Carol -- Namida no Teddy Boy（涙のテディボーイ）

 

One of the things that representatives in the media and commercial industries in Japan love to do is announce special days based on the perceived pronunciation of certain numbers in a date. So, basically every 29th day in a month would be considered to be Meat Day or niku no hi（肉の日）because the "ni" and "ku" can correspond to the pronunciation of "2" and "9" respectively. A day in a specific month can also be manipulated similarly; for example, today is June 9th（6月9日） or the sixth month's ninth day, and with "6" being "roku" abbreviated into "ro", and once again "9" being "ku", a special day can be made from the merger into "rokku"...namely rokku no hi（ロックの日）or Rock Day. 

(Yup, it didn't last.)

Well, today on Rock Day in Japan, NHK interviewed the one-and-only Eikichi Yazawa（矢沢永吉）, charismatic rock singer-songwriter and former leader of the 1970s rock band Carol（キャロル）. I'm not sure how long the above video will last on YouTube, but this is the very interview that I saw this morning with Yazawa who is apparently such a force of nature that the network typed his name in all caps. Although he definitely doesn't look like a spring chicken, he hardly looks anything like his 72 years either...maybe 15 years younger. The rockin' has been a fountain of youth for him. In addition, my inability to gauge people's height is still fully engaged. I'd assumed that he was a fairly short fellow but actually he towers over me since he's 180 cm tall. In fact, the interviewer, news anchor Minoru Aoi（青井実）who's likely the tallest on-air personality for the network at 185 cm, didn't have to hunch over and look down at his subject this time around.

In any case during the interview, it was made plenty clear that Yazawa (or YAZAWA) is more than rarin' to go and hit the concert circuit once again after a few years of the pandemic. I can only hope that I have that much energy (the height is out of the question, of course) when I hit the big Seven Two.

After reading up some of the long file on Carol on J-Wiki, I thought it was a tad ironic that NHK and Yazawa had such a cordial conversation at the Tokyo stadium since decades ago in the 1970s, the national network and the three big newspapers in Japan representing mass media had taken a very harsh stance against rock music in general. Carol basically boycotted NHK and apparently that action brought it a lot of popularity from young people. But I'm gathering that the hatchet between them was buried a long time ago.

In any case, allow me to bring "Namida no Teddy Boy" (Tears for Teddy Boy), Carol's 8th of 10 singles that were released before the band broke up. Released in February 1974 several months after their biggest hit, "Funky Monkey Baby" (ファンキー・モンキー・ベイビー), it's an appropriately winter-set rock n' roll song about paying tribute to the title character who may have gone far away or died, and even the coming of the spring hasn't dried those tears yet. The upbeat melody is still plenty jaunty as Yazawa sings this. The singer provided the music while his bandmate Johnny Okura（ジョニー大倉）came up with the bittersweet lyrics.

Carol -- Funky Monkey Baby (ファンキー・モンキー・ベイビー)

I just saw the above commercial this morning. All I could remark about Puppy Monkey Baby was about what kind of horrors those secret genetics labs were creating now. At first, I thought the hybrid creature was uttering "funky monkey baby" which had my memory engrams firing up in the old kayo section of the brain.

"Funky Monkey Baby" has been a song that I've heard off-and-on over the decades but always through its performance covers by some of those middle-aged crooners that have popped up on shows like the recently dearly departed "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）. In fact, up until today, I had never heard the original version by the band Carol（キャロル）.

And Carol was a name that I had heard bandied about in kayo kyoku but never really got to know. Of course, I got to know about the band's charismatic leader Eikichi Yazawa (矢沢永吉) in his later years when he provided hits like the sultry "Somebody's Night". So I finally get to hear the band and the original version of the song.

Carol's biggest hit was the band's 7th single from June 1973 which was composed by Yazawa and written by his bandmate, the late Johnny Okura (ジョニー大倉). In the early 1970s, when popular music in Japan was about traditional enka, sweet aidoru and long-haired folk music, "Funky Monkey Baby" and Carol in general must have been quite the subversive (and therefore cool with the young crowd) thing with the band members all looking like pompadoured extras from a 60s biker movie. But instead of making trouble, Yazawa and the guys just wanted to make good ol' rock n' roll. The song managed to get as high as No. 57 on the Oricon weeklies and was the title track on their second album which came out a month after the single.

Reading the J-Wiki article on Carol, I found out that although Yazawa was the guy who started up the band in 1972, it was Okura who came up with the concept and look for the band which initially began its short life as a Beatles tribute band when the Fab Four were performing in Hamburg before they made it big in the early 1960s. However, I also discovered that the name for the band came from a rather cute source in that Carol came from Christmas Carol....couldn't really see those guys in Santa suits, mind you.

Carol lasted about 2.5 years before they decided to call it quits. On that J-Wiki article, there was a pretty long section on the band's influence that I will probably cover in any future songs about the band, but frankly I didn't want to destroy my eyes trying to scroll down through all that kanji for the time being. I think one aspect of Carol's legacy has been all those leather-jacketed teens with their pompadours who populated Yoyogi Park on the weekends later in the decade and twisted like all get out. Some years ago, I visited that same park one Sunday afternoon, and there was one fellow around my age still looking like a Carol member bopping away.

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