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.
Last Friday, when I put up Iruka's（イルカ）"NYC wa Toosugite"（NYCは遠すぎて）, I realized that there have been a number of New York-themed tunes posted up here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" over the years. And since we have those "America" tunes that I posted as an Author's Picks back in 2023, why not become even more localized and go straight to the Big Apple? A couple of them on that list ("Kennedy Airport" and "Purpletown") could comfortably belong on this list but since they're already up there, it wasn't too difficult to find two more. But without further ado, here are my five New York tunes.
Well, I figure if kayo kyoku composing legend Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）can have his disco period, why not someone like the former rockabilly singer and fellow legendary composer Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）. Disco was big at the time and didn't publicly suck quite yet.
So, Hirao came out with a 1976 album called "Disco Train" in which he tackles some original disco music while providing the disco touch to some well-worn kayo kyoku favourites. The title track is right here and it provides a good heaping of tribute to the theme song from the famous American music program "Soul Train". He definitely gives it his disco all with help from arranger Jun Fukamachi（深町純）. I'm just curious about some of those other disco remakes of kayo kyoku on the album.
This track by musician, songwriter and arranger Jun Fukamachi（深町純）might be called "The Minority" but man, does it sound like a very aural majority.
From Fukamachi's November 1977 album"The Sea of Dirac", "The Minority" is one funky jam fest (going rather spacey near the end), and with legendary musicians taking part in the overall project ranging from drummer Steve Gadd to the Brecker Brothers and bassist Anthony Jackson, there is probably much to digest through the ears here. Specifically with "The Minority", accompanying Fukamachi on the keyboards, there are guitarists Eric Gale and Steve Khan, bassist Tony Levin, drummer Howard King, percussionist Errol "Crusher" Bennett, trumpeter Randy Brecker, saxophonist Michael Brecker and trombonist Barry Rogers. In fact, this is the first Fukamachi album where all of the participating musicians are American outside of the main man himself.
I just had to include this video by Funky Monk which has "The Minority" playing to a very avant-garde video.
The first time that I ever went to New York City was in 1993 when it was already in the midst of being cleaned up. I was still quite nervous about going there though because of all of the stories that I had heard about The Big Apple in the past and its nickname of being The World's Most Dangerous City. But taking that one-hour hop from Toronto to New York and spending a few days there with friends was a revelatory and enjoyable one. I think the only tense moment, even if you would call it that, was when one guy in a trench coat came up to us on the edge of Central Park and opened up his "store" asking if we needed any drugs. I politely declined saying that "Sorry but I am cutting down this week". He must have pegged me automatically as a Canadian.
Having said all that, I'm convinced that movie makers and Japanese musicians were in love with New York City despite all of the crime, aggression and financial woes that it was suffering in the 1970s. Writing this article, I was reminded of not only the late songsmith and keyboardist Jun Fukamachi's（深町純）"On The Move" album from 1978 but there was also Shigeru Suzuki's（鈴木茂）"Kennedy Airport" from that same year.
I already did Fukamachi's title track from "On The Move" but I have here another scintillating track from the album, "Letter to New York". I think the only thing missing from the title is the word "Love" since the music by Fukamachi seems to be absolutely dripping with a heartwarming Manhattan-hugging fusion of jazz and bluesy funk. It's all seasoned with Michael Brecker's tenor sax, Will Lee's bass and Richard Tee's piano accompanying the crooning vocals of Zachery Sanders backed by Ullanda McCullough. Brecker's sax solo so belongs in New York that it probably deserves a key to the city. "Letter to New York" may be a creation of its time but I would still be happy with it being an accompaniment to any future arrival back in the titular city.
In the past, if anyone at a BBQ party asked me about how many hot dogs I wanted, I answered "Yes!" or "How many do you have?". Nowadays, I answer "Two". When I was living in Japan all those years, one of the things that I missed dearly was the good ol' hot dog. I mean, local establishments such as Doutor did sell the franks but they weren't the same as the ones by Maple Leaf and Schneiders.
Midway through my time in the Tokyo area, the famous American hot dog franchise, Nathan's, tried to make a go of it with a few shops, and I was one happy customer for a while. However, they didn't succeed for some reason although when one shop in the Shinagawa area actually had waiters taking folks to tables to serve just hog dogs, I think that there was some misunderstanding about the whole ethos surrounding them. But having said that, hamburgers on the other hand simply captured the hearts and stomachs of the Japanese foodies who apparently wanted more than McDonalds and Burger King. Go figure! In any case, I've been enjoying my regular hot dogs again for the past decade since coming home for good.
Now, why all that preamble on my love affair with the hot dog? Well, it's one of the big images on the cover of the late keyboardist-arranger Jun Fukamachi's（深町純）August 1978 album"On The Move". When Rocket Brown and I had our conversation last weekend, Fukamachi came up amidst the talk and we talked a bit on the album which seems to have incorporated a lot of American or New York City pop culture symbols onto the cover. Rocket did mention that he had spent some time in the Big Apple studying his craft and recording this album.
The title track which starts the album off is akin to a travelogue into New York City beginning with a plane landing at one of the major airports there, and it soon picks up an active funky groove as listeners seem to get that tour through what was once called The World's Most Dangerous City (maybe that was just "Saturday Night Live"). I haven't listened to Fukamachi's material enough to make a solid observation but from listening to "On The Move" and then a later song "It's You", it sounds like he enjoyed creating a day in the life within his individual songs. With all of those samples of people talking and yelling and that police siren, Fukamachi was bringing in his observations of how amazing and raucous life was like in NYC back then. People were and probably still are on the move there. He sure did love his planes, though.
Next to Fukamachi's melody, Emi Fukuzawa（福沢エミ）provided some lyrics for the backing vocals. There were also some heavy hitters in the studio helping out such as Steve Gadd on drums, Will Lee on bass, and the Brecker Brothers on trumpet and tenor saxophone. Fukamachi himself was manning the Yamaha CP-30 and the synthesizer. It's too bad that I've yet to find any video featuring a concert version of "On The Move".
Jun Fukamachi（深町純）is someone that I've mentioned once before on KKP through Goro Noguchi's（野口五郎）"Catalog L.A."（カタログL.A.）song as its composer. However, I have come across his name via YouTube and some other literature. Fukamachi was a Tokyo-born composer and arranger who also handled synthesizers and other keyboards often in the fusion genre, and he collaborated with many artists and provided them with their songs. The musician was also active in providing music for movies, television and musicals, and according to his Wikipedia article, he even worked with The Brecker Brothers and drummer Steve Gadd. In 1989, he established Japan's first synthesizer major at Senzoku Gakuen College of Music in the city of Kawasaki. He also released many of his own albums but sadly in November 2010, he passed away at the age of 64.
In 1981, he along with a couple of other acts in the fusion genre, Masayoshi Takanaka（高中正義）and Carioca, recorded a compilation album called "Horizon Dream", and one of the tracks under his name is "It's You". It starts out as an innocent bluesy piece representing what sounds like rising up on a beautiful day in the tropics depicted on the album cover before things get more active starting with that saxophone solo. That solo does a slow burn for about a minute or so before listeners are taken for a bit of fun on the boardwalk but still retaining that bluesiness and the original melody. The guitar and sax then have a nice little jam session with the hazy synthesizer holding court in the background after which some more party atmosphere rolls on in with the tide. Finally, it's time to come home in the evening.
Considering the title of Fukamachi's song, it's definitely not a solo act in the story but hopefully a very happy couple, very much in love.
Now realizing that each of the 1970s Shin-Gosanke（新御三家...The New Big Three）, cute Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）, super-cool Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）and urbane Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）gave their contributions to the genres of City Pop and J-AOR, I have to look back when I wrote about Noguchi's 1983 hit"19:00 no Machi"（19:00の街）. I did call it a City Pop tune back then since I thought it was similar to some of the shibui urban contemporary material that Akira Terao（寺尾聰）produced at around the same time. "19:00 no Machi" didn't really adapt any of the Steely Dan or Doobie Brothers riffs (although there is something in chorus that shouts Bee Gees) but to me, it was unmistakably a tune that felt right at home in the megalopolis of Tokyo.
Little did I know that Noguchi had already gotten his taste of the genre (along with that water as you can see above) several years previously. Specifically, I cite the year 1978 in August since he would release his 12th album"L.A. Express". Disc jockey Takayuki Fujisawa（藤沢隆行）in his review of the album via my City Pop bible of "Japanese City Pop" openly wondered how Noguchi's fans reacted to this release which didn't fall back on his tried-and-true kayo melodies and actually fell forward to this shiny new City Pop.
I couldn't tell you myself but it was quite the image of him on the cover of "L.A. Express" with him out in the desert somewhere with a fully open shirt as he chugged down some of that H2O. Moreover, right from Track 1, "Catalog L.A.", it was pretty obvious that he embraced his inner American soft rock or AOR. Written by Konosuke Fuji（藤公之介）and composed by Jun Fukamachi（深町純）, that piano and bass among some of the other instruments were all screaming "Welcome to the City of Angels! Jump in the limo and come for a tour." Plus, having David Sanborn on alto sax will always be an invitation for me to any song. It makes for an interesting comparison with the more "down-home" feeling of "19:00 no Machi" some years later. Still, there is something about that arrangement in there that made me feel that there was a bit of the kayo continuing to tug at Noguchi.
