El DeBarge -- El DeBarge

From Discogs

Welcome to another Thursday Reminiscings of Youth session where I take a look at some of those English-language songs or albums that impressed upon my own ears, soul and mind when I was but a wee lad...namely back in the 1970s and 1980s.

I also sometimes touch upon movies from way back then and this time, it's "Short Circuit" from 1985. I had forgotten the fact that it starred Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, two thespians who I would send out a "Where are they now?" alert. To be frank, I never got around to seeing the movie although the cute robot Johnny Five was all the craze in that summer along with the phrase "No. 5's alive!".

And this is where this week's ROY target comes in. It's El DeBarge's first solo album "El DeBarge" from May 1986 and three songs from that release are known to me and not surprisingly, all three were released as singles throughout that year. Arguably, the most well-known of them is "Who's Johnny?" which was made into the theme song for "Short Circuit". This was basically my only connection with the movie and I'd say it's the poppiest song that I've ever heard by El...right down to the childish way he sings out the title from time to time. It could even have made for the coolest theme song to a Saturday-morning cartoon. But this was something I was hearing on heavy rotation on the radio. It made it to No. 3 on America's Billboard. Peter and Ina Wolf were responsible for the songwriting.

 

Meanwhile, the dream team of Burt Bacharach, Bruce Roberts and Carole Bayer-Sager took care of "Love Always", and this one and the next song are the tracks that have held better sway over me since this is El in his element: R&B and soul. As much as I have loved the full family's "All This Love" from several years before, "Love Always" is another wonderful ballad by the solo DeBarge that has lived rent-free in my head all these decades. Maybe part of the reason is that it's been compared to the music that Michael McDonald has covered according to the album writeup on Wikipedia, and I'm a huge McDonald fan.

In the same paragraph, "Someone", a splendid mid-tempo track that hovers between "Who's Johnny?" and "Love Always", has also been compared to the works of Stevie Wonder. Created by Jay Graydon, Mark Mueller and Robbie Nevil, this is a song that I also heard regularly on the Toronto radio stations and once I got weaned off of radio after graduating from university, I lost contact with it while forgetting the title and maybe even the singer. I'd figured that it was El behind it but without the title and the fact that life was interrupting me for several decades, I could never confirm it. Well, doing the research on the album for ROY, I finally found it again and it still sounds as wonderfully 80s soulful now as it did back then. Another check off my list. "Someone" got somewhere in the Top 20s on Billboard.

"El DeBarge" did OK by peaking at No. 24 on Billboard. It did even better on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart by coming in at No. 8. So then, what Japanese singles were being released in the merry month of May 1986?

REBECCA -- Raspberry Dream

Miki Imai -- Tasogare no Monologue （黄昏のモノローグ）

Yuki Saito -- Doyoubi no Tamanegi （土曜日のタマネギ）

Jay Graydon & Marc Jordan -- Secret Love

 

One of my favourite tracks on Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Miss M" album from 1980 was "Secret Love". In fact, I love it so much that I gave it its own article a few years after posting about the album. One YouTube commenter even mentioned that "Secret Love" seemed to be the great connector between American AOR and City Pop in Japan.

The song does go down smoother than a Bailey's Irish Cream. However in the 1980 album, there were those horns which suddenly blasted a hole in my eardrums during the instrumental bridge. It was somewhat jarring; otherwise, I would have pegged it as the perfect AOR song.

But that seems to have been resolved when one of the two guys responsible for its composition, guitarist Jay Graydon (the other guy was David Foster, so it was Airplay behind the music), released his third solo album, "Past to Present - The 70s" in 2006. The horns are now gone but the rest of the music and arrangement has basically been untouched, and this time, the vocals are provided by the lyricist Marc Jordan who also does a great job. Still feel like bombing down the Ventura in a convertible during dusk or dawn while hearing this.

Airplay/The Manhattan Transfer -- Nothin' You Can Do About It

 

All these years, I knew about Canada's David Foster since the 1980s when he was coming up with these pop instrumentals such as "The Love Theme from St. Elmo's Fire" and "Winter Games", and also songs for acts such as Earth Wind & Fire and Kenny Loggins. Then much later, I discovered that he helped out Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）for their own albums. Finally, I realized that he was part of a band called Airplay that was around for just 1980. 

A Canadian songwriting legend was paired up with one of the great American guitar icons, Jay "Peg" Graydon, and according to Wikipedia, their backing band consisted of the members of Toto and other session musicians who have had their own connections to Japanese singers such as Jerry Hey and Gary Grant. This is the ultimate AOR grouping!

In the aim for total transparency, this week's Reminiscings of Youth is actually a bit of a misnomer because I never found out about Airplay or its arguably most famous track "Nothin' You Can Do About It" on their lone self-titled album when it came out in 1980. It was only within the years that I've been working on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that I first discovered this really snazzy song via YouTube and it's been the eternal earworm ever since. For some reason, I don't ever recollect hearing "Nothin' You Can Do About It" on the radio when I was a kid, and yet it sounds like the type of song that would have gotten heavy rotational airplay (pun fully intended) considering what was being played on the stations back then. The horns and the keyboards are amazing, and who knew that Graydon could sound that good as a singer? I'm just glad that I was able to finally come across it in my older years (circa 2018) and that one song was enough for me to order the album from Amazon.

The thing is that the song created by Airplay and Steve Kipner was originally recorded by The Manhattan Transfer as a track from their 1979 "Extensions". And "Nothin' You Can Do About It" fit hand-in-glove with the Transfer's move into smooth classy pop that time. Still, when I think of the arrangement, I have to go with Airplay's cover.

I'm just lifting this brief excerpt from a 2014 interview with Graydon via Wikipedia:

Interviewer: Did you guys ever envision Airplay becoming a full-time, touring type of band? 

Graydon: David wanted to tour and I didn't. A dumb move on my part.

Well, no worries Jay! It looks like you made up for that oversight with the above performance in 1994!

I gave my compliments to Neo-AOR Norwegian singer-songwriter Ole Børud about a month ago for "Find a Way". Well, he and his band gave his own tribute to the song a year ago.

Going with the Manhattan Transfer's October 1979 release of "Extensions", what other songs were coming out in Japan at that time?

Saki Kubota -- Ihojin （異邦人）

Yellow Magic Orchestra -- Technopolis

As a PS, I also read that Foster played for the band Skylark in the early 1970s. Me, I ate at Skylark! And the crazy thing was that the manager looked like a Japanese Jay Graydon!

Ole Børud -- Find a Way

 

I've made exceptions and included Western artists even if they aren't part of the Reminiscings of Youth articles since their songs were simply so amazing. That was the case with the duo Young Gun Silver Fox because of their love of performing songs in the vein of late 70s/early 80s West Coast AOR, a genre that I've also greatly cherished over the years.

Well, here is another exception. Ole Børud is a Norwegian singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer who's run the gamut of genres in his 46 years of life. His Wikipedia entry lists them as such: Children's, choral, Christian metal, contemporary Christian music, extreme metal, Gospel, hardcore punk, hymn, jazz pop, progressive metal, pop rock, R&B, soul and yacht rock. Yeah, it's that wide.

Back in 1996, Børud joined a doom metal project called Schaliach as a guitarist, bassist and drummer and they came up with the album "Sonrise" which was about as epic as metal can get.

However from 2008 onwards, Børud made a hard turn and tackled the old West Coast sound with jazz, soul and other musical influences beginning with the album "Shakin' the Ground". I knew about Japanese folk singers making the big jump into City Pop from the 1970s going into the 1980s, but Børud has trumped them.

Anyways, his latest single from April this year is "Find a Way" which absolutely floored me because it sounds so 70s/80s that I forgot that we were currently in 2023. It's that AOR! Plus, "Find a Way" is further fortified with some of the big names from that era and genre: Bill Champlin, Jay Graydon and Michael Omartian. It's such a fun song that it's given me hope that other artists along with Young Gun Silver Fox and Børud can bring back some more new examples of those sleek and smooth styles from decades past.

J-Canuck's Morning Songs

 

Ah, yes. Morning at the R&B Hotel right by Otsuka Station on the JR Yamanote Line in Tokyo. I stayed there for most of my time in Japan in October 2017. I don't know about far more seasoned travelers but I've always enjoyed mornings abroad on vacation for some reason. Maybe part of the reason is that while other folks have to rush off to work, I can take my sweet time with things; you know, savor the coffee a bit longer and walk over to the station at a much more leisurely rate.

Some days ago, I had a suggestion from a friend about putting up a certain list as an Author's Pick, but the topic struck me as being a little too difficult for me to even concoct a short list. But then right after, the bulb suddenly glowed above my head and I thought about morning-based tunes. I know that I have written about such songs individually and they all have that similar melody line of hope and renewed energy.

Off the top of my head, then, I have brought over six such tunes including one from America that's especially dear to me.

1. Bread & Butter -- Monday Morning (1980)

I know that for most working people, Monday mornings can royally suck eggs. But this calmly arranged "Monday Morning" by folk/City Pop duo Bread & Butter can take the edge off. The feeling is that this title track from their 1980 album may have that specific day of the week title but the overall impression is more of Sunday morning.

2. Circus -- Petit Dejeuner ~ Nichiyoubi no Choushoku（日曜日の朝食）(1981)

Of course, the promise of a sumptuous breakfast or brunch will set off any gastrointestinal alarms so this song by vocal group Circus can help accompany that kitchen scene of prepping Eggs Benedict or a heaping stack of pancakes. "Petit Dejeuner" has that skippy rhythm which can set the pace for poaching those eggs in the boiling water.

3. Makoto Matsushita -- Business Man (Part 1) (1982)

Oh, that businessman...always doing his best! I've already mentioned in the Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）article dealing with his 1982 album "The Pressures and the Pleasures" that the whole thing about the snazzy track "Business Man" is the main character getting what needs to be done over the day that always seems to be too short. I think of him enduring the physics-breaking rush hours on the train in the morning and drinking his sole fuel of caffeine. If there were a movie about life in Tokyo, then I highly recommend "Business Man" as the insert song.

4. Toko Furuuchi -- Asa （朝）(1995)

When I first wrote the article on Toko Furuuchi's（古内東子）sultry "Asa" (Morning), it was back in June 2012, so very early in the blog's history, and I guess that it was OK back then to write one measly paragraph. Nowadays, ideally, I always try to go for three paragraphs. And since writing about "Asa" over a decade ago, my imagination regarding this appealingly woozy number has expanded a lot. I now think of the song setting the stage for a woman waking up alone, temporarily or permanently, but getting reassured by the sunrise that things will be OK. I always thought a sax solo was more of a nocturnal thing but the late Michael Brecker really makes the morning here.

5. Morning Musume -- Morning Coffee（モーニングコーヒー）(1998)

Morning Musume's（モーニング娘。）"Morning Coffee" is the only non-AOR entry here on the list, but it did hit my head hard when I was thinking up the list earlier today. It was the official 1998 debut single by the original group that probably made quite the splash considering that unusual title. Considering all of the different types of music that Morning Musume in all of its incarnations has tackled over the past quarter century, it seems almost poignant to have the beginning start out as a Beatles-ish guitar pop tune.

6. Al Jarreau -- Mornin' (1983)

As of this writing, the legendary Al Jarreau has already had a couple of his smooth tunes included in KKP as ROY articles, and now I'm adding his "Mornin'" as a special entry here. The song, created by Jarreau, David Foster and Jay Graydon as a single in March 1983, not only sounds like it has to be played in the morning as some aural orange juice (with fresh pulp) but its music video appears like those old cereal commercials. "Mornin'" made it up to No. 2 and No. 3 on the American and Canadian Adult Contemporary charts respectively. It's been over six years since he left us and I still miss him dearly.

Earth Wind & Fire -- After the Love Has Gone

 

This week's Reminiscings of Youth article is the second one to feature the great band Earth Wind & Fire. Of course, the first one I did was the celebratory favourite, "September" which I did, naturally enough, on the 21st of September. And in all likelihood, I will end up doing a few more ROY articles with EW&F over the next several months.

The first time that I heard "After the Love Has Gone", EW&F's July 1979 single, it wasn't on the radio. Actually, it was on a TV show about a radio station..."WKRP in Cincinnati", to be exact. In fact, it's in the above video of a second season episode called "For Love or Money" (go to 22:37...regrettably, the song sounds like it's been largely muffled due to the usual copyright issues), and though I don't really remember the plot for this season opener, I do recollect the scene of poor Bailey Quarters being stood up by Johnny Fever while "After the Love Has Gone" is playing. 

I know about Loni Anderson as the beautiful Jennifer Marlowe and how her posters were flying off the shelves while the show was on the air, but I was always drawn to (the just-as-beautiful) Jan Smithers as Bailey, and watching that scene while the EW&F classic was playing really had me wanting to stomp on Johnny for stomping on Bailey's heart. 

Although it's been over 40 years since "After the Love Has Gone" was released and that episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati" was broadcast, whenever I listen to this ballad, at least during part of those 4 minutes and change that the song is playing, my memories unearth that particular scene at the radio station. It just seemed like the perfect match between scene and song for a TV show, and in fact, the Wikipedia article for the song mentions about that scene on "WKRP". Apparently, it's also been used by a number of sports teams whenever they lose at home.

And that's the crazy and amazing thing about this song. It's a beautiful and romantic creation about the loss of romance. With those soft horns and strings and the crooning by the vocalists, when I first heard this, I'd thought that it was all about a wonderful courtship between two people when it was actually about the separation of them. Maybe there is something very Japanese about "After the Love Has Gone".

That same Wiki article has plenty of information on the making of the song but suffice it to say that I couldn't imagine Hall & Oates singing "After the Love Has Gone". This is truly my favourite EW&F ballad, and it's truly a masterpiece by David Foster, Jay Graydon (aka Airplay) and Bill Champlin with Maurice White behind the production and main vocals. I'm glad that it got its Grammys.

So, what were three singles that got their release in July 1979 when "After the Love Has Gone" itself was released?

Miharu Koshi -- My Blue Summer （マイブルーサマー）

Circus -- American Feeling

Bread & Butter -- Ano Koro no Mama （あの頃のまま）

Steely Dan -- Peg

 

I remember when an old friend of mine at university went out with a bunch of other buddies for a drink at a nearby bar, and he was still finding his sea legs when it came to drinking stuff. So, he browsed through the drink menu in the cocktail section since up to then, he apparently had only gone with beer and wine. Then, close to heading home time, he hit something called Long Island Iced Tea and wanted to give that a shot (no pun intended). I didn't know anything about it since I was pretty much connected at the liver to my Brown Cow.

My friend drank it down and he drank it down quickly. He proclaimed it was so very tasty and smooth and if it hadn't been for the fact that it came in an unusually tall highball glass, he would have gone for a second. Well, not too long after that, when we were on the subway, he was doing everything except standing or sitting down. It was fortunate that we had our section of the subway to ourselves because he was as high as a kite and acting like one; luckily, the ceiling kept him from achieving orbit. Even luckier was that one of our other friends was willing to drive him home since he didn't live too far away. I don't know what happened after that but I assume that he got to know his toilet even more intimately the next morning. But we both found out how deceptively potent a Long Island Iced Tea was and still is.😉

Now, let's think about one of Steely Dan's famous songs, "Peg". I think it is the equivalent of a Long Island Iced Tea. Indeed for all of their fans, it is truly tasty and smooth, but according to the history of the making of this prize tune, if I were to further analogize with the best version of the famous cocktail, it would call for not only the best of each ingredient: vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, and a splash of cola according to Wikipedia, but also the ones that would work with each other in harmony. So, maybe Belvedere is the best luxury vodka available but for mixing into a Long Island Iced Tea, perhaps Tito's is the one to have, and so on. Try juggling all those ingredients to make the ultimate version.

And apparently that's how hard it was for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker and some of the best studio musicians to come up with "Peg" which was released as a Steely Dan single back in November 1977. Yet, it sounds so groovy and effortlessly catchy (I was grooving again with my shoulders when I heard it a few minutes ago). But through various sources such as YouTube and Wikipedia, I realized that there was the whole thing about the right guitar solo (ultimately achieved by Jay Graydon), how many other musicians were put in and out the revolving door to get the correct combination to play "Peg" to the band's satisfaction, and the certain special chords involved. For the nearly four minutes of pure SD pleasure, everyone probably had to go through some even more major wringers for days or weeks. Such were the famous demands of Fagen and Becker.

I heard "Peg" on the radio of course all the time but the first time I encountered it was, strangely enough, through a TV commercial for some vocational school in Buffalo, New York when I was a teen. I couldn't remember any of the other music that had been playing in the first part of the ad, but then there came the push for dance classes, and suddenly the opening seconds of "Peg" came on. And suddenly, the ad had my full undivided attention as the leotard-wearing kids started to dance to the song.

Ironically though, it wouldn't be until my years in Japan that I finally started purchasing Steely Dan's back catalogue of albums, and it all started from watching a Japanese IBM commercial featuring the ThinkPad and Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." from his 1982 solo album "The Nightfly". And once I got that one, I just had to start collecting SD CDs. Ultimately, I did get "Aja", the September 1977 album that has "Peg". In Canada, the single peaked at No. 7 on the RPM charts while in the United States, it hit No. 11 on Billboard. 

Of course, taking that full dive into City Pop in the last few years of my stint in Tokyo, I and many other City Pop fans have discovered how much Steely Dan has influenced the singers and bands of the genre in terms of their output. Therefore, instead of putting up the usual Oricon leaders or music prize winners of that time, for this ROY article, I will list merely a few of the many songs that contain the Steely Dan DNA.

1. Makoto Matsushita -- Lazy Night (1981)

2. Akira Inoue -- Bartok no Kage（バルトークの影）(1982)

3. Mariya Takeuchi -- Plastic Love (1984)

4. Blue Peppers -- Searchlight（サーチライト）(2017)

Oh, and before I forget...

Al Jarreau -- Breakin' Away

Al Jarreau's "Breakin' Away" is a touchstone song for me, considering my choices in music. I mean, not only does its namesake album have one of the most iconic covers in the AOR genre (I don't know of any person who could make pink and white look so cool as a fashion statement; he'd be perfect in Ueno Park in the spring!), "Breakin' Away" the single is an uplifting number whose first few bars can still elicit happy comfortable shivers up and down my spine. The entire song is one joyous walk in a city park with jazz in the fresh air and soul in my feet. And of course, there are the wonderfully velvety vocals from Jarreau who I still miss dearly some 3.5 years after his passing.

Since then, my love for Jarreau has grown through "Mornin'", "After All" and the theme song from "Moonlighting" among other highlights from his career. I may be exaggerating here, but I think that if it hadn't been for songs like "Breakin' Away", my entry into the world of Japanese City Pop and its own AOR genre wouldn't have been as easy (-listening) as it was. Indeed, there were people involved in the creation of "Breakin' Away" and the rest of the album who have had their own involvement in the urban contemporary scene of that time in Japan such as Airplay (David Foster and Jay Graydon), Jeff Porcaro from TOTO, and Jerry Hey probably among some of the other musicians. In fact, Graydon helped in the creation of the song along with Jarreau and Tom Canning.

The album was released on June 30, 1981. Strangely enough, my last ROY article was on Hall & Oates' "Private Eyes" which came out in late August that year around a month after my return from that fateful trip to Japan. "Breakin' Away" was released only a few days before I headed on out with my graduating class from Japanese Language School. It hit No. 1 on the US R&B and Jazz charts and broke into Billboard's Top Ten at No. 9.

Since it was released at the end of June that year, why not go with what was hot on the Oricon singles chart as of July 1st? Here are the Top 3.

1. Chiharu Matsuyama -- Nagai Yoru

2. Masahiko Kondo -- Blue Jeans Memory

3. Toshihiko Tahara -- Kimi ni Kettei!

To finish off, I will never forget Jarreau's appearance on Canada's venerable "SCTV" comedy show in a parody of "The Jazz Singer". Here he is singing another track from the album, "We're In This Love Together" which was also released as a single.

Mariya Takeuchi -- Secret Love

"Secret Love" is a track from Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Miss M" album from 1980. As I mentioned in the article for her 4th album, "Miss M" is about as City Pop/AOR that the divine Miss M has ever gotten. And "Secret Love" seems to be Ground Zero for that genre. It sounds so West Coast circa that decade that I wondered whether Takeuchi had decided to put up stakes somewhere along the Ventura Highway in California.

Written by Marc Jordan and composed by Jay Graydon & David Foster (aka Airplay), the AOR keyboards start things off as if they are welcoming in the sunrise and then Mariya brings in her mellow tones with backup from the horns before everything and everyone takes the song into broad daylight in Los Angeles. Listening to it, it felt like I was sitting by that off-pink plastic radio that used to sit on the dining room table back in the late 70s. 

"Secret Love" is about as nostalgic and slick as they come for me. However, the only thing that irked me is during the bridge when those sunrise keyboards came back in for a couple of seconds only for the horns to suddenly blast in. It seemed like the guys wanted to lure the listener in up close to the speakers before playing that sonic joke on him. Happened to me the first time and just struck me as being a bit intrusive. Still, if someone asked me about what City Pop was all about, I could just point him to this song as an example.