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.
Showing posts with label Cosmic Invention. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cosmic Invention. Show all posts
I thought that Haruo Chikada's（近田春夫）lyrics for this second of three singles by the technopop unit Cosmic Invention（コスミック・インベンション）, a quintet of kids on synthesizers, were surprisingly adult. Not that "Chotto Honto Ato wa Uso" (A Little Truth Followed by Lies) needs to have an R-18 rating stamped on it, but the story of a young girl somehow getting entangled with the local hunk while putting on the show that they are a bona fide item sounds more like something for the high school juniors or seniors.
Released in July 1981 and delivered in alternate breathless and robotic voices by Cosmic Invention drummer/vocalist Mima Morioka（森岡みま）against the backdrop of technological bleeps and bloops, the music was provided by Hiroyoshi Oda（小田啓義）, the same fellow behind the arrangement of the band's take on "Computer Obaachan"（コンピューターおばあちゃん）. This mixes in all of the probable emotions that the lass of the story might be feeling: the internal thrill and panic along with the comical deviousness of keeping the charade going.
Seeing those costumes below, I think that Cosmic Invention should have been called Spectrum Junior. instead of YMO Junior. In any case, "Chotto Honto Ato wa Uso" was also a track on the band's August 1981 debut album,"Cosmorama".
Although I played the recorder and the clarinet and tried to play the French horn (my failures on that instrument were the source of much merriment among my classmates in band class), I knew I really didn't have any aptitude for making my own music. Yet, one day, my father was kind enough to get my brother and me a Casio keyboard. The novelty was there with all of the different features and music patterns, but like all novelties, this gradually wore off and poor Casio got stuffed into the closet, and I'm assuming that sometime during my days in Japan, the instrument finally got thrown out.
Fortunately, though, for folks like me who like to listen to music, a few folks on this planet not only actually had the aptitude but had the interest and raw talent to make music such as Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）and Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）among many others.
I wrote briefly through the "Computer Obaachan"（コンピューターおばあちゃん）article on this kiddie technopop band that was around from 1979-1982 called Cosmic Invention（コスミック・インベンション）. Although I'm a big Yellow Magic Orchestra fan, I had never heard about these kids on synths until a couple of years ago thanks to the blog.
The idea to come up with this junior version of YMO coalesced when Kazuo Morioka（森岡一夫）, the founder of Hillwood, a company which made synthesizers, decided to put together a band centering around his own teenage daughter, Mima Morioka（森岡みま）, with members her own age. With Mima on drums and vocals, there were Yoshimasa Inoue（井上能征）, Katsumi Sato（佐藤克巳）, Kanna Hashimoto（橋本かんな） and Kiyomi Ando*（安藤聖己）on the various synths. Just to inform you, I'm not totally sure on the reading of Ms. Ando's first name since according to jisho.org, there are a few readings and I couldn't find either a romaji or furigana depiction elsewhere online; also she left the band in 1981.
Cosmic Invention's debut record came out in March 1981, "YAKIMOKI" (Anxiety), and listening to it, I think it does sound like Haruomi, Ryuichi and Yukihiro if they had started up YMO as children. There's something very sing-song and cute about it but to be honest, I enjoy the band's 2nd single,"Computer Obaachan" better. But there's no doubt about the pleasant clarity of Morioka there when she's singing.
That connection between Cosmic Invention and YMO was solidified as the former actually warmed up for the latter at the Budokan in December 1980. Just imagine these kids warming up for one of the biggest bands in Japan at the time at one of the most prestigious venues in the country. I wouldn't blame any of them if they felt supremely yakimoki.
After Cosmic Invention broke up in 1982, some of the members kept on going in the music industry with the notable person being Yoshimasa Inoue who decided to parlay his skills into those of a singer-songwriter. His name has already popped in the Labels section under that capacity with him providing songs for folks like Miho Morikawa（森川美穂）and AKB48. Professionally, his name is now written in Japanese as 井上ヨシマサ.
*Thanks to a needed push by commenter Tae Mckay, I was finally able to confirm that it is indeed Kiyomi Ando.
I realize that I've been getting a bit heavy on the technopop over the past few days, but after coming across this adorable piece of techno kayo, I just had to get it onto the blog.
"Computer Obaachan" (Computer Grandmother) is this song written and composed by Ryoichi Ito（伊藤良一...I hope I've pronounced that correctly） and arranged by Yellow Magic Orchestra'sRyuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）that was placed onto the NHK children's segment, "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた...Songs For Everybody） back in late 1981. I think at the time, a lot of pop music was going a bit YMO-happy so why not a kid's song? In any case, the NHK Jido Gassho Dan（NHK東京児童合唱団...NHK Tokyo Children's Choir） as led by moppet Shuuko Sakai（酒井司優子）took care of this catchy technopop ode to a grandmother so cool and smart that she is just like a living computer to her adoring grandkid. The song proved so popular that it kept coming back onto the segment off and on over and over again from 1981 to 2009. The music behind the choir was two-thirds of YMO with Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）on the drums.
However, it was originally performed in the same year by a short-lived technopop band, Cosmic Invention (1979-1982). The original arrangement was by Hiroyoshi Oda（小田啓義）which sounded a little sluggish to me when it was performed by this group that was nicknamed YMO Junior. The reason for that lay in the fact that the members were all either elementary or junior high school students.
Over a quarter of a century later, technorock band Polysics provided their own fun cover of "Computer Obaachan" via a 2007 compilation album titled "Rock For Baby".
Then in 2011, Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）gave a groovier version via the album "Miku Hatsune Sings New Wave". I have to say that in each of the versions, it's the "Yay, yay, yay" and "Whoa, whoa, whoa" that keep it fun for me.
Roppongi Hills
February 5th 2019: I found out a bit of history concerning this classic.
