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.
I heard a rather interesting piece of news last Friday via NHK. Today, June 1st (and indeed, welcome to June 2026!), is the 900th anniversary of the founding of Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture. 1126...what a year! Chiba Station right in the heart of Chiba City was a regular stop for me on Monday afternoons since I had a regular class at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; I was picked up by the regular company bus at one corner and spent a 20-minute ride to the factories in the suburbs.
I didn't explore too much of the city outside of the immediate station area, but I do recall having a couple of dinners there and having a quick bite to eat at the station hamburger shop (and no, it wasn't a McDonalds) along with buying a few CDs at the music shop...also in the station. Of course, the monorail was always zipping by above me.
Anyways, in commemoration of Chiba's 900th birthday, I'm bringing in some "city" songs: songs that have the word "city" or "tokai" in them. I would have included Anri's（杏里）"Surf City" here but it had already gotten a shoutout in last week's "HANDS Down!" article. So, without further ado:
Christopher Cross is already represented on the weekly Reminiscings of Youth series via his theme song for "Arthur", "Best That You Can Do", and yeah, indeed it was a hit and one of the songs that was a regular on the radio airwaves throughout 1981.
But the singer-songwriter from San Antonio, Texas, had been around for a decade and then in January 1980, he released his first single"Ride Like The Wind". As with "Arthur's Theme", it was a regular on radio. When I first heard it though, I'd thought that it was all about some guy enjoying riding on his steed in the countryside. Actually, it's all about fleeing the authorities on the way to the haven in Mexico. For some reason, I get images from "The Shawshank Redemption". Compared with "Arthur's Theme", "Ride Like The Wind" is much more dramatic, thrilling and urgent rather than the sophisticated and romantic cadence of the former. Thriller versus romance. But of course, Michael McDonald's singular contribution adds some further wondrous spice...like kosher salt in all those YouTube cooking videos.
As one YouTube commenter put it, he'll never listen to "Ride Like The Wind" without remembering this sketch from Canadian comedy series "SCTV". As a segment on the in-house radio show "The Gerry Todd Show", it features Rick Moranis as McDonald himself racing to the studio to give his multiple takes of "a long way to go". I'm happy to say that I actually saw the sketch in its first run!
I only discovered this Rick Beato video several months ago. During this interview with McDonald, we find out that he actually caught the "SCTV" skit and figured that he was having a nervous breakdown. The power of pot!😵 Glad that he has such a good sense of humour.
In Canada, "Ride Like The Wind" made it all the way up to No. 3 on RPM while in America, it peaked at No. 2. Let's see what was also at the top of the Oricon charts on January 28th 1980, a couple of days before the Cross classic was released.
Hello and welcome back to another article of Reminiscings of Youth where I describe one of my old favourites from Canada, the United States or Great Britain when I was but a (not-so-) wee lad. For this edition, we have some good ol' very 80s Canadiana for you.
I was always hearing Toronto-born Sherry Kean's "I Want You Back" in 1984 on the radio and what stood out to me the most along with the fact that it contained a decade's version of Tropicana music mixed in with the synths was Kean's distinct voice. I can't quite describe it but it has a quality that I think a lot of singers would envy because no one else could emulate it. It's just a shame that "I Want You Back" was the only hit for Kean when it hit No. 19 on the RPM chart.
After a number of months of hearing "I Want You Back" on the radio, I finally got to see Kean in the music video for the song, and once again, I was struck by her distinct beauty. She looked like an 80s version of a 20s flapper girl, and for that matter, she had a passing resemblance to actress/singer Pauley Perrette, aka Abby Sciuto from "NCIS".
According to her Wikipedia profile, Kean made a shift into country music and for the last number of years has been a tour guide at the McCulloch Heritage Centre in Pictou, Nova Scotia.
Now, since I couldn't find out in which month "I Want You Back" was released, let's go with what was being released in October 1984.
Well, earlier tonight, I was watching the NHK program "Great Nature" which focused on certain areas of France and famous artists including Claude Monet and Henri Matisse. Again because of the usual copyright issues, though Monet's works could be seen with no problem, Matisse's paintings were blocked out by pixilation. I guess Matisse's estate is pretty picky about that sort of thing. Anyways, watching the art that I could see, I was reminded that it's time for another visit to the J-C AI art gallery.
For this week's regular Reminiscings of Youth episode, I think that it may have been Oscar-winning Ang Lee who once pointed out in an interview that he and his fellow directors were probably the most miserable employees within the production crew of any movie. For me, I would see his bet and raise him another 50 in the form of saying that perhaps it's the professional critic who might be even more angst-ridden. Case in point: Stereogum's Tom Breihan absolutely tears apart Sheena Easton's "9 to 5 (Morning Train)" on a number of fronts and for reasons that the fans actually love the song (although he is much kinder with her later tunes). I'm trying to imagine his residence with a sizable hole in the wall where he daily smashes his head from frustration.
Kinda like Don Music above here. He must have a line in his budget that simply says "TYLENOL".
Well, luckily, I'm on the side where I actually do like Easton's "Morning Train". The song was released in May 1980 in the UK and then nearly a year later in America. I can vouch for that latter release date since it's one of those signpost songs of my memories of the decade. "Morning Train" hit me like the...well, proverbial morning train when I first heard it on the radio.
On Wikipedia, it's been categorized as both pop and music hall. I don't quite know what constitutes a music hall song but perhaps it's that bossy saxophone or synthesizer sounding like a bossy saxophone. In any case, it was indeed that intro that drew me in. There was something about that Florrie Palmer la-dee-dah melody that simply hit right and gently helped me up into the pop music bandwagon that I would now inhabit. It was no wonder that I was repeatedly listening to "Morning Train" when I was on that morning plane heading to Japan from Toronto on that Summer 1981 Japanese language graduation trip; I needed something to take the edge off on my first trip without my family accompanying me.
A few years later, I found out that there actually had been a music video for "Morning Train". Easton looked fabulous but I think it was a bit odd for her to be slinking about in a suit that looked more appropriate for a disco than a small railroad town. Regardless, it hit No. 1 in both Canada and the US while it "only" peaked at No. 3 in the UK.
Well, let's go with the UK release month of May 1980. What was at the top of the Oricon charts back then?
In preparations for this week's regular Reminiscings of Youth, I found this love-filled ballad by the band Crystal King（クリスタルキング）. Of course, they are known for their official debut single"Dai Tokai"（大都会）.
Well, their 2nd single which was released in April 1980, "Shinkirou" (Mirage), is another soaring song giving vocalist Masayuki Tanaka（田中昌之）another opportunity to let his boomer voice hit the stratosphere. A summer ballad about someone's torrid love, "Shinkirou" was written by Shigeru Amano（天野滋）of the band NSP and composed by Crystal King member Michio Yamashita（山下三智夫）. It's a relaxing and mellow song that I swear has some elements of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum, some Queen guitar and even some of that "Dai Tokai" magic. Even Tanaka's vocals at the beginning of each verse reminded me of TUBE's Nobuteru Maeda's（前田亘輝）golden voice. Overall, it's the type of song that happily tells you it's Miller Time!🍺
Reaching No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies, "Shinkirou" ended up as the 16th-ranked single for 1980, ultimately selling around 750,000 records. The song would finally make it onto an album via the band's December 1985"Crystal King The Best".
Ahh...just a couple of more days before summer officially comes to an end for 2022. I'm sure that there are many out there who lamenting the end of the season, especially those sun worshippers here in Toronto considering that for a lot of the year, we seem to be swathed in perpetual cold and the odd snowstorm. Well, those are the breaks for the city whose meteorological makeup is predictably unpredictable.
Then, allow me to provide some final summery solace with Crystal King's（クリスタル・キング）"Cecile". Yeah, it's been a long time since I've put up an article about one of their songs so I'm happy to bring them back. Dreamy "Cecile" was their 8th official single from July 1982, and it's been categorized as a New Music tune on J-Wiki, but I also think that it's quite the AOR piece about mooning over a woman named Cecile.
One thing that stands out with "Cecile" is that it's neither the supremely high-pitched Masayuki Tanaka（田中昌之）nor co-vocalist Monsieur Yoshizaki（ムッシュ吉崎）, the two band members behind their biggest hit, "Dai Tokai"（大都会）, who was the main vocalist here (although Tanaka does pop up now and then). It was in fact composer and guitarist Michio Yamashita（山下三智夫）behind the microphone this time round with Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）coming up with the lyrics. Singer-songwriter Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）was responsible for the arrangement that seems to bring up images of sunshine, seashore, and beach chair. "Cecile" managed to peak at No. 33 on Oricon.
"Thriller", "Billie Jean", "PYT", "Human Nature", "Beat It"...the list goes on for the Michael Jackson hits which I've enjoyed over the years. But there is one song by the late King of Pop that still hits me with those fine feelings of yesteryear and it's truly a reminiscing of youth.
"Rock with You" was released on November 3rd 1979. That combination of the opening rat-a-tat-tat drum and then the spacey synthesizer has been my ASMR trigger for my ROY moment all these decades, and the way that Jackson just purrs those opening lines truly emphasizes that one line in Rod Temperton's lyrics: "Relax your mind". Despite that title, the song is cool and cooling.
The song was called a disco tune in a year when that very word was most likely being partnered with another word to become one of the more famous pop cultural catchphrases of disdain, but being someone who never really had an issue with the genre, I do enjoy the funk, soul and AOR of "Rock with You". It's all great but my favourite part of "Rock with You" along with the intro is the middle section which starts with "And when the groove is dead and gone..." when the Seawind Horns led by Jerry Hey and those romantic strings come rolling in. I can imagine an epic scene flying over a major city during sunset when that middle part comes in.
And the amazing thing is that it's probably one of Jackson's shortest songs at just three minutes and change. But Jackson, Temperton, all of those amazing studio musicians and producer Quincy Jones spun some wonderfully shimmering gold with "Rock with You" as it hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and even finished 4th on the yearly version of the chart.
One more observation that I had was before I saw the video for "Rock with You", I hadn't remembered seeing Jackson for several years since his time with the Jackson 5 in the early 1970s when he was just this little kid, and most of my sightings of that group was through their Saturday morning cartoon on ABC. So to see this really lanky happy young man in the sparkling suit appear in front of a laser beam and rotating fog was quite the thing.
Anyways in making my usual search for what was also coming out in Japan at the same time, I discovered that quite a few classics did come out at around the same time as "Rock with You".
Ahhh...."Hokuto no Ken"（北斗の拳...Fist of the North Star）. In complete honesty, I have to confess that I never saw a single episode of this popular 80s animein its entirety but even I know its reputation of a post-apocalyptic Earth filled with tyranny and horrors only for a hero the size of a small truck inflict some major whup-ass to the bad guys as he travels the ravaged land. Of course, I remember Kenshiro's way of fighting with those Gatling guns he calls hands and the "ATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!!"
And then there is the famous opening theme song for the series, emphasized by those three words at the very top of the article. I don't know the rest of the lyrics but if anyone ever said "YOU WA SHOCK!" to me at an anime convention, I would probably counter with my incredible "ATATATATATATATATATATATATATA!!" (verbally, not physically) in knowing response.
But the crazy thing here is that I had no idea...not one iota...that it was the band Crystal King（クリスタルキング）which was responsible for one of the most famous anison in history. I should have realized it from Masayuki Tanaka's（田中昌之）scream of those 3 words but I never made the connection. My knowledge of Crystal King wholly stemmed just from their most famous hit, "Dai Tokai"（大都会）in 1979 in which Tanaka blew out that ear-piercing shout (and perhaps many a stereo speaker) at the very beginning of that song.
Perhaps the song can be just known or titled as "YOU WA SHOCK!" but its official title is the strangely soft "Ai wo Torimodose!!" (Take Back The Love!!). Coming out in October 1984, the muscular anison was written by Crystal King pianist Kimiharu Nakamura（中村公晴）and composed by band guitarist Michio Yamashita（山下三智夫）. I mentioned above that I had no idea that Crystal King would ever perform an anison. Well, I guess that may have been the case with vocalist Tanaka as well. According to the J-Wiki write-up on Crystal King, Tanaka despised anime and when he was handed an issue of the original "Hokuto no Ken"manga, he refused to open a single page. And he just wondered why he deserved the ignominy of singing an anime theme song. I guess he wa shock.
Well, as it turned out, "Ai wo Torimodose!!" became a big hit as it went as high as No. 53 on Oricon, and it cracked the million barrier in sales. I guess after all those accolades, Tanaka mellowed out considerably on his attitude...at least for this particular song anyways, and now admits that he is happy that he did get to co-sing it with lead vocal Monsieur Yoshizaki（ムッシュ吉崎）. It may be anime history but it's history nonetheless, Tanaka my man!
A big thanks go out to Nikala, Marcos V, Jari and especially J-Canuck for giving me the opportunity to participate and contribute to this awesome blog. I am grateful for all their tirelessness in writing their various detailed, informative and entertaining posts this year and eagerly look forward to reading their future posts in the coming 2014 year.
As we come to the close of 2013, it typically is a time for reflection and looking back on the recent year, however in keeping with the spirit of this blog and its focus on covering music from the past four decades of Japanese Kayokyoku and J-Pop, I wanted to share with readers my personal list of favorite songs from the best musical period ever - The 80s, particularly in the area of Anime, J-Dorama and Japanese Movies.
In subsequent weeks, Marcos V, J-Canuck and Nikala will also share their personal favorite 80s music lists and hopefully this combined effort will give everyone a fairly broad and comprehensive overview of the diverse spectrum of music that came out during that amazing decade.
So without further ado, here is my 80s playlist....
The band, Crystal King（クリスタルキング）, had one of the more memorable songs of the late 70s with that dramatic piano intro and then the high blast by co-lead vocal by Masayuki Tanaka（田中昌之）. The other lead vocal, Monsieur Yoshizaki（ムッシュ吉崎） (yup that was his stage name), took on the low parts and also shared the lead on "Dai Tokai"(The Big City).
There was something very anthemic and lyrical as to how this song was arranged. And certainly with Tanaka giving his Freddie Mercury best, there's a hint of Queen in there, too. The lyrics, which were written by Tanaka, use the big city as more of a framing device for how people need to struggle their way through life. Guitarist Michio Yamashita（山下三智夫）was the composer.
"Dai Tokai" was Crystal King'sdebut single inNovember 1979 but the band had actually been around since 1971, performing at the military base and disco clubs in Sasebo on the island of Kyushu. Then in 1979, at the international Yamaha Music Festival in Tokyo, Crystal King performed "Dai Tokai"(which, according to the YMF's website, was titled "In the City of Strangers") and won a Grand Prix prize. Canyon Records picked up on that victory and signed Crystal King up to have the song released officially as a single. It broke the Top 10 within a month of its release, and hit the No. 1 spot and stayed there for 6 weeks. It became the 3rd-ranking song of 1980 and the band even got its ticket into the Kohaku in that same year. All told, the song sold over 1.5 million records.
The city that was being sung about, though, wasn't Tokyo, but the city of Fukuoka. Crystal King is still around today although Masayuki Tanaka can't quite hit the stratospheric notes anymore.
