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.
Showing posts with label Johnny Yoshinaga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Johnny Yoshinaga. Show all posts
Earlier today, I received a pen-and-paper letter from an old friend who lives in Okinawa. We haven't seen each other in almost 30 years but we've been able to keep in touch annually through Xmas and stuff. He and his family had lived briefly here in Toronto where we first met. I think that the last time that we met was during the early years of my second stay in Japan when we and some other mutual friends met up at a ramen joint just across the street from my NOVA school in Asakusa.
I'll have to send a reply as soon as possible, but reading the letter this afternoon had me thinking of this song by the late singer-songwriter Johnny Yoshinaga（ジョニー吉長）, "Zero Comma Zero". Honestly, I don't know what the title is all about although I start thinking about geographical coordinates, but there is Yoshinaga's lyric "Time goes fast, time goes on" which is kinda my internal observation on my relationships with friends as I approach my sixties.
A track from his 1983 album"Love Child", this was his own creation which has its ingredients of mellow funk, light rock and perhaps some blues rolling around in there. Plus I think that the genres are all hiding under a thin veil of City Pop because of the arrangement. It does make for the ideal song of contemplation about life and all that happens within it while nursing that drink at a bar.
Back in October 2019, I wrote up an article on "Sweet My Baby" and "Open Your Eyes", a couple of songs by rock band Pink Cloud（ピンククラウド）which consisted of consisted of guitarist/vocalist Char, bassist Masayoshi "Louise Louis" Kabe（加部正義）, and drummer/vocalist Johnny Yoshinaga（ジョニー吉長）. Of course, the three individual musicians also had their own solo parts of their careers. I've covered Char and Kabe, and now it's Yoshinaga's turn.
Johnny Yoshinaga, whose real name was Nobuki Yoshinaga（吉長信喜）, released a solo album in 1980 titled "Hello Kids", and I've fallen quite hard for one of the tracks...the 8th one, to be exact. At 36:03 is "Go-gatsu no Kaze" (The Winds of May). With the Fender Rhodes and the harmonious horns gently bringing the listener in, the strawberry at the top of this shortcake is Yoshinaga's bluesy voice and that falsetto of his. It's the type of song that generally demands a tumbler of whiskey on the rocks.
I think part of what makes "Go-gatsu no Kaze" so likeable for me is indeed the horns and the languid arrangement. As a kid, I watched my fair share of "Saturday Night Live" off and on from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. No matter how great or how horrifying the skits were, the one constant was the ending when everyone got on stage to say goodnight and then the SNL band started up to see everyone off with what I would consider to be an urban lullaby with the horns. "Go-gatsu no Kaze", written by Takemi Yoshida（吉田健美）and composed by Masato Sugimoto（杉本真人）, reminds me of the ol' sendoff at the end of each and every episode of SNL. It is rather reminiscent of a jazzy good night before slumber.
Yoshinaga was born in the city of Kokura in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1949, and as a musician, he started his career around 1965 by first participating with Checkmates（チェックメイツ）, a blues-rock band in Kobe. Later on, he would start up his own group, Yellow,（イエロー） in 1972. He would also have his first solo album in 1977, "Johnny"（ジョニー）, before getting together in the following year with Char and Kabe to form JOHNNY, LOUIS & CHAR, later to be renamed Pink Cloud.
The drummer had been married to soulful singer Mari Kaneko（金子マリ）before divorcing in 1999, and they have two sons, drummer Nobuaki Kaneko（金子ノブアキ）of the band RIZE and bassist KenKen. Yoshinaga passed away in June 2012 at the age of 63.
That Krispy Kreme chocolate donut and coffee as you see above was purchased and consumed at a huge food court at the Diver City mall in Odaiba, Tokyo back in 2014. It's just behind the life-sized Gundam model. The famous donut franchise had its time in North America but did a quick fade once folks realized that arteries and veins actually needed to stay intact for survival.
It then hit Japan like a meteor almost 10 years ago with Store No. 1 launching in South Shinjuku just across from the Takashimaya Times Square shopping complex. I remember that opening day well on that one Friday in December 2009; since I was in the area, I had thought that I might attempt to get one of those icing-slathered donuts although I knew with all of the hoopla from the Krispy Kreme marketing machine and the usual reaction from foodie Japanese there would probably be a lineup of about half an hour or so. Well, my prediction was completely off...it was more like a 2-hour queue! And for several more months, it would stay that way as folks from all over the nation would flock in to grab a couple of briefcase-sized boxes of cholesterol bombs. It's as if the Japanese had never heard of yeast donuts before. For me, it would take about a year before I finally ventured my way into Store No. 1 and get a donut and coffee. It was an interesting experience....the donut was indeed rich and sugary but the coffee was about as strong as an Avenger at the Battle of Earth, probably to counteract the effects of the donut. Didn't get much sleep that night.
Branches eventually started popping up like fungi all over Tokyo and certain parts of Japan in the next couple of years before I took off for home for good. However, by the time I returned for my first visit to the country in late 2014, I found out that the KK bubble had popped and interest was falling. And by the time of my next visit in 2017, Store No. 1 was gone, to be replaced by an Italian restaurant. Maybe the branch in Odaiba is perhaps the only branch left in Tokyo...not sure. But the rise and fall of Krispy Kreme didn't particularly surprise me. There was a similar phenomenon with Cinnabons prior to the KK boom. Incidentally, Cinnabons is still a fixture here at Eglinton subway station after all these years.
So, my story about Krispy Kreme in Japan was put up to introduce this sunny and contented song by the band Pink Cloud（ピンククラウド）. "Sweet My Baby" first caught my attention when I saw the video off to the side to the right of YouTube and saw that album cover with the two comical Japanese masks. With the name of Pink Cloud, I was rather intrigued.
I soon discovered that "Sweet My Baby" was one happy and funky piece of musical joy by Pink Cloud. Another revelation is that the band consisted of guitarist/vocalist Char, bassist Masayoshi "Louise Louis" Kabe（加部正義）, formerly of the Group Sounds band The Golden Cups, and drummer/vocalist Johnny Yoshinaga（ジョニー吉長）from the rock band Yellow（イエロー）. If I'm not mistaken, that is indeed Yoshinaga behind the mike for "Sweet My Baby" and he puts his own sweet soul and funk into his voice, punctuated by his "Doo-doo-bee-doo".
The song belongs to the 1982 album"Cloud Land ~ Tougenkyou"（桃源郷...Shangri-La）. Char, Kabe and Yoshinaga first got together as a trio in 1978 and simply identified themselves as JOHNNY, LOUIS & CHAR. But then, they decided to go with the new name of Pink Cloud going into 1982. Looking at their discography on J-Wiki, they were certainly prolific with their releases until the band broke up in 1994.
Right after I listened and enjoyed "Sweet My Baby", I found another Pink Cloud confection under the title of "Open Your Eyes" which came from their 1989 album"Pink Stick". It's a fun guitar-based boogie with what I think is a little mix of rockabilly and jazz. The cover bands would love this one to death.
Pink Cloud has been categorized on J-Wiki as a rock group but from listening to these two songs so far, I think Johnny, Louis & Char came up with even more in terms of their music.
