Kaori Kawamura -- Merry-go-Round ni Notteru Kimi no Koto ga Suki da yo（メリーゴーラウンドに乗ってる君のことが好きだよ）

 

Rock singer-songwriter Kaori Kawamura（川村かおり）left this Earth way too early at the age of 38 back in 2009 due to cancer. Although she didn't burn up the Oricon charts like some other singers or bands, she remains one of the musical touchstones for me when I was living in Gunma Prefecture between 1989 and 1991 because before I arrived in Japan at the end of the decade, it was unusual to see a female Japanese singer who wasn't bouncing around in a white frilly dress or singing enka in a formal kimono on stage. However, the turn of that decade had a lot of diversification going on in the new format of J-Pop and one of the new wings that unfurled in the mainstream was the female rocker either through bands like Princess Princess and solo singers such as Kawamura. 

I got to know Kawamura basically in 1991 via "Kamisama ga Oritekuru Yoru"（神様が降りてくる夜), a catchy number that I used to hear often because it was used as the theme song for a segment on the extremely popular Fuji-TV Wednesday night variety show "Kuni-chan no Yamada Katsutenai Terebi"（邦ちゃんのやまだかつてないテレビ）. And then there was her cover of "Tsubasa wo Kudasai"（翼をください）, a 1970s folk song that has become a standard in those high school chorus competitions.

When I first caught this music video, I was initially a little confused. My image of Kawamura had been that of the singer with that close-cropped haircut in the leather outfit who felt that it wasn't too cool to smile. But here she was with slightly longer (but not long) hair in pretty casual wear and actually beaming a bit more.

My assumption was that this one of her later efforts on the basis that perhaps Kawamura had mellowed out, but it was actually the video for an earlier 4th single "Merry-go-Round ni Notteru Kimi no Koto ga Suki da yo" (I Love Ya on the Merry-go-Round) that had been released in September 1989. A rolling and jangling pop/rock tune, this was written by Kawamura and Ken Takahashi（高橋研）with Takahashi handling the melody and arrangement. The lyrics are all about some fellow asking a young lady for a fun afternoon at the amusement park. My compliments on the guitar work.

"Merry-go-Round" was also used as the theme song for an anime motion picture, the boxing-based "Eiji"（エイジ）in 1990 at the request of the creator of the original manga, Hisashi Eguchi（江口寿史）. The song was also Kawamura's first to get into the Top 100 of the Oricon charts by placing in at No. 90.

Well, I found out some of Eguchi's work through a Denny's commercial.

Kuniko Yamada -- Yamada Katsutenai CD (やまだかつてないＣＤ）

Kuniko Yamada（山田邦子）, a homely but hilariously cheeky comedienne, first found fame on the Fuji-TV Saturday night comedy-variety show, "Oretachi Hyokinzoku"（オレたちひょうきん族...We Are The Funny Guys) which pretty much ran for the entire decade of the 1980s. Her specialty was impersonating singers, but I recall seeing her in a segment in which she drew some surprisingly racy stuff in front of the kids. But with her own star rising, Yamada eventually got her own variety show on the same network from October 1989 titled "Kuni-chan no Yamada Katsutenai Terebi"(やまだかつてないテレビ....Kuni's Yamada Unprecedented TV) every Wednesday night. It was part of my weekly viewing routine during my years in Gunma. The comedienne was her usual hammy self in various skits and segments with other regulars, but a number of musicians also achieved a form of semi-regular status on the show.

So, in March 1991, a double-CD pack which resembled one of those cubic watermelons that Japanese scientists had concocted some years back was released titled "Yamada Katsutenai CD"（やまだかつてないＣＤ....Yamada Unprecedented CD). Being a fan of the show, of course, I just had to purchase my own copy. CD 1 has all of the original songs while CD 2 contains the karaoke versions of those songs. Almost half of them have already been profiled: Kan -- "Ai wa Katsu", Mariko Nagai -- "ZUTTO" and the late Kaori Kawamura -- "Tsubasa wo Kudasai".

Kawamura also had another contribution to the show in the form of "Kamisama ga Oritekuru Yoru"（神様が降りてくる夜...The Night The Gods Come Down), a pop-rock tune which was used as the theme for one of the recurring segments: a parodic feature on medieval Japanese court life. The song was created by Ken Takahashi（高橋研）.

During the turn of this decade, the singing duo Wink had become one of the big acts in show business. Of course, Kuniko Yamada, whose talent lay in impersonating singers, just couldn't resist and decided that she needed to impersonate them. So, she incorporated another segment in 1990 titled "Nihon Zenkoku Sachiko Sagase"(日本全国早智子探せ.... Find A Sachiko All Over Japan) in which her Shoko Aida would find the right Sachiko Suzuki. She found her.... Chie Yokoyama（横山知枝）, a high school student from Hiroshima Prefecture. Together they formed the unit, Yamadakatsutenai Wink（やまだかつてないWink), and their first single was "T-Intersection -- Anata ni Modorenai"(T-Intersection -- あなたに戻れない...I Can't Return to You), an uptempo Eurobeat piece whose lyrics were written by Yamada herself and composed by saxophonist MALTA.

In the following year, the ersatz Wink came up with a ballad titled "Sayonara dakedo Sayonara janai"（さよならだけどさよならじゃない...It is and It Isn't Goodbye), which was also written by Yamada and composed by regular guest KAN. It was created partially as a tribute to Yokoyama who was on her way to graduating from high school and onto college. However, it's become a graduation song for just about everyone. It did become a hit, peaking at No. 2 and ending up as the 49th-ranked song of 1991. The entire disc set itself was able to hit the top spot on Oricon as well.

There is also a Xmas song by the duo on the CD, but let's save that for a more appropriate time.

Yamada Katsutenai CD
Discs to help me remember the late 80s and early 90s

Seeds not included

Akai Tori/Kaori Kawamura -- Tsubasa wo Kudasai （翼をください）

Some time ago, I wrote an entry on the song "American Feeling" by vocal group The Circus. The song was one of the mainstays during that part of the junior high school year known as "Gassho Konkuuru"（合唱コンクール....Chorus Group Competition) Season. During my 2 years teaching in my 2 junior high schools in northern Gunma, I would always hear the kids, led by the music teacher, sing in serious harmony as they prepared for the inter-school contests. Along with "American Feeling", another go-to song in the contests was "Die Moldau", one of the six symphonic poems created by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana in the late 19th century.

But there was one other popular song that had the students in Japan singing, and that was "Tsubasa wo Kudasai". The title literally means "Please Give Me Wings", but apparently it's more known as "Wings to Fly". This song was originally created in 1970 by lyricist Michio Yamakami （山上路夫）and composer Kunihiko Murai（村井邦彦） as an entry in a music festival contest in Mie Prefecture. However, the folk group, Akai Tori（赤い鳥）, asked if they could sing it just 2 hours before its recording. I guess the meaning of "wings"in the title was not lost on this new band since its name means "red birds". And it was also a good match in that the group gave the song that optimistic lift which would later be emulated by later generations of uniform-wearing students.　In 1971, it would release the song as the B-side to another song in February 1971.

Akai Tori will always be known as the leading group for this much-covered song. And even after it disbanded in 1974, its members branched out into their own successful projects. Vocal Junko Yamamoto（山本潤子） and bassist Shigeru Okawa（大川茂） started the vocal group Hi-Fi Set along with Yamamoto's husband, Toshihiko（山本俊彦）, who was also a guitarist in Akai Tori. Meanwhile, two other members would start up another group called Kami Fuusen（紙ふうせん）.

After hearing the song so much from the teachers' room that it took up permanent residency in my head, it was a pleasant surprise to hear this rock version one night near the end of my stay in Japan in 1991. Sung by the late Kaori Kawamura（川村かおり）, this fresh take on what had been given the anthemic approach was as if a few of those kids snuck out during rehearsal and treated it their own way. The song became a hit for Kawashima as it sold close to 300,000 copies.

But everyone has covered it over the decades....from Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里） to Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）. Even the Susan Boyle has given her own rendition.