Hideki Naoi & SHADOW -- Liar ~ Koi no Petenshi（ライアー（恋のペテン師））

 

One of the funniest movies that I have ever seen was "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" from 1988. Starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine as two very different con artists trying to beat each other, I loved it for the hilarious situations, such as the one above, and the setting of the genuine French Riviera commune of Beaumont-sur-Mer. I remember with great fondness how the movie audience was just splitting their collective sides laughing and to be honest, I don't think that I've seen a comedy on the big screen since then that had me laughing that much.

According to J-Wiki, "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" was released the following year in Japan with the fairly unwieldy title of "Petenshi to Sagishi ~ Damasarete Riviera"（ペテン師とサギ師/だまされてリビエラ...The Fraudster and the Swindler/Cheat Me, Riviera）. The term sagishi（詐欺師）, meaning fraudster, is something that I hear all too often since Japan also has too many con men trying to pull off grandparent scams and the like. However petenshi（ペテン師）is rather new for me, but it basically translates as swindler, so it's pretty much the same as sagishi.

Finally, getting to the song of this article then, we have "Liar ~ Koi no Petenshi" (Swindler of Love) by Hideki Naoi（直井秀樹）& SHADOW. Now, Naoi has been mentioned once before a couple of months ago for his catchy 1983 "Omae wa Inryoku"（おまえは引力）which became a campaign song for the Toyota Corona at the time. I stated there that this was Naoi's only single in all likelihood, but I guess that it was his only single as a solo artist since "Liar ~ Koi no Petenshi" is the B-side for the single "Akai Yoru"（赤い夜...Red Night） with Naoi as a leader of the band.

Written by Naoi, composed by Hiro Nagasawa（長沢ヒロ）and arranged by Osamu Totsuka（戸塚修）, "Liar" is a swiftly flowing disco-inflected City Pop tune from 1981 which also possesses some of that bouncy guitar funk. If there were a movie to surround this song, I probably wouldn't imagine "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" but something more down-to-earth such as a cop-and-swindler thriller in the heart of Tokyo. At the same time, seeing the singer on the cover of the single doesn't make me think of him as a swindler or even a liar but more of an odious mechanic on a break.

In any case, I would love to hear "Akai Yoru" if it ever gets up onto YouTube.

Hideki Naoi -- Omae wa Inryoku（おまえは引力）

 

One of our stops during that 1981 summer graduation trip to Japan was Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture since it was the hometown as it were for the famous automobile enterprise. Through one of the many pamphlets that I got on Toyota and its corporate philosophy, there was also a hierarchy showing everything from the most inexpensive car in the line to the most expensive which was the Crown. Basically, as that name intimates, the Crown was for company presidents and similarly statured executives.

If I'm not mistaken, the second-highest car in the Toyota line was the Cressida. Strangely enough, not long after our trip to Toyota City, we had our three days of homestay in Nara with the Tezukayama Girls' High School students. My host sister and her father came to pick me up and the latter drove us to his home in his Cressida. At the time, I didn't really think about what Akiko's father did for a living but that was one fine interior for the Cressida.

I'm not sure where the Toyota Corona fit in the grand scheme of things but at one point, it did have a snazzy tune for its commercials, namely in 1983. There's just a thimble of information give about singer Hideki Naoi（直井秀樹）which is simply that he is currently a music producer and that back in the day, he had at least one single and one EP come out under his name. The single was "Omae wa Inryoku" (You are the Attraction) which was that snazzy tune.

Composed by the late Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）, written by Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）and arranged by Akira Inoue（井上鑑）, according to the writeup of the song on Hip Tank Records, "Omae wa Inryoku" had some inspiration from Elbow Bones & The Racketeers "A Night in New York", a 1980s return to all that jazz and high-flying class which was on heavy rotation on the radio here back when I was a high school kid. There is some of that feeling in "Omae wa Inryoku" but I don't think that the Elbow Bones' influence is quite that direct and it's mixed in with some of the tropical jazz from Kid Creole & The Coconuts. But let's not take anything away from "Omae wa Inryoku"; it's still a fun and bouncy tune for Naoi.