Geddy Lee -- Take Off

 

Well, as the sign says above, Happy Canada Day! We bid you welcome from the Great White North. As I mentioned yesterday during the regular weekly Reminiscings of Youth session, I would be doing another special July 1st edition of ROY in commemoration of Canada's 155th birthday. Yesterday was a fun pop tune by Spoons, "Tell No Lies". Today, we're going even sillier.

Occasionally on KKP, I've cited my favourite comedy series of all time "SCTV" that was filmed in Canada and had several of its cast members hail from this country. One of the favourite segments on the show was "Great White North" which found popularity in both Canada and the United States, and it all came about because of a bureaucratic bit of nuttiness via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In the early 1980s, "SCTV" was being shown in both countries but because of a difference in the allotted commercial time between Canada and America, there were an extra two minutes of time for the Canadian broadcasts, and so the CBC asked or demanded the show's producers to add some Canadian content despite the fact that it was already mostly Canadian in location and cast.

Two of the cast members, Dave Thomas (St. Catherines, Ontario) and Rick Moranis (Toronto) thought that this was corporate claptrap at its most idiotic, but they decided to get back at the CBC by coming up with "Great White North" which was two minutes of this improvised Canadian content by Bob and Doug McKenzie played by Moranis and Thomas respectively. Basically, they parodied the uber-Canadian-ness through everything ranging from their accents and vocabulary to their clothing and topics which in the case above covered long underwear and back bacon.

Well, to everyone's surprise, including Moranis and Thomas, "Great White North" was a bona fide hit, eh? Pretty soon, folks were putting on their tuques and heavy coats, and they were mimicking the so-called Canadian accent. There was even a parade in celebration of the guys down our main street of Yonge Street here in Toronto with fans going crazy which rather terrified the two. I'm sure that they were thinking "What the heck did we just do?!". 

And that wasn't all, eh? Bob and Doug ended up starring with the amazing Tony Bennett in one segment, they recorded a Grammy-nominated album, and they even got their own movie, "Strange Brew", a few years later with the villain played by Max Von Sydow, who just happened to play the Exorcist and a knight who went up against Death himself in "The Seventh Seal".

Now, to fulfill my duties of providing Canadian content on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I am obligated to provide a brief glossary of Great White North speak:

G'day -- Hello or goodbye

How's it going, eh? -- How are you?

Beauty -- Great or wonderful

Hoser, hosehead -- Idiot, dummy

Take off! -- Get out of here! or another confrontational phrase that ends with off.

Eh? -- Just pepper your conversation with this sentence ender for pure Canadian back bacon pleasure.

Interestingly enough, all this was happening while the whole Valley Girl speak was popping up in America. Just imagine having the McKenzies having a conversation with Moon Unit Zappa!

Anyways, as for that Grammy-nominated album, I'm referring to "The Great White North" which was released in 1981. The album had the LP version of sketches starring the boys but there were a few musical interludes such as their version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", and then on Side A, there is "Take Off", which is a mix of more McKenzie chicanery and vocals by Geddy Lee from the legendary rock band Rush.

As the Wikipedia article for the album states, "The Great White North" hit the Canadian RPM charts at No. 3 in December 1981. Well, what was coming out in that month in Japan, according to Showa Pops?

Mariko Takahashi -- Yoake no Lullaby （夜明けのララバイ）

Hiroyuki Sanada -- Ai Yo Honoo ni Somare（愛よ炎に染まれ）

Takao Kisugi -- Yume no Tochuu （夢の途中）

Finally, as for that "Coo loo coo coo, coo coo coo coo" that Doug twitters out every episode, that comes from the flute intro for another Canadian media legend, "Hinterland Who's Who".

G'day, eh?

TOTO -- Toto IV

From HMV

Unfortunately I am a couple of days late but at least, I'm still acknowledging the 40th anniversary of the release of "Toto IV" by the rock/AOR group TOTO. Yup, all the way back on April 8 1982, an album that even I'd been aware about in my embryonic years as a music appreciator got its days in the sun. I heard about the hits that came from "IV" and the half-dozen Grammys that it got including one for Record of the Year.

Therefore, I'm doing this special Sunday edition of Reminiscings of Youth and only my second ROY article on an album after Billy Joel's "The Stranger" (well, half of it as of this writing). But there are other reasons for this as will, one being that out of the five singles that were born from "IV", three of them were staples in my radio history. As for the second reason, I figured that TOTO just had to finally get onto the blog since a few of the original members, guitarist/vocalist Steve Lukather, keyboardist David Paich and drummer Jeff Porcaro had been working with a number of Japanese singers in the past such as Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）, Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）.

"Africa" was the third single associated with "IV" that was released in June 1982, and I'm not sure if my opinion is in the minority or the majority, but I think that if anyone thinks about the album, then "Africa" will be the first song to pop up to mind. Not surprisingly, this is one of the TOTO radio staples that I mentioned above. With Paich and Porcaro being the songwriters, I will always remember the song for that synthesizer riff which starts things off, the refrain and the overall atmosphere of an amazing adventure to be had on the titular continent. It hit No. 1 in both Canada and the United States.

"Rosanna" was the first single from "IV" released at the end of March 1982. Paich was the songwriter here and according to the Wiki article, TOTO keyboardist Steve Porcaro and Lukather declared that "Rosanna" was the ultimate TOTO song. To me, the song was the quintessential 80s pop/rock tune that was hitting the airwaves when I was a high school kid, along the lines of Chicago and Airplay perhaps. The "West Side Story"-influenced music video (and there was also something in the arrangement that reminded me of 50s group music) was one that I saw a lot of times thanks to Canada's Muchmusic channel and 80s music compilation album commercials which featured it. As well, that instrumental bridge with the synths was used in many bumpers on local news programs and maybe even sports broadcasts. 

Additionally, I found out that the horns were arranged by Jerry Hey who had his group of brass musicians help out Japanese singers on their albums over the years, too. "Rosanna" hit No. 4 in Canada whereas in America, it reached No. 2.

Comparatively, there isn't much written on Wikipedia on the March 1983 single and "IV" track, "I Won't Hold You Back", but it is the one other song that seemed to get frequent airplay on the local stations. With Paich taking care of this one as well, his father, Marty Paich, handled the orchestral arrangements, and it was the inclusion of that orchestra that has me remembering "I Won't Hold You Back" very well. As a power ballad, it does pack an emotional wallop (maybe it was the representation of grief) especially when those French horns and strings rumble in during the instrumental section. At the time, I hadn't even known that it was a TOTO tune and if I had been more insightful at the time, I would have thought it part of some sort of movie soundtrack. The song reached No. 17 in Canada while it hit No. 10 in the US.

The other two singles from "IV" were "Make Believe" (July 1982) and "Waiting for Your Love" (June 1983). Listening to those two, I have especially taken a liking for the latter as a great AOR tune. Some of those City Pop guys and gals in Japan would probably bow and yell out "We are not WORTHY!" to it.

As for "IV", it hit No. 4 on the album charts Stateside while reaching No. 1 in Canada and No. 3 on Oricon in Japan. I've begun to realize the hype surrounding this album when it was making the rounds back decades ago. 

So what was being released in April 1982 (although for a couple of them, J-Wiki has stated it was more like March) according to Showa Pops?

Mariko Takahashi -- for you

Hiroshi Itsuki -- Aishitsuzukeru Bolero （愛しつづけるボレロ）

Hiroyuki Sanada -- Sabaku no Machi ni（砂漠の都会に）

Hiroyuki Sanada -- Sabaku no Machi ni（砂漠の都会に）

 

I've just watched the first episode of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）for 2022 and I discovered that lyricist Makoto Kitajo（喜多條忠）had passed away from cancer on November 22nd last year at the age of 74. Beginning his career in 1973, he's had a long list of songs right up to 2021 whose words he provided to many acts including the lyrics for the folk classic "Kandagawa"（神田川）as recorded by the band Kaguyahime（かぐや姫）in which Kitajo was a member.

Another song that he created didn't become anywhere as famous as "Kandagawa" but it's quite the soothing ballad sung by actor/singer Hiroyuki Sanada（真田広之）who's become rather famous in Hollywood over the past couple of decades. Sanada's 6th single was "Sabaku no Machi ni" (In A Desert Town) from March 1982. May I say that was quite the head of hair that Henry was sporting back then; in a dictionary under the term "blow-dry", that single cover would be the photo.

Composed by folk singer Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）as this appropriately folksy lone-wolf-on-a-journey song, Kitajo's lyrics have that lone wolf singing about the devastated young lady she's left behind, bereft of her paramour in that small desert town. And yet, I think that it's really the lone wolf who's suffering while he rationalizes his feelings by throwing them on her.

However, before anyone thinks that Sanada was singing about love and life in the Old West, "Sabaku no Machi ni" was actually as the ending theme for a jidaigeki epic on Fuji-TV called "Kage no Gundan III"（影の軍団III...Shadow Warriors III）. So it wasn't exactly guns being drawn here but katana and shuriken, and I gather that from the ending credits above, the show did also have its fair share of humour. If I'm not mistaken, Sanada is the third character to show up in the credits.

The full name for the entire early 1980s TV franchise was "Hattori Hanzo ~ Kage no Gundan"（服部半蔵～影の軍団）with the late great Sonny Chiba（千葉真一）as the star who played different ninja in each of the four seasons of the TV franchise including different generations of the legendary Hanzo Hattori.

I guess Chiba and Hattori were not done with each other even into the 2000s. The more you know, eh?

Hiroyuki Sanada -- Ai Yo Honoo ni Somare（愛よ炎に染まれ）

 

Though I didn't know about actor Hiroyuki Sanada（真田広之）until his starring role in the dark 1993 NTV drama "Koko Kyoshi"（高校教師...High School Teacher） (as you can see from the thumbnail, I was somehow able to get a poster promoting the show), I discovered through his J-Wiki and Wikipedia pages that he'd had a long career starting from his days as a child actor in the 1960s. Apparently in this retrospective on Sanada as seen below, he was in front of the camera as young as 5 years old.

Sanada has been in numerous TV shows and movies before and after "Koko Kyoshi", and he eventually broke into Hollywood, and I believe the earliest that I'd ever seen him in an American film was "The Last Samurai" with Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe（渡辺謙）. He also got into a couple of the Marvel blockbusters including the one small scene where he was taken to task by Hawkeye in "Avengers: Endgame" last year.

Of course, being the young star actor in Japan, Sanada also had his time in the recording booth with singles and albums released mostly in the 1980s.

Would you get a load of that blow-dry hair on the cover of his 5th single "Ai Yo Honoo ni Somare" (Love Painted In Flames) from November 1981? A little dab really did him! In any case, this was the theme song for a 1981 movie starring Sanada, "Moeru Yuuja"（燃える勇者...The Blazing Valiant） which featured him as a young man who had grown up in Africa coming back to Japan to do battle with a sinister organization. 

"Ai Yo Honoo ni Somare" has that heroic arrangement with wailing electric guitar, and I've got a sense of a few influences. Speaking of that arrangement, I get hints of Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）balladry (although Sanada has a softer voice here), some fiery enka from Joji Yamamoto（山本譲二）who had his big hit that year with "Michinoku Hitori Tabi"（みちのくひとり旅）, and to be honest, I also get that feeling of my old favourite karaoke song "Yukiguni"（雪国）by Ikuzo Yoshi（吉幾三）at the end of each delivery of the refrain. Yukinojo Mori and Kazuo Otani（森雪之丞・大谷和夫）were behind the creation of the song.

Sanada is actually not too bad behind the microphone, so now I'm kinda wondering how his old castmate from "The Last Samurai", Ken Watanabe must sound like. He's also released a few singles of his own.