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.
"Summer's Gone" is a lost summer song bringing together the sense of colours of a summer gone past. Within the lyrics, colours are added to personal belongings and sights and music such as "orange Dead Kennedys", "a black August" and "yellow-green Peggy Sue", so that they cleverly express subtle emotions on an absolutely incredible level. The melody is like that "aquamarine Motown" which also includes the harmonica solo by master Nobuo Yagi（八木のぶお）.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
I was never in the situation that the protagonist for this song has found themselves in. During my Japan days, whenever I found myself missing the final subway of the night on a Friday, and that was surprisingly easy back then because transit closed up shop tragically early for a cosmopolitan city like Tokyo (and even now, I think folks from other big cities on the planet may find the final trains and subways in the megalopolis coming and going at a little past midnight somewhat scandalous), I had little choice but to get a taxi. For the record, I've had no problems with cabs or cab drivers. The service is absolutely safe, clean and polite but the fare can add up, and I often had to compete with several dozen other folks who missed their own trains home. However, I was never alone; I just had to be patient.
Well, in singer Chocolat's "Uchuu no Tunnel" (Space Tunnel), the person involved here has just missed their easy commute home one night: all of the taxis are occupied and there's nothing at the bus stop so it's time to light up a cigarette there to figure out next steps. Somehow, though, the idea gets into the protagonist's head that the entrance to the subway downstairs is the portal to space. Methinks somebody may have hit one too many Lemon Sours at the izakaya.
Still, "Uchuu no Tunnel", the first track on the singer's 2nd album"Hamster"（ハムスター）from August 1999, is great fun to listen to. Written by Chocolat and her husband, Akito Katayose（片寄明人）of GREAT3, and composed by Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）of Kirinji（キリンジ）, the song sounds like a magical carpet ride through the Shibuya-kei filter and going from a mundane subway entrance into the Twilight Zone. I think that there is also something rather kid-like about the whole thing in that the out-of-luck adult gets changed into a ball-of-energy child once they have penetrated the barrier. It may all be drunken fantasy but I've heard of worse ways of spending the night than conked out on the bus stop bench.
The brothers of Kirinji themselves did their own cover of "Uchuu no Tunnel" in their 2002 album"Omnibus" (while J-Wiki says 2002, other sites such as Amazon say 2007). Their jazzier take is more on the adult side with some more of the old sci-fi creeping in via a 70s-sounding synthesizer, a good extra dollop of groove, and the more button-down vocals, but the high tempo is also present so that carpet ride can still be had. Perhaps this version of "Uchuu no Tunnel" is more appropriate for the earlier hours of the night when transit is still active.
Man, do I like the above video for GREAT3's"Ai no Kankei" (The Connection of Love). It's all so stylish especially with the three members Akito Katayose（片寄明人）, Kenichi Shirane（白根賢一）and jan dressed in black all huddled around the microphone (kinda too bad that the video seems to cut off some forty seconds before the end, though).
I also like the songwriting by lyricist Katayose and composer Shirane for the title track of their 9th studio album from March 2014. Of course, there is the habit-forming funk but I also enjoy the way that the guys skip through those lyrics. Never thought I would ever hear any act trip the light fantastic in such a sexy way delivering the first two lines of the hiragana syllabary. Even the lyrics as they are set up on "Uta-Net" reflect the skippy delivery. As for the album "Ai no Kankei", that reached No. 66 on Oricon.
A little more than a month ago, I introduced the band GREAT3 onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with their sunny vibes via "Summer's Gone". I'm still going through the rabbit hole with them.
Here is "Ruby" which was GREAT3's 12th single from December 2001. I mentioned in "Summer's Gone" that J-Wiki has shot off a long list of genres that the band has covered, wavering between different types of pop and rock. For "Summer's Gone", I thought that there was a bit of Shibuya-kei in there and perhaps some 60s Sunshine Pop thrown in to boot, but with "Ruby", there is something a bit jazzier and some feelings of the blue-eyed soul and sophisti-pop that The Style Council was making back in the 1980s, namely through "My Ever Changing Moods". I also love the delivery of the vocals.
GREAT3 collectively wrote and composed "Ruby" which seems to be about a fellow who seems to be coming apart at the seams due to a lost romance; my impression is that he's lucky to have survived his drive on the national highway that's mentioned in the lyrics. No mention of the title but perhaps this was the name of the lady who broke his heart. However, the video for "Ruby" has quite the different and artsy tack to it.
Unfortunately, the song didn't make it onto the rankings for some mysterious reason, but it was the opening track on GREAT3's 6th album"When you were a beauty" that came out in January 2002. That one had better success as it got as high as No. 60 on Oricon.
It's been one of the more unusual Hump Days in recent memory. Along with the pandemic stuff, the entire world seems to be on tenterhooks about the aftermath of a certain election, but let's keep that out of the way since I want to keep things nice and copacetic here at "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Feel free to relax and bliss out.
Perhaps we can start things off with a group that I'm introducing onto the blog. Mind you, I've known about GREAT3 for a very long time...over a decade, to be exact, since this was one of the authors' recommended bands on "Japanese City Pop". In fact, whenever I leafed through the pages of my City Pop bible, I always saw GREAT3's debut 1995 album, "Richmondo High" pop up at the end. However I assumed that they had never shown up on YouTube since they were rather obscure.
Little did I know. Actually, there are quite a few songs up on the site by this band which, according to their Wikipedia article, was born after a previous band, Rotten Hats, broke up in 1994 with some of the members going on to form a new outfit Hicksville. Well, guitarist Akito Katayose（片寄明人）, drummer Kenichi Shirane（白根賢一）and bassist Kiyoshi Takakuwa（高桑圭）branched out to form GREAT3, and the name of the band wasn't created to arrogantly show off but to illustrate the fact that the three of them were (relatively) tall, ranging in height between 176 to 187 cm. All of them write their songs and also act as lead vocalist.
From their aforementioned "Richmondo High" album, here is "Summer's Gone". Despite my first sight of them in the pages of "Japanese City Pop", I don't quite think that this particular track is City Pop; it actually comes across as an appealing slice of straight-ahead pop with a hint of Shibuya-kei and somewhere in the middle, there's an even bigger sensation of 1960s sunshine pop. But in the J-Wiki article for them, they've been categorized as being fluent in rock, alternative rock, funk, pop/rock, psychedelic rock, indies pop, dream pop, folk rock and AOR. If I were thinking comparisons with other bands, I think that there's some similarity of GREAT3 with Original Love.
As for "Richmondo High", it peaked at No. 66. GREAT3 had an initial run of 10 years between 1994 and 2004 with 14 singles and 7 albums under their belt. Then after nearly a decade apart, they came together again in 2012 with another single and a couple of albums. During their time together and away from each other, they were busy helping other artists individually such as daoko, Bonnie Pink and Chara in terms of writing and production and performing.
Bassist Takakuwa didn't return to GREAT3 when the band decided to get back together in 2012 but has since become the solo performer Curly Giraffe who has also joined up with guitarist Shigekazu Aida（曾田茂一）to form the duo HONESTY. Takakuwa's replacement was jan whose mother happens to be singer/photographer Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）. By the way, jan fits the requisite height for the band at 187 cm which just happens to be Takakuwa's height as well. Not sure if any of them bring a tape measure during auditions.
To finish off with even more family-based trivia, guitarist Katayose is married to model/singer Chocolat, and in 2000, they formed the duo Chocolat&Akito and released a single "Veranda".
