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.
Although today has had a slightly changed schedule to accommodate my busier one tomorrow, I still haven't forgotten that Thursdays are devoted to regular Reminiscings of Youth songs. We did have the special holiday edition earlier this week, so here's the regular one.
So, it's nice to have the Queen of Quiet Storm herself, Anita Baker, back on the blog. I became a fan from the 1980s but she kept on going well into the 1990s and beyond. I have her first four albums but didn't continue the collection of her discography after heading to Japan. Well, some years during my odyssey there, I was either in Tower Records or HMV when I discovered her 2002 BEST compilation,"The Best of Anita Baker", and it took me all of a second to make the purchase.
Along with those hit songs from her early albums, there were some new ones that I hadn't heard by Ms. Baker, and one of them was "I Apologize" which was a October 1994 single. I may have been eight years late but better late than never. And it was another soulful smash for me and in my humble opinion, it was the standout new song for me. Created by Baker, Gordon Chambers and Barry J. Eastmond, it's a heartfelt tribute to the one action in a relationship that might be extremely difficult but absolutely necessary. I've spoken to enough married students to get that impression.
On Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, "I Apologize" hit No. 8. And perhaps I should apologize since I didn't realize that Baker just celebrated her birthday last month on the 26th. In any case, what was also being released in October 1994 in Japan?
Once again, I bid you welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth where I post an article on an old song from outside of Japan that I have cherished since my days as a young lad in Toronto. It's been a while, so I wanted to write something on one of my favourite pop groups, The Manhattan Transfer.
I actually saw the guys perform this on an episode of that music show "Solid Gold" decades ago, and thought it was a pretty darn cool tune. This would be "Mystery", straight from The Manhattan Transfer's September 1983 album "Bodies and Souls" which also has one of their biggest hits, "Spice of Life" that I've covered in a past ROY article. And as with "Spice of Life", the late great Rod Temperton took care of this urbane and soulful ballad. Both songs were the many examples of the Transfer's urban contemporary phase spanning from the late 1970s going into the 1980s.
Now, it was just a couple of weeks ago that I devoted the ROY that time to Anita Baker's scintillating "Rapture" album. It was there that I mentioned that there was especially one track on the album that I wanted to focus upon, and indeed, it's this one, the Queen of Quiet Storm's own cover of "Mystery". Her take fits very well with the overall mood of the album and she handles it with absolute aplomb. If I had to make a choice between the two, though, I would have to go with The Manhattan Transfer's original because of those wonderful harmonies elicited from the group.
Going with the September 1983 release of "Bodies and Souls", what were some Japanese singles being released that month?
Welcome to the regular Reminiscings of Youth article where I post about a song or an album from the West that caught my ears back in my adolescence or childhood. And one of the biggest and happiest purchases that I ever made was for Anita Baker's"Rapture", her second album from March 1986. Back in early 2021, I put up a ROY recognizing the Queen of Quiet Storm's big hit "Sweet Love" which launches "Rapture", and you can read about all the emotions I got from hearing that one for the first time on radio. Well, for this ROY, I've decided to also give some of the other great tracks their time in the KKP sun.
"Caught Up In the Rapture" isn't only the third track on "Rapture" but the third single to come out from the album. It did pretty well on the Billboard charts by coming in at No. 37 but also No. 6 on Billboard's Hot Black Singles chart. Back on my "If I Had an All-Night Radio Show..." article, I had placed "Sweet Love" as one of the songs to play on the first show; my second show would have automatically followed up with "Caught Up In the Rapture". It's a wonderful soul ballad.
"Same Ole Love (365 Days a Year)" is the fourth single that came out in February 1987 which also broke the Top 10 on the Hot Black Singles chart by placing in at No. 8 and doing more modestly on the Billboard general chart at No. 44. I've often written about how certain songs have reminded me of certain places, and for "Same Ole Love", I've reminisced about the Toronto Blue Jays' old base of operations, Exhibition Stadium, downtown before Skydome was constructed and opened in 1989. When I was there for one game at the old stadium, "Same Ole Love" just happened to be playing before the teams made their way out onto the field.
"You Bring Me Joy" wasn't released as a single. Instead, it is the second track following "Sweet Love" on the album which I have always thought somewhat strange because I feel that it should have been the final track on "Rapture". This gospel soul ballad is so explosively sung by Baker that it could have been one showstopper of an ending to a brilliant album especially when she and the chorus yell out "MY JOY!". I was at one party at the end where I was dancing with a lass to this one; that was quite the surge of energy to finish off things.
There are other tracks but I'll leave it here for now because there is especially one other track on "Rapture" that I'd like to feature solo. "Rapture" peaked at No. 11 on Billboard, won two Grammy awards and sold three million copies by October 1987. In Canada, it reached No. 25 on RPM.
So, what was hitting the Top 10 of Oricon just a few days before the release of "Rapture"? I give you Nos. 3, 4 and 5.
I had family over tonight for dinner after which most of us ended up watching the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game and the Edmonton Oilers-Florida Panthers Stanley Cup matchup. Drowsing off a bit in my armchair which is something that I tend to do with alarming frequency these nights, I started entertaining one of my fantasies which is wondering how it would be like to be an all-night radio DJ.
"Man, you must have been hitting the Canada Dry pretty hard, J-Canuck!" is probably what a lot of you might be thinking. But yeah, I've always wondered about a career in radio, and not just during the daytime drive time but also in the wee hours of the morning. After all, although I'm not sure whether I have a voice for radio, I certainly have a face for it! Plus, not only have I loved Donald Fagen's classic 1982 album "The Nightfly" as you can see above, I've also loved the cover of Fagen himself dressed up as a 1950s or 1960s disc jockey handling the overnight shift in that tiny room while he's charismatically spinning tales and records between midnight and 6 am.
One reason that I would love to try to give this particularly distinct job a whirl despite the hours is that I've read recently that live overnight radio in North America, at least, has been dead for a long time now (wherever you're reading this, perhaps you can tell me if this is also true in your neck of the woods). Financially speaking and in terms of personnel, I can understand why a radio station manager would cut all ties to all-night radio with a real human being; subscribing to a nationally-provided streaming service from a computer while the lights are all out at the station can save a lot of dough. However, I've also read that there had been DJs in the past who relished the overnight shift because they were a whole lot more free to talk and play their own kind of music and talk with the other all-nighters out there ranging from desperate university students cramming for exams to security guards at their lonely stations. Maybe they could have their own favourite guests or buddies come by to keep them company and nosh on pizza and stuff. As someone who used to man the Tuesday night shift at the International Student Centre at the University of Toronto, I was accustomed to seeing and chatting with all sorts of people who passed by the front desk and enjoyed it most of the time. I could enjoy that too as a DJ perhaps (of course, as long as the station manager was a nice and generous person).
But what would I play? Well, this is something that I was musing about for a long time and the six choices that I have are only a mere fraction of what I would like to play during a stint in the booth. Not surprisingly, it would be a mix of Japanese and non-Japanese music. So, typing this close to 11 pm EDT, here's a sextet of cool-down nighttime music coming up here on WKKP in Toronto. I'd also welcome any contributions by you out there.
The other day, I wrote the article "Well, If You Like Quiet Storm..." to provide some of those Japanese songs that I personally felt reflected the elegance and groove of the Quiet Storm sub-genre that artists ranging from Smokey Robinson to Silk Sonic lovingly brought to our ears. This week's Reminiscings of Youth features one of those songs.
If there were a queen to represent Quiet Storm, I would definitely vouch for Anita Baker. Being a fan of hers ever since I was awestruck by her "Sweet Love" on the radio back in 1986, and since that fateful aural encounter, I've ended up buying most of her albums including a BEST compilation. So you can imagine way back when, when I found out that Baker was about to release a big single and album in 1988, both with the identical title of "Giving You the Best That I Got", how giddy I was feeling.
And most definitely, I wasn't let down at all. I bought the album on compact disc, but the single was released in September 1988, and "Giving You the Best That I Got" hit my ears once more as so smooth and velvety and sophisticated that I felt like making a reservation at the city's most expensive restaurant just for myself (one look at my bank account brought good sense back to my head). I've been reading a lot of the comments for the many YouTube videos that have featured the song, and it has come across as one of those ultimate romance tunes that can only be served on the finest bone china and crisp white linen.
Baker so owns this song that I couldn't quite believe it when I was reading the Wikipedia article for it and found out that songwriter Skip Scarborough, who created it alongside Baker and Randy Holland, had first offered "Giving You the Best That I Got" to other singers. Happily, the right singer got the right song. Not surprisingly, it was nominated for the following Grammys: Best R&B Vocal Performance (Female), Best R&B Song, Record of the Year and Song of the Year, and it won the first two. I was also reading the recording players for the song, and it turns out that three of them have worked with Japanese acts from whom I've seen in many an album's liner notes: bassist Nathan East, percussionist Paulinho da Costa and singer Valerie Pinkston Mayo. The song hit No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
As usual, I must ask about what the Top 3 songs on Oriconwere for September 1988.
A while back, a commenter referring to one of my City Pop-themed articles recommended the R&B duo Silk Sonic. To be honest, I hadn't heard about them before but when I was told that the duo consisted of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak, my attention was grabbed especially because of Mars since he has been bringing back some of the old funk and soul of my youth through hits such as "Uptown Funk" and "Treasure".
Then, when I heard "Love's Train" (which was released as a Valentine's Day gift of sorts in February 2022) for the first time a few nights ago, I was absolutely smitten. I'd been wondering whether the musical stylings from the R&B of the late 1970s and early 1980s by folks like Michael Jackson, Earth Wind & Fire and DeBarge would make a comeback, and it looks like it has. Electricity was snapping up and down my spine as I heard it.
Silk Sonic's"Love's Train" is a cover of the 1982 original by the R&B/funk band Con Funk Shun and it's also just as scintillating and memorable and mellow and velvety. Along with its Wikipedia categorization of those two genres in the first line of the paragraph, it's also been given the Quiet Storm label.
Now, cherishing my R&B from way back means that I also love my Quiet Storm, too. However, I never gave much thought about what it means and why it has been called that way, and that's considering that a few of my ROY articles over the past few years include representatives of that sub-genre. According to Wikipedia, it's "...a radio format and genre of R&B, performed in a smooth, romantic, jazz-influenced style...and was named after the title song on Smokey Robinson's 1975 album A Quiet Storm".
For me, Quiet Storm means updated postwar cool jazz (Bill Evans) mixed with soulful groove, and whenever the name pops up into my head, the first person that appears is Anita Baker. Her "Sweet Love" from 1986 absolutely floored me when I first heard it on the radio as a university student. Some other examples are Bobby Caldwell's"What You Won't Do For Love" and DeBarge's"All This Love".
The whole story behind the formation of Quiet Storm strikes me as being a fairy tale come true for any person who has ever wanted to become a successful radio DJ. Howard University students Melvin Lindsey and Jack Shuler were working at WHUR-FM in Washington D.C. in 1976 as interns when they suddenly got their chance to go behind the mike, and Lindsey with his buttery voice and his selections of love ballads from the 1950s to the 1970s were hits to the extent that the two guys got their own show. I mean, it would be like if the City Pop-loving YouTuber who first brought "Plastic Love" to the world's attention had been in a radio station rather than behind a laptop. Wouldn't it be something if someone decided to make a movie out of Lindsey's life? Sadly though, the Quiet Storm pioneer passed away at the age of 36 in 1992.
Around Halloween last year, I put up an Author's Pick titled "Well, If You Like Japanese City Pop..." just to showcase any non-Japanese artists who have come up with songs that had that similar Japanese urban contemporary style. So, after thoroughly enjoying "Love's Train", I started wondering whether I could find similar examples of Quiet Storm within Japanese music since City Pop absorbed genres such as R&B, disco, and Latin.
It didn't take too long as it turned out and although you might disagree with my five choices (obviously not comprehensive at all), perhaps you can also give your own thoughts on what might be your J-Quiet Storm choices. And for that matter, what are your favourite Quiet Storm songs? Wiki also has its own list of Quiet Storm.
For the first Reminiscings of Youth article for 2021, I bring you Anita Baker's"Sweet Love". Interestingly enough, with that title, it could easily have become the name for a typical Japanese aidoru tune of the decade, and perhaps it has become one but I have yet to come across a song like this. Perhaps if there's someone who knows such a song out there, he/she can let me know.
I've seen the video for "Sweet Love", which was released on May 27th 1986, a number of times but the first time I heard it was on radio. And it hit me like a Mack truck because of that dramatic piano-and-percussion intro followed by Baker's splendidly smoky vocals.
In retrospect, I wondered if this breakthrough hit for the divine Ms. Baker had ever made it as a Parliament cigarette song in Japan because "Sweet Love" feels like the perfect soul love song that often makes it onto a Parliament commercial. The song is urban and urbane, soulful and sophisticated, and it's the type of tune that should have been floating in the air at my first university prom at the old Sutton Place hotel in downtown Toronto. We were all decked out in tuxedoes and ball gowns that night as we looked distinctly less scruffy. Indeed, "Sweet Love" is the type of song to accompany a high-class night out on the town.
Pretty darn quickly, I picked up the record that it came on, "Rapture", Baker's 2nd album which had come out a little earlier in April, and all of the tracks are winners there, too. And if I'm not mistaken, I taped it onto a Maxell so that I could listen to it when I had to pull off some of those all-nighters. Nothing better than having Anita Baker and copious amounts of green tea making sure you stayed awake past the midnight hour.
As for the single "Sweet Love", Baker and Louis A. Johnson were two of the songwriters but I was surprised to discover that Gary Bias, the veteran saxophonist from one of my favourite bands, Earth Wind & Fire, was also a fellow songwriter. Happy to know as well from Wikipedia that not only did "Sweet Love" pick up a Grammy for Best R&B Song but "Rapture" itself earned a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. It hit No. 8 on Billboard and No. 21 on Canada's RPM singles chart.
Considering the date of release for "Sweet Love", let's see what were the Top 3 singles at Oricon in June 1986.
Merry Christmas in Japan and Merry Christmas Eve here!
This is not only a collaboration between the Labels of Reminiscings of Youth and Xmas here on the blog, but it's the farthest back that I've gone for a ROY article. In fact, I should correct the category here and say that it's more of a Reminiscings of Babyhood or Just-Graduated-From-Foetushood because I was only born some weeks before "A Charlie Brown Christmas" made its debut on CBS on December 9th 1965. Certainly, there's no way that I can remember the first time that Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and the rest of the bunch made their way onto television screens together for the first time, since in all likelihood I was in the crib getting my 18 hours of beauty rest (which failed utterly) but I know that I've been watching it since I was a little kid.
I've enjoyed the whole thing over and over and I even bought the DVD for "A Charlie Brown Christmas" about a decade or so ago in Japan. Of course, a lot of things debuted for the first time including the characters and the famous "Linus & Lucy" theme which is arguably the theme song for the entire she-bang known as "Peanuts" (geez, ol' Chuck can't even catch a break there). One of my favourite scenes in the special is most of the characters boogying away to "Linus & Lucy" with Schroeder on the piano, Snoopy on the guitar and Pig-Pen on wood bass. My brother and I always giggled at Frieda's dancing.
Of course, if I got the DVD for the special then I just had to get the classic soundtrack with the Vince Guaraldi Trio. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and the music are absolutely inseparable and at the time that I saw it annually, I heard and treated the soundtrack not as jazz but just "Charlie Brown music" because of that distinct Guaraldi piano. From what I read about the production of the special back in 1965, though, was that inserting wistful jazz music into a kiddie program was thought to be downright insane at the time.
Happily, braver heads and ears prevailed. But along with "Linus & Lucy", "Skating" and all the rest, there is the opening theme "Christmas Time Is Here" by Guaraldi and television producer Lee Mendelson with the chorus from St. Paul's Episcopal Church in San Rafael, California. I cannot imagine the introduction for the show without this song, and whenever I get introduced to a jazz pianist that I hadn't heard before, I immediately compare that artist with Guaraldi via "Christmas Time Is Here". That was the case when I first heard the velvety tones of Bill Evans back in Japan. I listened to Evans' trademark "Waltz for Debby" and found the lilting and romantically swinging melody reminiscent of Guaraldi's "Charlie Brown music" (although I know that Evans started his career before Guaraldi), and internally remarked, "Yep, he's my guy!" and ended up buying a number of his albums.
The soundtrack is a must-play at this time of year, and I will listen to it again later tonight just before Christmas Eve gives way to Christmas Day. Wow! That's something...55 years since it was released. But what was released in Japan back in December 1965? Thanks again to "Showa Pops" for the answers.
