Pal/Ichiro Araki -- Yoake My Way（夜明けのマイウェイ）

 

Although I got into Japanese variety shows and all of those music ranking programs from the 1970s, the typical drama was something that I never really got into. However, the above show "Chotto My Way"（ちょっとマイウェイ...My Little Own Way） which was broadcast as a comedy-drama based on life in a Tokyo restaurant on NTV between October 1979 and March 1980 on Saturday nights caught my eye because of the cast consisting of people who are now considered to be veteran thespians and/or legends such as Naoko Ken（研ナオコ）and Kaori Momoi（桃井かおり）.

What caught my ear as well was the theme song by the vocal group Pal（パル）. The last time I posted about this band which lasted between 1977 and 1982 was back in December 2023, and they have been notable in their presence on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for the fact that each of their songs here have been given different genres, so they were certainly variable in the type of music they sang.

In any case, the theme song for "Chotto My Way" was "Yoake My Way" (Daybreak My Way) which has a half-grand/half-disco opening and ending on the same level as a theme tune for an American prime-time drama in the 1970s. In between though, the song (and words) by Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）sticks to a jaunty pop arrangement that fits the typical sitcom style in Japan, and as I hinted above, it's the first time that I've used the pop label to describe a Pal song. And this time, it's obvious that the main vocalist is Kayo Watanabe（渡辺香世）. 

The J-Wiki article on Pal is a relatively short one but it does have a section on "Yoake My Way" itself since it did get its own single release in October 1979 and became a hit for the band. It scored a No. 18 ranking on Oricon (ending up as the No. 80 single of the year), selling 400,000 records.

There were a few other artists who covered "Yoake My Way" including the original songwriter Araki himself. His version showed up on his April 1981 album "Concertrick" and it's a more laidback and groovier take.

Reiko Ike -- Ocho no Blues（お蝶のブルース）

 

Although I'm not a fan of the traditional tough woman series of Japanese movies in which a lady ends up becoming the head of a yakuza gang, for example, the tropes are quite well known to me. That includes the fatal flashing of blades, the tempting flashing of skin, and the theme song. Actress and singer Meiko Kaji（梶芽衣子）was the first example that I knew by name thanks to my viewing of "Kill Bill, Vol. 1".

Recently, a commenter asked me about another entertainer from the early 1970s who also had her finger in the industry as a blood-and-guts female warrior. Her name is Reiko Ike（池玲子）from Tokyo, and she was discovered as a teenage pinup model in the pages of a weekly magazine by a couple of higher-ups at Toei Company. She was made into a star through hardboiled crime flicks throughout the decade including a 1973 movie titled "Yasagure Anego-den Soukatsu Lynch"（やさぐれ姐御伝 総括リンチ）which can be translated into "Female Yakuza Tale: Inquisition and Torture". A lighthearted rom-com this definitely isn't.

I mentioned above that the theme song has been one of the familiar tropes and it's because of that sharp lone-wolf trumpet which seems to be part and parcel as an accompaniment for any ronin warrior in a chambara movie or TV series or a protagonist in a gangster flick. No exception here as Ike herself sings the theme song for "Yasagure Anego-den Soukatsu Lynch". The star's discography was brief with only two singles and a few albums in the 1970s and the second single was that theme, "Ocho no Blues" (Butterfly Blues) which was released in June 1973.

Written by Masao Ishizaka（石坂まさを）and composed by singer-songwriter Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）, Ike and the arrangement sound like how her character probably comported herself as she walked through her territory: with confidence and nonchalant strength, and woe betide anyone who got in her way. In fact, I'd say that her vocals are even slightly more sultrier than the ones for Kaji, and she was only hovering around the age of 20 when this film was released. The video below contains scenes from the movie as the song is playing and just in case, I will give a friendly viewer's discretion advised warning here. 

Ichiro Araki/Hiroshi Tachi -- Itoshi no Macks ~ Macks A Go Go（いとしのマックス 〜マックス・ア・ゴー・ゴー〜）

 

As is usually the case for me, I was doing my round of maintenance among the articles last night when I came across Noelle's 2016 article for "A rundown of the 48th Omoide no Melody (第48回 思い出のメロディー) Part 2". A few of the videos got taken down by YouTube so I had to replace them.

One such video was for Noelle's description of the performance by one of the guests on the annual NHK special who happened to be singer-songwriter Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）. She had been expecting to hear Araki's "Itoshi no Macks ~ Macks A Go Go" (Macks, My Love) because she enjoyed actor/singer Hiroshi Tachi's（舘ひろし）cover version, but instead the original singer went with his debut single, "Sora ni Hoshi ga aru youni" (空に星があるように) . 

We're going with something from seven years ago, but I'm not going to see one of my friends and fellow writers be disappointed, so allow me to bring "Itoshi no Macks" onto the KKP screen. This was his fifth single from May 1967, and true to the Group Sounds boom that was happening in the latter half of that decade, Araki made some adjustments to the melody and arrangement so that he was jangling it like any GS band. The entire song is a love paean to some lady named Macks (get that red dress for her, Ichiro!), perhaps short for Maxine or Maxie. And yep, the lyrics have the name down as "Macks" and not "Max" which I had assumed at first.

"Itoshi no Macks" may have been Araki's first big hit as it sold 1.25 million copies by some time in 1968 and got him his sole invitation to the 1967 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen. This was before the Oricon charts came out but I could imagine that the song would have hit No. 1.

To commemorate his 10th anniversary in the music business in 1976, Araki released through what was once Trio Records a revised version of "Itoshi no Macks". This one still retains the GS flavour but as the song progresses, there is more of a silky Mood Kayo element added through strings and sax.

Ahh...here is the Tachi cover which was his 1991 single. I could only find this video but it sounds like there is a bit more of a rock sheen to this one.

Lalo Schifrin -- Theme from "Mission: Impossible"

 

Your mission, if you choose to accept it...

I may have been less than a year old when the original "Mission: Impossible" series came on CBS in September 1966, but my earliest television memories are the opening credits montage sequence, the tape recorded message and Jim Phelps looking over who was going to be in on this week's mission. Oh, of course, there was also the theme song by Lalo Schifrin for which my mother told me with no lack of mirth that I had a very visceral reaction. Apparently, I was bouncing in my Pampers when that iconic theme came on, but I guess even back then, I had an ear for the coolest tunes.

And so for this week's ROY article, I'm going with another beloved American lawman show theme to join the themes from "Dragnet" and "Peter Gunn". But unlike those articles which had the avant-garde group Art of Noise do their cover versions, I'm sticking with the original Schifrin version. Indeed, it is one of the most recognizable themes on television no matter the nation and as soon as one hears it, I'm sure that those famous repeated scenes, mask-ditching, espionage derring-do...and Tom Cruise come to mind, although for nostalgia's sake, so do Peter Graves and Martin Landau.

These pieces of information haven't appeared on the Wikipedia article for the song, so I'm wondering if they are apocryphal. However, one piece is that Schifrin had actually originally created the theme as background music for a particularly intense scene in an episode of "The Man From UNCLE", another 60s spy show; Schifrin was involved with at least a few of the episode scores. The other trivia point is that the "Mission: Impossible" theme was played presumably once on ABC's "American Bandstand", that popular music-and-dance show hosted by Dick Clark, only for things to come to a screeching halt because the kids couldn't figure out how to dance to it.

Ah, yes. Tom Cruise. There was the late 1980s return of the series on ABC with Graves once more which started out well but petered out (no pun intended) fairly quickly. However, I was in Japan when Paramount Pictures decided to bring "Mission: Impossible" to the big screen with the actor who would become the world's most famous stunt man with the first of the movie franchise coming out in 1996. Even though I was no longer bouncing around on my butt in the theatre, it was still a thrill to catch the trailer with the famous catchphrases and the original Schifrin theme. When I first saw the movie, though, I had to admit to some disappointment since the production team decided to break two M:I commandments: they killed off the team, making Ethan Hunt the overarching one-man IMF team with a few recruits helping out here and there; plus, they made Jim Phelps a bad guy. In the quarter-century since that first movie, though, I've been much more accepting of it, and I have to say that Brian DePalma put in a lot of style and Danny Elfman put out a bristling version of the theme song.

In the leadup to the release of the 1996 movie, I was at Tower Records in Shibuya when I saw a counter selling Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen's dance remix take on the Schifrin theme. Yeah, I think that I was spending an inordinate amount of time at the listening post for that one.

Since the DePalma movie, we've had a total of six "Mission: Impossible" movies with Cruise up to now with different directors and composers. Plus, we should be getting another couple of them coming down the pike in the next few years. With all of the intrigue and "Can you top this?!" stunts (I'm guessing that Cruise will have to crawl around the International Space Station before jumping onto a Space X capsule to get back to a yurt in Mongolia in the next flick), I still look forward to the opening credit montage and how the Schifrin theme is handled. No more bouncing around, though.

Although a single of the Schifrin theme was released in 1967, I'm going to go with the debut year of the original series in 1966. So, what were the award winners at the Japan Record Awards back then?

Grand Prize: Yukio Hashi -- Muhyou （霧氷）

Best New Artist: Ichiro Araki -- Sora ni Hoshi ga Aruyou ni（空に星があるように）

Best Composer: Kuranosuke Hamaguchi/浜口庫之助 for Mike Maki -- Bara ga Saita （バラが咲いた）

Ichiro Araki -- Midnight Blues

 

When it comes to the classic anime "Ashita no Joe"（あしたのジョー）, of course the theme song any fan or even those who aren't fans but at least are aware of the original manga and series will remember is the iconic one of the same name as performed by Isao Bito（尾藤イサオ）. Grim determination seems to sweat out of every pore on the song.

But along with the fact that there have been a number of entries for "Ashita no Joe", anime and live-action, there have also been a number of songs attached to the franchise, although the original theme song will always be the best remembered. For instance, I was surprised to find out about this relatively lighthearted theme of honky-tonk blues that adorned each episode in the latter half of the second series of "Ashita no Joe" that got televised in 1981.

Titled "Midnight Blues", this was an April 1981 single (yup, 40 years ago) written, composed and performed by Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）who does seem to love his blues. In fact, my first article on the Tokyo singer-songwriter also had him doing something bluesy but still within the kayo parameters by my reckoning. "Midnight Blues", though, seems to take Araki away from Japan and transports him to some place like Tennessee (hi there, harmonica solo), and he and his band are happier than peas in a pod. No one dies in the ring here; instead, everyone heads out to the nearest bar for a cordial round of brewskis after the fight...with Joe treating. The single also found itself on Araki's February 1983 album "SCENE-PHONIC".

Ichiro Araki/BEGIN -- Sora ni Hoshi ga Aruyou ni（空に星があるように）

As there are stars in the sky
As there is sand on the beach
In my heart, I just had
One small dream

The above is the translated beginning for the lovely and sad ballad titled "Sora ni Hoshi ga Aruyou ni" (As There Are Stars in the Sky), written, composed and sung by Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）for his debut back in September 1966. It was performed on a recent "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, and I thought it was a pretty song so I tracked it down.

Listening to Araki's lyrics, I thought that there was something quintessentially Charlie Brown about it and something that most everyone could relate to. Ol' Chuck is lying on the pitcher's mound long after another losing effort and just wondering what else he could have done, and I think the late Charles M. Schultz was reflecting about anyone who has gone through failure after failure. Considering how kayo kyoku is, when I took a look at his lyrics, I had expected the song to be about a failed romance but there was nothing in there to imply any girl running away. It was merely the expression that a dream for something had run off.

"Soni ra Hoshi ga Aruyou ni" apparently did touch a lot of people. It sold over 600,000 records and earned Araki Best New Artist honours at the Japan Record Awards that year but it didn't get him onto the Kohaku Utagassen for some reason.

In March 1997, the Okinawan band BEGIN did a cover of "Sora ni Hoshi ga Aruyou ni" as their 12th single that, despite the lyrics, sounded more hopeful and perhaps even quietly defiant.

Kaori Momoi/Ichiro Araki -- Bye-Bye Lullaby (バイバイ子守唄)

Yesterday I went out with my movie buddies to catch the live-action version of "Ghost In The Shell" starring Scarlett Johansson down at the Scotiabank Theatre. Now I fully realize that live-action adaptations of anime have been horrible...the best I've been able to say about the one or two I have seen is that the visuals were fine. And I think that's also the case with this movie: visuals were fine while the execution was kinda OK/kinda meh. Still good try for all involved...I did like that gigantic version of Hong Kong.

Along with Beat Takeshi and Rila Fukushima, the other Japanese thespian in the movie in a small but pivotal role was the divine Kaori Momoi（桃井かおり）. My image of her on TV all these years has been that of the force-of-nature lady overflowing with ennui and charisma...if you can imagine a combination of Bette Midler and Greta Garbo. She seems to not so much speak with people than she does hold court with them. Her role in "Ghost In The Shell" in contrast was a lot more down-to-earth...as much as it could be in such a sci-fi movie.

Early in the blog's history, I wrote about one 1982 song that she performed with singer-songwriter Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）, "Nejireta Heart de"（ねじれたハートで）which played to her strengths...that of the seen-this-done-that diva residing in a chic nightclub. Even earlier than that, though, I came across another single she released in January 1981 titled "Bye-Bye Lullaby".

It was the opening theme song for a Momoi TV drama back then called "Downtown Monogatari" (ダウンタウン物語...Downtown Story) in which the actress portrayed a lounge singer/hostess of a bar in Yokohama who falls in love with a priest of a nearby church which has fallen on hard times. "Bye-Bye Lullaby", not surprisingly, has that feeling of a gospel hymn along the lines of "When The Saints Go Marchin' In" providing those uplifting notes. However the delivery is pure laidback and sultry Momoi.

The song was written and composed by actor-singer Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）who provided his own cover of "Bye-Bye Lullaby" with a slightly more contemporary kick in 1983 for his album "Scene Phonic". Considering that I have already covered him in the blog through his "Kimi ni Sasageru Horonigai Blues" （君に捧げるほろ苦いブルース）, I'm starting to see that he had quite an interesting approach to his music. Perhaps he could have been labeled as one of those New Musicians along with Yuming (ユーミン) and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）back in the 1970s.

Ichiro Araki -- Kimi ni Sasageru Horonigai Blues （君に捧げるほろ苦いブルース）

Just a couple of nights ago, commenter Mr.Fathat and I were having a chat when he mentioned one of his favourite Japanese songs, "Kimi ni Sasageru Horonigai Blues" (Some Bittersweet Blues For You). I had never heard of this song or the singer/composer/lyricist Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）, so I was already quite intrigued. What further amped up the stakes was the above still for the YouTube video with Araki in his 70s hair dressed in formal Japanese attire in a sepia-tinged scene that looked like it was out of early 20th-century Japan (Meiji or Taisho Eras?); and the picture was surrounded by what looked like a newspaper page out of the Cold War.

I took a liking to the song almost immediately since it had a jaunty beat, and the melody fell into that interesting melange of Western and Japanese styles brought together as New Music that had its heyday in the 1970s. It was rather like that return of early jazz brought through American pop music from that decade that I used to hear on the radio as a kid. When I heard "Kimi ni Sasageru Horonigai Blues", I got somewhat reminded of Keiko Maruyama's（丸山圭子）album "Tasogare Memory"（黄昏めもりい）from 1976 which had tracks with that similar melodic feel.

Araki's lyrics are indeed bittersweet but it was rather interesting when I looked up the term horonigai on Jisho.org, and along with "bittersweet", it also produced the phrase "something that has a strong taste that adults favor". Perhaps it's this latter definition that would fit the words here. Araki is singing a tribute to a former love who may have gone on to bigger and better things, but although there is some sadness, there is also simultaneously a feeling that he's out of the woods of letdown and that he has also moved on. In fact, in accordance with that second definition for horonigai, I think he may actually have embraced that pain as a good lesson in life. He certainly likes that specific term as he compares it to the taste of freshly-brewed coffee and the sound of someone playing an intro to a serenade to no one in particular.

Interestingly enough, I found this video of composer/rock singer Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）and veteran singer-songwriter Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）performing a cover of Araki's song.

Araki himself is quite an interesting fellow. According to J-Wiki, along with the fact that he was a singer from 1966 to 1984, thanks to him falling in love with modern jazz as a high school student, he also acted in many movies and TV shows, and has been a music producer, businessman, novelist, a magic critic, and a card magician. A man of many hats indeed who has also gone under a number of pseudonyms such as Napoleon and Suzuka Suzuki. The Tokyo native is also the child of an actress and a literature critic, and as a young man, he even won a prize at a national stamp competition for his own collection.

A mere musician or a Renaissance man? You be the judge.