CHAKA -- Call Me ~ Oboeteite Hoshii（覚えていてほしい）

 

Well, by this point on Saturday night, I would have already had my two articles up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and perhaps watching the NHL playoffs or doing something else. But weirdly, earlier this afternoon, for some reason, Blogger had a technical issue which didn't allow me to edit or create new postings, so I was left wondering whether after doing twelve years of KKP and the years of the earlier blog while I had been  living in Japan actually filled up all the space I could within the platform. However, I think an email with a screenshot sent to the Blogger administrators took care of things, so I'm back here now.

What I had been planning to post and what I am posting right now is something different from singer-songwriter and English teacher CHAKA (aka Mami Yasunori). Of course, fans including me remember her as the vocalist for the quirky 80s technopop duo PSY-S. With her partner Masaya Matsuura（松浦雅也）, they came up with some great songs that had more hooks than a fisherman's tackle box. 

However, once PSY-S' day was done in the early 1990s, I knew that CHAKA had gone the jazz route as part of her musical odyssey, but I only found out about this album and the opening track just a few short months ago. Her 1999 "I Found Love" begins with "Call Me ~ Oboeteite Hoshii" (I Want You To Remember Me), a tenderhearted piano pop ballad fronted by the familiar and sweet vocals of CHAKA. The arrangement was handled by keyboardist Satoru Shionoya（塩谷哲）, formerly of Japanese salsa band extraordinaire Orquesta De La Luz and an artist who has helped other singers such as Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）. Basically, Shionoya is one of the few names that I see in the details of a song that would immediately get my attention., and he's done it once again here.

"Call Me" could be tear-inducing. I haven't gone into CHAKA's lyrics but the tone of the ballad is reminiscent of a woman whose relationship with another has unfortunately ended but she still pines for her now-former significant other and asks kindly that she be contacted again once in a while. It's rather ironic that I had been planning to go with this song even before the Blogger issue occurred since I felt just like the title. Anyways, thank you Blogger for resolving the problem.

CHAKA with Toko Furuuchi -- Huckleberry Friends（ハックルベリーフレンズ）

amazon.jp

Better-late-than-never situation here. This song, and the album that it is included in, is now over 20 years old but didn't know about its existence until tonight.

I've known CHAKA and Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）separately as singers with some wonderful voices, the former during her time with PSY-S and the latter during her early career in the 1990s. Never did I think that the two would actually get together for a duet, though. But that is what they did for one track, "Huckleberry Friends", on CHAKA's 2nd solo album "with friends" in 1996.

CHAKA took care of the lyrics while Furuuchi came up with the groovy and relaxed melody in a nice collaboration about two friends sticking with each other through thick and thin. And as the title would suggest, I would say that the pair makes for good buds hanging out with each other on the weekend at a cafe or at a baseball game. The only other surprise is that "Huckleberry Friends" wasn't used as a theme song for a J-Drama or something.

If I had known about this song and album, it would have been up on my shelf for a couple of decades already. Just goes to show that there are still treasures to be found in the Japanese music iceberg.

Miho Nakayama/Cindy -- ROSÉCOLOR

I had been wondering about how Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）was doing recently since the last news I did hear was that she had divorced her husband, writer-composer Hitonari Tsuji（辻仁成）after 12 years of marriage. Tsuji had also been married once before to actress Kaho Minami（南果歩）who would later marry actor Ken Watanabe（渡辺謙）...but enough of that matrimonial merry-go-round. Apparently at this point, Miporin is continuing to live in France with her son but appeared in her very first stage play earlier this year and was a performing guest last December at the annual "FNS Music Festival" for Fuji-TV, her first appearance on a music show in 18 years.

My recollection of the the 80s female aidoru is divided into the early 80s aidoru featuring ladies such as Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）. But in the second half of the 1980s had the rise of a sassier and take-less-guff brand of aidoru; I always saw Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香）and Nakayama as the leaders of that "movement". And in fact, I read on J-Wiki that for that latter half of the decade, the aforementioned two aidoru along with Yoko Minamino（南野陽子）and Yui Asaka（浅香唯）were dubbed by the media as The Four Aidoru Queens.

In terms of music, my arrival in Gunma Prefecture came following the July 12th 1989 release of Miporin's 16th single, "Virgin Eyes" which had me hooked because of that dynamic melody composed by Anri（杏里）. And as a result, for some years, I kept my eyes and ears on the singer who seemed to be making that transition from regular aidoru to pop star because of "Virgin Eyes" without investigating too much about her earlier material.

Consequently, I didn't really know much about her preceding single which came out in February of that year, "ROSÉCOLOR", aside from the title all in caps. A bit of a pity since it is a nice little Latin-infused ballad which was written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）and composed by Cindy.

One of the reasons that Nakayama and Kudo have stood out to me despite that label of The Four Aidoru Queens is that I always had that comparison between the two singers. Kudo was the aidoru with the oomph factor in her songs and dancing while Nakayama struck me as being at her best with the balladry, vocally speaking. But even in the above performance on "The Best 10", there were some of the characteristic off-notes that I've often associated her with when it came to her uptempo stuff. Still, it is a soothing tune that I wished I could have gotten to know earlier. Well as they say, better late than never.

"ROSÉCOLOR" was the 5th in a string of 5 No. 1 singles that Miporin had between 1987 and 1989 (she would have three more No. 1s after that). It would finish the year as the 27th-ranked single. The ballad would also be used in a Shiseido commercial.

I also came across a video featuring PSY-S' Chaka singing a more straight-ahead pop rendition of "ROSÉCOLOR"; no idea whether this was ever made into a track for one of her own solo albums or as part of some compilation project. The performance stops midway to introduce the cover (with some of that Latin flavour back) by composer Cindy herself for her 1991 album "Don't Be Afraid". She would cover it again in 1997 for her final album "Surprise". At the risk of offending fans of Miho Nakayama, I think Chaka and Cindy delivered smoother versions. The one other reason I put this article up was in a tribute to Cindy herself that I started with my first article on her.

CHAKA -- Ashita e no Melody （明日へのメロディー）

Well, after seeing the DVD box set of this "Card Captor Sakura"（カードキャプターさくら）anime on my friend's shelf all these years, I finally got to see some evidence of this well-regarded franchise. Mind you, I was already intrigued through its theme songs including the truly groovy "Groovy!" by Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香美）.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend played the 2nd movie titled "Cardcaptor Sakura Movie 2: The Sealed Card" from 2000 which meant I was starting this franchise right from the wrong end of things since I believe that this is the last film or TV series representing Cardcaptor Sakura to date. It actually wasn't too difficult to follow although I think viewing the series would have helped me with the mythos to a certain extent.

Anyways, I guess in continuing the tradition of keeping some cool urban contemporary theme songs for Sakura, the movie ended with a truly glorious ending theme to accompany the scene that I bet all of the fans had pined for when it came to the relationship between Sakura and Syaoran. But the singer behind "Ashita e no Melody"(Melody to Tomorrow) wasn't Hirose but another songstress with plenty of soul in her voice, CHAKA from PSY-S.

I've long been a fan of PSY-S so to hear CHAKA give her grand best to this ending theme was no surprise; the only surprise was discovering this was only her 4th single as a solo artist. With lyrics by the singer and music by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）, "Ashita e no Melody" has that mix of disco and fantasy (just think of Sailor Moon and Ariel hitting Studio 54 in New York City in the late 1970s) with that beat plus that wild harp. Not surprisingly, Sagisu has arranged remixes for material by J-R&B diva Misia, another singer with a grand voice. If the franchise ever decided for a reboot, then Misia would be a spiffy choice to provide a theme song.