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 Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band. Show all posts
Welcome to another Reminiscings of Youth article where I go over some of the songs from America, Canada, the UK and other nations outside of Japan that resonated happily in my ears and brains when I was a little tadpole.
ABBA already has a small but growing file in KKP. "Dancing Queen" was the big hit of theirs that did become a part of my musical memories because of folks loving to sing it at karaoke both in Toronto and Tokyo. However, their earlier June 1975 single "SOS" was something that I first heard via those K-Tel record compilation commercials when I just kept hearing the chorus. "SOS" became one of those builder-uppers as I started getting more of their parts together. After the chorus, I finally got to hear the beginning with the somewhat contemplative piano and then the mournful lyrics by vocalist Agnetha Fältskog. It took a while but I finally got the entire song into my head. As for the music video above, they really liked their crane shots and reflective mirrors. No need for CG or AI here although those of course wouldn't be around for a few more decades.
On Canada's RPM, "SOS" made it up to No. 17 while in America, it peaked at No. 15. It did hit No. 1 in Australia, Belgium, New Zealand, South Africa, and West Germany.
Not only have I brought "SOS" to KKP just a little after its 51st anniversary but it's being posted about a year after my last ABBA tune, "Super Trouper". So, what was hitting the top of the Oricon charts a day before the release of "SOS"? I have Nos. 1, 2 and 4.
Let's start off this Thursday with a regular Reminiscings of Youth article. I remember back in the sixth grade when our teacher was one of those really ambitious types who had some of us creating a mini-greenhouse in the classroom along with macrame owls to boot. One of my classmates was a huge Bay City Rollers fan and she couldn't stop jabbering away about"Saturday Night", one of their big hits.
Methinks that if she had ever met the guys from Scotland, she would have been jabbering in tongues for the rest of her childhood. But "Saturday Night" is indeed a catchy anthem ("S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y NIGHT!") of a power pop song and it was one of the hits that I remember hearing on telly and radio in the mid-1970s. From what I've read, there was an original version released in 1973 in the UK, but it didn't do much on the charts back then. However, it was re-recorded with new lyrics and re-released in the United States sometime in August 1975 and that was all she wrote. It hit No. 1 in both Canada and America.
I've mentioned "The Hockey Theme", the legendary former theme song for the CBC's iconic "Hockey Night in Canada" show. In that article, I also let folks know that "The Hockey Theme" and HNIC parted company years ago due to some failed negotiations between the original composer and the network. But since then, a cover version of "Saturday Night" by the band Monster Truck has been used to get the audience all revved up just before the games begin since HNIC always appears on Saturday night.
Since Wikipedia didn't bother to give an exact date of release for "Saturday Night" (simply August 1975) in the US, I'll just go with what was at the top of the Oricon chart for August 4th 1975. Here are Nos. 1, 4 and 5.
Abram: He once killed three men in a bar with a (expletive) pencil! Who can (expletive) do that?!
Well, some guy named John W. I know another amazing fellow named John W.
Yeah, he once terrified millions of people with two notes! Who could do that?!
It also didn't hurt that these two notes were the musical representation of a hungry Great White shark. I was just a few months shy of becoming ten years old when Steven Spielberg's iconic "Jaws" came out on June 20th 1975...indeed tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of its release. I remember seeing the TV version of the above trailer as a commercial, and that was enough to have me burrow into the sofa. The following months wouldn't get any easier as "Jaws" thrilled and scared audiences and its fame would lead to more scenes getting shown on the telly. I finally saw the entire movie on VHS years later and yep, there would be plenty of jump scares including the one with poor Ben Gardner. Probably by the end of 1975, people refused to get into the water...even if the water belonged to Lake Ontario (well, mind you, back then people refused to get into the water there for different reasons).
Anyways, back to that John W. Of course, I'm referring to soundtrack maestro John Williams. A couple of years before he would make another iconic soundtrack via "Star Wars", he had really made his mark with those two notes for "Jaws", something that initially had Spielberg laughingly reacting to it as if Williams had wanted to make a joke. Instead, this ostinato (only learned about the musical term recently) has become one of cinema's most recognized and deadly riffs, and folks who listen to it from other people will automatically get that image of a shark in their heads. Seeing the various reaction videos (like the one above) for certain scenes from the movie, a number of the reactors reacted viscerally whenever the two notes began playing again. It's back!🦈
I finally listened to the full version of the "Jaws" theme when I bought "John Williams ~ Greatest Hits: 1969-1999". I had no idea that there had been more to the basic two notes, and yeah, it's dramatic and thrilling, although I was a little surprised by that middle part where it sounds like some kids happily hitting the water at the beach or a buffet at their favourite restaurant...not knowing in the former case that they could become the buffet.
Well, I heard that "Jaws" will be getting that big 5-0 celebration later in the summer with special big-screen releases among other events. Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water...
Incidentally, Japan wouldn't get its first look at "Jaws" until several months later in December 1975. Also, when I was first introduced to the term ostinato, my faulty memory had initially remembered a song by KEDGE that I had thought used the word for its title. However, the song is actually "Sostenuto"（ソステヌート）, named for a musical term which has a different meaning.
What was at the top of the charts on June 23rd 1975 in Japan? I give you Nos. 1 and 2.
When it comes to the good-time rock n' roll group, the Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band（ダウン・タウン・ブギウギ・バンド）, almost all listeners will be reminded of "Minato no Yoko, Yokohama Yokosuka"（港のヨーコ・ヨコハマ・ヨコスカ）from 1975.
But immediately before that, their 3rd single"Smokin' boogie" was said to be the song that got the band into listeners' ears. Written by bassist and vocalist Takeshi Arai（新井武士）and composed by fellow bandmate Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）, it starts off rather rootsy before we all get that reminder of what it must have been like to cut a rug on the dance floor back in the 1950s. Meanwhile, Arai's lyrics talk about how one probable teen got into a life of cigarettes. Japan Tobacco must have loved this one while anti-cancer campaigns probably did not. Even the chorus makes like the sound of the guy puffing away.
However, as they say, "Wait, there's more!". It turns out that "Smokin' boogie" was inspired by American blues guitaristElmore James' 1961 "Shake Your Moneymaker", itself inspired by previous songs according to Wikipedia.
Over the past couple of years that this blog has been in existence, I've mentioned about the songwriting husband-wife team of Ryudo Uzaki and Yoko Aki（宇崎竜童・阿木耀子）behind the more muscular hits of Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）in the latter half of her career such as "Yokosuka Story" and "Imitation Gold". Well, let me tell you about the song that got the team started. And it's been a song that has popped here and there, now and then for almost 4 decades.
The famous bass riff of "Minato no Yoko, Yokohama Yokosuka"(Yoko From The Docks) has been used often as part of a gag on numerous Japanese variety shows over the years; the one I remember most recently is the late-night show "Pussuma"（ぷっすま）starring loudmouth tarentoYusuke Santamaria and SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi for one of their segments. And the song sometimes gets highlighted on those retrospective shows. It's certainly one of the more interesting tunes that popped up during the 70s.
As for the band itself, Uzaki was fronting an amateur band in late 1972 when he came up with the long and unique name of the Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band. However, his co-members at the time were a bit skittish about going pro which brought about a breakup. Undaunted, though, Uzaki only needed a few months to get a new group of rockers together to launch a new band with that long name, and the Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band came up with their debut single in December 1973 titled "Shirazu Shirazu no Uchi ni"（知らず知らずのうちに...While Not Knowing）.
Then, almost a year and a half later, Uzaki's wife, Yoko Aki, made her debut as a lyricist, penning this mystery about a guy looking for the seemingly streetwise-but-vulnerable Yoko through the docks of Yokohama and Yokosuka. According to J-Wiki, Uzaki, who composed the song, was so impressed by the words that he felt that he had to be the one to sing them. However, he had a difficult time trying to wrap his tongue and notes around the lyrics, so instead he decided to make them a tough-guy patter uttered to the guy searching for his Yoko, with only the title being sung by the band. Just imagine Uzaki as this Mickey Spillane character in a none-too-safe bar giving it straight to the kid. I found the English translation to the song right here by Ben Bullock.
As they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention". Or perhaps innovation. Whatever the case, it worked. After its release in March 1975, "Minato no Yoko", the band's 4th single (it was initially the B-side to the original single, before it got flipped due to demand), hit No. 1 in late June and stayed there for about a month, as its title and lyrics became popular catchphrases for the year, especially the line, "Anta, ano ko no nan nano sa" (Hey, what does the girl mean to ya?). It would also win four awards, including the Grand Prize from the Japan Record Awards, before becoming the 5th-ranked song of the year.
Plus, seeing Uzaki and crew looking like the baddest biker badasses (for 1975, anyways) that you wouldn't want to encounter on a lonely prefectural highway at night didn't hurt either in the coolness factor in front of the young. I'm sure they made quite the spectacle on stage when they got onto the 1975 Kohaku Utagassen, and just my speculation, I'm fairly sure that the NHK switchboard lit up with indignant calls about letting virtual hoodlums on the Shibuya stage on New Year's Eve.
To be honest, whenever I've seen them on those old tapes, I just wondered how serious or tongue-in-cheek the Downtown Boogie-Woogie Band was with "Minato no Yoko", especially now considering that I've seen the lyrics which include Yoko and a kitten. Still, the musical approach to it and the looks of the band pretty much immortalized them. A year later, Uzaki and Aki would get down to work helping immortalize Momoe Yamaguchi.
