of Wendt's passing yesterday at 76. He's been in other projects although I believe that he preferred performing on the stage, but I will always remember him as ever-imbibing Norm.

Yup, this is an atypical Reminiscings of Youth although we'll have the regularly scheduled one tomorrow but since I enjoyed "Cheers" in the early years especially when Shelley Long and Nicholas Colasanto were part of the cast, I wanted to pay tribute to Wendt. Plus, since hearing about his death, the theme song has been playing in my head frequently.

As you know, I have lavishly included TV theme songs from my childhood and youth within the ROY series, and I think this one for "Cheers" is up there with the best. Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart-Angelo were the ones behind "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" with the former singing the song. Anchored by a piano that sounds as if it belongs to a bar like Cheers, Portnoy gives this truly sympathetic delivery and the equivalent of an arm around the shoulder as if helping a buddy in the blues and inviting him for a round on him at their beloved drinking establishment where the rest of the guys are waiting.

A full version of the song was released by Portnoy in early 1983. Of course, my condolences go to Wendt's family, friends and many fans. NORM!! So, at around the time that "Cheers" came out, what was up at the top of Oricon? I have the Top 3 from September 27th 1982.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

2. Hiromi Go -- Aishuu no Casablanca （哀愁のカサブランカ）

3. Mio Takagi -- Dance wa Umaku Odorenai （ダンスはうまく踊れない）

Aming -- Kokoro Komete Ai wo Komete（心こめて 愛をこめて）

 

It's been a good long while since I last posted an Aming（あみん）tune, so it was rather fortuitous that commenter W was kind enough to leave some kind words regarding their song "Lover My Love" the other day. 

The article for "Lover My Love" was something that I had posted all the way back in May 2016, so a better part of a decade ago. And as it turns out, "Lover My Love" was the B-side for Aming's 3rd single "Kokoro Komete Ai wo Komete"（心こめて 愛をこめて...With My Heart, With Love） which came out in April 1983. The crazy thing was that I had never written about that A-side.

Well, it might be nearly ten years late, but I'm here to rectify that situation. Even crazier is that I can recognize that particular keyboard intro but couldn't remember the rest of it. Regardless, "Kokoro Komete Ai wo Komete", which was written and composed by Aming half Takako Okamura（岡村孝子）, has a pretty jaunty and folksy melody although her lyrics are a melancholy self-therapy session after major heartbreak. It's not a happy situation but at least by the end, there seems to be some shafts of light breaking through the clouds.

Adding some further details, the single peaked at No. 18 and Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）and Ebako Jr. took care of the arrangement. Strangely enough, "Kokoro Komete Ai wo Komete" was never placed onto an original album, but it finally made it onto a 2007 BEST compilation "P.P.S. Anata e..."（P.P.S. あなたへ…To You）. Of course, thanks go to W for reminding me of the B-side which finally led to the article for this A-side.

Tears for Fears -- Mad World

Thank you, Bing!

 

Tropical Storm Shanshan may have been downgraded from a typhoon but it still seems to be wreaking havoc on the Japanese archipelago, so I'm hoping that everyone is doing the best they can under some very trying meteorological conditions. 

For this week's Reminiscings of Youth, I remember years ago when a certain video game of battle put up a theme song whose melody was instantly recognized by me and it was effectively sung in this very sad and resigned fashion as if soldiers were left wondering when this war would ever end.

But my ROY memory goes back even further since the original version of "Mad World" was recorded by the New Wave duo Tears for Fears. Although the September 1982 single had been released before their "Change" song, it was actually the opposite for me here in Toronto; I'd heard and enjoyed "Change" before "Mad World" came out as the follow-up. 

The order didn't matter though because both songs are still great. Tears for Fears' Roland Orzabal came up with words and music for this lyrically unhappy tune although the music video has the man himself doing a one-man rave party on the jetty while his partner, Curt Smith, was left inside a manor to sing away. Being a fellow who was in thrall to all of the technopop of the time, "Mad World" was a cool world of all these bloops and bleeps including those quicksilver "horns" descending every so often like bombs. 

Strangely enough, "Mad World" didn't (initially anyways) make any sort of dent in the American and Canadian charts but it did hit No. 3 on the UK charts, going Gold. Of course, after doing my ROY last week on "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World", it was going to be a simple segue into this Tears for Fears classic. So, what was at the top of the Oricon charts back in September 1982? I will give you Nos. 1, 2 and 4.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

2. Hiromi Go -- Aishuu no Casablanca （哀愁のカサブランカ）

4. Seiko Matsuda -- Komugi Iro no Mermaid (小麦色のマーメイド）

Peter Gabriel -- Shock the Monkey

 

Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth article, and today I have a song whose music video has been seen as one of the more incredible productions ever. It also terrified the heck out of me when I first saw it as a teenager.

"Shock the Monkey" by Peter Gabriel did indeed alarm me initially because of the title and the unsettling video because I had wondered whether it was one of those creations which showed some poor monkey undergoing tortuous experiments. Instead, as I gradually discovered, Gabriel had actually wanted to address the issue of jealousy as represented by the gibbon in the video (not technically a monkey as noted in Wikipedia). It was the first time for me to see Gabriel as the premise seemed like something out of a psychological spy thriller with an intelligence agent eventually succumbing to those mysterious external forces.

I'd heard about Peter Gabriel all throughout 1982, the year that "Shock the Monkey" was released as a single in September. I had known about his time with the band Genesis although I never listened to them when they were an artsy progressive rock band in the 1970s. My knowledge of the band grew when they decided to go into a more pop and chart-friendly direction while Gabriel who had left Genesis went into other pastures of music. 

"Shock the Monkey" is a synthpop sensation with a great and immediately recognizable hook and I will always love Gabriel's exhortation of "SHOCK!" in the middle of the song. For that matter, I'd never heard vocals like his before; somewhere between a mix of rock star and siren. In Canada, the song hit No. 10 on RPM while in America, it did somewhat more modestly by peaking at No. 29 on Billboard.

Now, what was making the Oricon chart in September 1982? I have No. 1, No. 2 and... No. 10.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

2. Hiromi Go -- Aishuu no Casablanca （哀愁のカサブランカ）

10. Naoko Kawai -- Kenka wo Yamete (けんかをやめて）

Thomas Dolby -- She Blinded Me With Science

 

SCIENCE!

When I was in elementary school, I had actually thought about becoming a biologist since I loved and still love animals. For that matter, I also coddled an interest in astronomy (I collected newspaper articles on the planets and the International Space Station's ancestor, Skylab) and meteorology. Sometime in the 1970s, I ended up watching a science-based variety show, "Don't Ask Me", originally from the UK's ITV network on our local educational channel, OECA (later known as TV Ontario).

There was one elderly fellow on "Don't Ask Me" named Magnus Pyke (incredible name, by the way) who was this nutritional scientist, government scientific advisor and television presenter that pretty much stole every scene although there were other hosts and presenters. The very British Pyke may have already been close to around 70 years of age when I first saw him, but he was this ball of energy that flapped his arms about and very excitedly talked about various scientific matters as if he had just discovered them himself. He almost cemented my resolve into becoming a scientist but a certain country got in the way permanently some years later. The above video has Pyke in the sequel to "Don't Ask Me", "Don't Just Sit There" in the late 1970s.

It did make me wonder whether Matt Smith had partially based his own interpretation of The Doctor ("Doctor Who") on Pyke with his manic energy and flappy arms. And the good Doctor was also a governmental scientific advisor as well back in one of his earlier selves.

Several years after Pyke and "Don't Ask Me" had left my brain, the former suddenly appeared again and throughout pop culture once more when he showed up in Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science", a single released in October 1982 in the UK. And though, according to the Wikipedia article for the song, it didn't do all that well in the home nation, it certainly made its mark in the United States and Canada by scoring No. 5 and No. 1 respectively.

For a guy like me who was not only a geek but a guy who was also getting into the synthpop side of things, "She Blinded Me With Science" was musical manna from heaven. It certainly didn't hurt having Pyke's cachet as the mad scientist and director of the Rest Home for Deranged Scientists yelling "SCIENCE!" and the title all throughout the music video. Dolby's magnum opus is so catchy with the two melodic sides of funky/cheerful and ominous that I think of it as one of the representative songs of the 1980s. It was indeed poetry in motion.

I think Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" will be one of the juicier ROY articles that I've written up for the blog because not only does it have the Magnus Pyke angle, but there is also another angle involving Japanese popular music. More than ten years ago in the early days of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", when I wrote up about Akiko Yano's（矢野顕子）super-happy "Harusaki Kobeni"（春咲小紅）, I mentioned that there was a rumour regarding the singer-songwriter's connection with Dolby in that she had been in the recording studio when "She Blinded Me With Science" was being made, and so the following famous lyric came about:

Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful! 

(for years, I'd assumed that Pyke cried "Good heavens, Miss South America!")

At the time, Yano had provided backing vocals to Dolby's song "Radio Silence", a track on his May 1982 debut album "The Golden Age of Wireless", and at the time, she had been married to Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame. The site "TV Tropes" has mentioned the rumour in its file on Dolby (scroll down to "Shout-Out") and in "Harusaki Kobeni", I also wrote that this came out in Yano's own J-Wiki profile although it could have also actually been referring to the Sakamotos' daughter Miyu who was only one year old at the time. What the J-Wiki profile additionally stated was that Yano had also helped with the backing vocals, and I think that I did hear that distinctive voice of hers in the song, although according to Discogs, Miriam Stockley and Mutt Lange were the only people on backup chorus.

Having said all that, I did find a 2011 interview at the "Songfacts" website where Dolby said at the end that he'd written the Sakamoto line simply because he wanted to get a Japanese woman in the video. He also cheekily said that he had been ahead of the times in fetishizing Asian women. Not sure how tongue-in-cheek he was about that, though. Speaking about that femme fatale in the video, I did come across a Reddit conversation which mistakenly identified the lady as Yano. As someone who has a number of her albums, I can categorically say that the lady in the video and Yano are two different people.

Whew! That was quite a reminiscing of youth there. Anyways, what were the Top 3 singles on Oricon for October 1982?

1. Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

2. Ippu-Do -- Sumire September Love (すみれ September Love)

3. Masahiko Kondo -- Horeta ze! Kanpai（ホレたぜ!乾杯）

Billy Joel -- Pressure

 

Welcome to this week's Reminiscings of Youth and I'd like to welcome Billy Joel for the third time to a ROY after his romantic "Rosalinda's Eyes" and the sad-if-wise karaoke favourite "Honesty". 

This time though, I'm going to go with his frantic September 1982 single "Pressure". Now, I'd heard The Piano Man for years before this hit on the radio through the songs that I've already mentioned but also "Piano Man" itself and "Just The Way You Are" (which I will definitely include as a ROY perhaps on Valentine's Day 2022). However, what really had me paying attention to Joel and got me to go from just an interested listener to a big fan was "Pressure". In fact, the very first 45" single by Joel that I bought from Sam The Record Man was this song (it's just too bad that this didn't have the extended version on the music video).

Joel may be known as The Piano Man but he's also been called a musical chameleon for his ability to absorb different styles and musicians whether it be Mick Jagger and rock on "You May Be Right", Ray Charles on "New York State of Mind" or Ronnie Spector on "Say Goodbye to Hollywood". Then there is his whole love letter to doo-wop via the "An Innocent Man" album. But with "Pressure", I think that this was Joel's venture into New Wave with those crazed synthesizers.

Everything about "Pressure" works: the propulsive synth riff that sounds like it originally got lifted from some classical piece and then filtered through computers, the insane circus-y interlude, the crashing drums, Joel yelling out the title and then half-oozing the verses as if he were being put under sedation following yet another psychotic break. From what I've read about the song on Wikipedia, Joel was under some pressure getting tracks for "The Nylon Curtain" where "Pressure" would reside when his secretary suggested (probably very gently) about singing on the nature of pressure itself from all sources.

The music video by Russell Mulcahy for "Pressure" was the first exposure that I got of the song...I think it was on Casey Kasem's "America's Top 10", and it just added to the psychological nuttiness of it all. I think that it was downright Kafkaesque and it totally sold me on the song. "Pressure" hit No. 9 in Canada and No. 20 Stateside. In Japan, it got as high as No. 78. Since then, it's been brought back through an episode of that dark superhero series "The Boys", but I also remember it being used for a montage sequence before a Major League Baseball playoff series on TV, and it was incredible. I think that it would be the ideal song for any sport playoffs broadcast.

"Pressure" may have only gotten up to No. 78 on Oricon but what were No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4 on the Oricon Singles chart in September 1982? Unfortunately, I can't include Toshihiko Tahara's（田原俊彦）"Ninjin Musume"（NINJIN娘）which came in at No. 3 since at this writing, I haven't covered it yet.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

2. Hiromi Go -- Aishuu no Casablanca （哀愁のカサブランカ）

4. Seiko Matsuda -- Komugi Iro no Mermaid (小麦色のマーメイド）

Aming (Takako Okamura) -- Shio no Kaori no Naka de（潮の香りの中で）

 

When I think of singer-songwriter Takako Okamura（岡村孝子）, soft and fluffy and tenderhearted love songs come to mind. The following is no exception.

Mind you, this particular ballad is of the crying variety. Her "Shio no Kaori no Naka de" (In the Fragrance of the Tides) is not a celebration of love but the mourning of it. Specifically, her lyrics talk of a lost opportunity as she has to say goodbye to a good friend who's going away for some reason without ever knowing her feelings for him since, gosh darn it, she just couldn't pucker up the courage to say them. Her melody is also very poignant, too.

The above version comes from her November 1986 album of self-covers "Andantino". But the original as shown below was performed under her time with partner Haruko Kato（加藤晴子）in the duo Aming（あみん）. "Shio no Kaori no Naka de" was a track in their April 1983 debut album "P.S. Anata e..."（P.S. あなたへ…P.S. To You）, and it was actually a solo performance by Okamura. There isn't much of a difference in the arrangements for the 1983 and 1986 versions but the original was arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, the same person who took care of Aming's most famous hit, "Matsu wa"（待つわ）. "P.S. Anata e..." managed to peak at No. 2 on Oricon and eventually become the 42nd-ranked album of the year.

Donald Fagen -- I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)

 

Approximately two weeks ago, I contributed a ROY article for Steely Dan's wonderful "Peg" from the band's 1977 "Aja" album. Without going into the whole hullabaloo about how I got into the works of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker again, allow me to say that it was the beginning of my exposure to this demanding and resultingly amazing duo.

Some years later, I then started hearing "I.G.Y." by Donald Fagen on AM radio and that time, I thought that it was one of the weirdest pop songs that I had ever heard. A horn section shuffling to a reggae beat? The singer trying to reach those falsetto heights? And why would a song ever be called "International Geophysical Year", for heaven's sakes?

It would be years before I finally saw the light about "I.G.Y." and its album by Fagen, "The Nightfly". Before that point, I hadn't known that Fagen was part of Steely Dan, and although I did remember seeing that iconic cover for "The Nightfly" with the old-style radio DJ in the booth, I had no idea that it was Fagen as the disc jockey. In fact, I didn't even know that Steely Dan breaking up for a while partially led to the birth of this classic album.

My thanks will strangely go to IBM. As I mentioned in the "Peg" article, there was an IBM commercial played in Japan with a popular model/actress being featured alongside the ThinkPad and "I.G.Y." was the song in the background. My engrams were firing once more with a bit more affection for the Fagen single. At the time, I was teaching at my second school in Tokyo, and a fellow teacher who had been doing his own DJ'ing and recording recommended "The Nightfly" to me as one of the albums everyone had to own.

Indeed, I did buy it and it has become a heavy-rotation album. As was the case with that subtitle for "I.G.Y.", what a beautiful world! All of the tracks are splendid and I gradually got to know the story behind the concept of "The Nightfly" and Fagen's personal connection to it. Of course, you can take a look at the Wikipedia article for the album for starters.

The part of the story where Fagen related how much he relied on those 1960s late-night radio shows as a kid in what he called his bland neighbourhood did hit me somewhat. I had my decade of listening to various stations across the dial and especially during my university years, I relied on those radio DJs to keep me amused, entertained and awake as I pulled off those all-nighters to get the essays done and exams studied for. Certainly, I was interested enough to track down this video of a 1964 broadcast of a radio show from Boston.

As for "I.G.Y.", I now consider it to be one of the most appealingly quirky pop songs that my ears have had the privilege of being exposed to. Once again, it was all about those horns, keyboards, Fagen's vocals and that melody now paired with lyrics that sardonically talked about the wonders of futuristic living. And yet, I still get one of those rare moments of optimism in my head (my persona really usually wavers between cynicism and pessimism) whenever I play "I.G.Y." on the stereo, hoping for those gleaming trains, hypersonic planes and driverless automobiles going to and from those smart homes. Not surprisingly, my mind goes to certain areas in Tokyo such as Odaiba and even further afield in nations such as Dubai.

"I.G.Y." was released in September 1982 with "The Nightfly" coming out a month later, so I figure that I can provide what were in the Top 3 of Oricon in October 1982.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa  (待つわ）

2. Ippu-Do -- Sumire September Love (すみれ September Love)

3. Masahiko Kondo -- Horeta ze! Kanpai（ホレたぜ!乾杯）

DeBarge -- All This Love

For nostalgia's sake tonight, I put on one of my ancient Canadian Tire tapes with stuff that I had recorded all the way back in my high school years (1980s). Unfortunately, my tape recorder, Jaws, got a bit peckish so it nibbled on some of the tape, and if you have read my article on Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）"Crimson", it can get a little too messy on the devouring. Luckily, though, the damage wasn't too bad.

The first song on my various tapings from the FM stations on Toronto radio happened to be DeBarge's "All This Love" which was released back in October 1982. "All This Love" stands as one of the great soulful romantic ballads of all time in my estimation. It's one of those special tunes that can truly transport me into a happy place for nearly 6 minutes. Moreover, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for me to say that thanks to this classic and other great 80s R&B/pop songs, this helped me appreciate Japanese City Pop.

Now, considering that this may be my fourth time paying tribute to a Western tune after also having written about "Love Will Keep Us Together", "Vacation" and most recently "Lovely Day", I've decided to pack these all together into a new Label called Reminiscings of Youth. Basically, if I talk about one of my favourite American, Canadian or British songs when I was a teen or kid, I will see if I can find some of the timely kayo that had come out around the same time as that song.

So, without further ado, here are the Top 3 songs on the Oricon singles chart for October 1982:

1. Aming -- Matsu wa

2. Ippu-Do -- Sumire September Love

3. Masahiko Kondo -- Horeta ze! Kanpai

Aming -- Lover My Love

Just as much as the electric guitar and strings became an identifying trope for me when it came to Japanese popular music of the 1970s, some of Japan's 80s pop was represented by a combination of synths, an introspective piano and some soaring strings.

For that reason, Aming's（あみん） "Lover My Love" hit me right in the heart as soon as I heard it. This wasn't even the A-side but the B-side to the duo's 3rd single "Kokoro Komete Ai wo Komete"（心こめて 愛をこめて...With My Heart, With Love） from April 1983. Just from listening to this ballad, I realized that Aming's discography may be a microcosm of my exploration of Japanese pop music in general: all of the Oricon hits at the very top of the iceberg with a good number of hidden gems deep below the surface of the ocean.

Takako Okamura（岡村孝子）, one-half of Aming at the time, wrote and composed and sang this song about the reminiscences and regrets of a past romance before the decision to move on with life. But it's Okamura's melody beginning with that piano and then the entry of those soaring strings and percussion that made it all worthwhile for me. Perhaps I might grab the BEST compilation that it was finally placed on, "P.P.S. Anata e..."（P.P.S. あなたへ…To You） which was released in December 2007. As for the single "Kokoro Komete Ai wo Komete", it got up as high as No. 18.

Mayumi Shibata/Aming -- Shiroi Page no Naka ni （白いページの中に）

Mayumi Shibata（柴田まゆみ）is a singer that doesn't have a whole lot of information about her. There is no entry of her on J-Wiki but there is a Facebook page which led me to a website devoted to her on Google. According to her profile, she was born on February 2nd and released what I think was her only single in 1978 titled "Shiroi Page no Naka ni" (On A White Page) which she had written and composed. After that, it would be another 14 years before she released anything new, and then in 2004, there was an album which came out on CD titled "Shiroi Page no Naka ni and more tracks".

So there is some mystery about her but no mystery about her single. I enjoy it very much. It's very much in the relaxing-as-chamomile tea category of ballad. It has that sort of nostalgic arrangement that I've enjoyed with the strings and keyboards, and the lyrics seem to bring an inspiring message about getting over a bad period and starting fresh on that new fresh page. Shibata won a prize at the 15th Yamaha Popular Song Contest in 1978 with "Shiroi Page no Naka ni".

The female duo of Aming（あみん）covered the song in their 2nd album from December 1983, "Memorial". When I heard the intro, I had thought that it was a wholly different song just with the same title but the lyrics were indeed the same. Instead of the wistful and sadder-but-wiser tone in the original, there was an even more optimistic bent to this version which made it sound almost like a City Pop tune, thanks to arranger Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）.

Aming -- Coffee wa Kirai （コーヒーはきらい）

After writing about their monster hit, "Matsu wa"（待つわ）from 1982, I had thought that I would probably never be able to write another article on the duo Aming（あみん）, who are Takako Okamura and Haruko Kato（岡村孝子・加藤晴子）, since their debut song was the only song that I knew them for.

But then some weeks ago, I came across this ballad titled "Coffee wa Kirai" (I Hate Coffee) which was a track on the duo's debut album, "P.S. Anata e..."（P.S. あなたへ…P.S. To You） from April 1983. And like caffeine, I was hooked...despite the title. Sung by Kato here, the lyrics by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）struck me as a bit vague about why the protagonist hated coffee. Was a past love an avid java drinker or did they happen to break up in a café?

I'm not sure about the answer to the above questions but I did like the music which was also by Matsumiya. I guess there's something about a light piano ballad that just gets me at ease. And it would actually be chamomile tea, not coffee, that would get me in the same state. Although Okamura was the one who would find lasting success as a solo artist in later years, I think Kato did a fine job here. But despite what she sings in this particular song, I do love my joe.

JTM's Romantic 80s Playlist

Image courtesy of http://valentinetipsandtricks.blogspot.com/2011/05/romantic-love-pictures.html

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, I thought it might be timely to share some of my favorite J-Pop love songs from the 80s. There is certainly no shortage of romantic songs to chose from but I wanted to select songs that may not necessarily be your atypical or conventional love songs. This list is just my personal list of favorite songs that tug at the heart strings.  So without further ado here is my 80s Love Songs Playlist...

Aming -- Matsu wa (待つわ）

I was watching the 1982 Kohaku Utagassen when this pair of women appeared and harmoniously sang this adorable tune. Little did I know at the time that this was the top song of the year according to Oricon. Takako Okamura（岡村孝子） and Haruko Kato（加藤晴子）were classmates at Sugiyama Joshien University（椙山女子園大学）in Nagoya when they decided to form a singing pair.

Aming has quite the trivia attached to it right down to the origin of the name. Until the duo's return in 2007, Aming would have ended up as the act with the shortest life that sang the No. 1 Song of the Year. Releasing their debut song, "Matsu wa"(I'll Wait for You) in July 1982, the pair announced their breakup at the end of 1983. The origin of the name came from the name of a cafe, Amin（安民）, used in the lyrics of a song, "Pumpkin Pie and Cinnamon Tea" sung by folk singer Masashi Sada（さだまさし）in 1979. Sada himself derived that cafe's name from Ugandan dictator Idi Amin! Consider my jaw thoroughly dropped!

"Matsu wa" was written and composed by Okamura and was first sung at the 1982 Yamaha Popular Song Contest in the Spring where it won the grand prize. It was released as a single in July of that year and reached No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies where it stayed for 6 weeks from late August to early October. And of course, they got onto the Kohaku in December. It has also become a popular song in the karaoke boxes.

The notable thing about their performance of the song, which covered the evergreen theme of unrequited love, was their minimalist approach. The ladies stood side by side and sang the song without any facial expressions and just shifted their feet. Quite the counter-intuitive maneuver when considering the frenetic bopping about by the various aidoru. Of course, another hit female duo, Wink, would pick up a similar choreographic theme about half a decade later.

As for the reason behind the brief duration of the duo, according to an NHK program in 2005, Haruko Kato said that she had come to the realization that she didn't really have any talent and felt that she didn't belong in the music world. Kato left Aming and returned to a regular life, while Okamura proceeded with a solo career that has thrived over the years. However, the friends maintained contact, and in 2002, Kato joined her former partner in a song commemorating the 20th anniversary of Aming. Then in 2007, the pair officially revived the act, even appearing once more in the Kohaku of that year.