Kayo Ishuu -- Mezame（めざめ）

 

A lot of us are coming out of the Easter weekend grumbling at the beginning of another work week. So I gather that the morning coffee was even more appreciated than usual. I've been a coffee drinker since around university; before then I'd been strictly on the Orange Pekoe tea. However, I cannot say in all honesty that I am a coffee connoisseur since I admit that I prefer to drink it with cream (no longer with sugar since my old flame was able to wean me off that years ago) and not black.

There's nothing like the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, though, to herald the beginning of that trek to the table for breakfast. Earlier today, NHK's "Asaichi"（あさイチ）was focusing on the healing power of smell and naturally that cup of java was targeted for its distinct aroma. Of course, when the announcer was grandly enjoying his cuppa, a famous made-in-Japan jingle played in the distance and you can hear it above at the 43-second mark of this commercial.

In the above commercial here, you can hear it once more at 36 seconds. It's been called "Dabada"（ダバダ〜）as an affectionate nickname due to the famous soft and heavenly scatting representing the pure enjoyment of taking in that hot dark liquid. The brand here is Nescafe's Gold Blend that's been around 1967 according to J-Wiki and aside from some musical tangents such as Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）"Little Tokyo" in 1991, Gold Blend has always used "Mezame" (Waking Up) as its anthem.

The singer behind "Mezame" is Kayo Ishuu（伊集加代）whose career in the industry lasted between the late 1960s and the 2010s. She was also one of the jazzy co-scatters for the theme of the late-night NTV show "11 PM". But for "Mezame", it's all classy and refined as the Nescafe guys wanted it for their coffee. The above is the full version as composed by pianist and arranger Masao Yagi（八木正生）which I hadn't ever heard before until I began writing this article. Indeed, it sounds like background music for a tour of one of Europe's greatest castles...which hopefully serves coffee at the end of the tour. The accompanying cake had better be made by the best French bakers.

"Mezame" has apparently been given slightly different arrangements over the decades although for the most part, it's been Ishuu's scatting at the core. However in 2012, pop duo Dreams Come True came up with their own soulful version of the song in tribute to its 45th anniversary.

Pizzicato Five -- Top Secrets

Having talked about Pizzicato Five（ピチカート・ファイヴ）through the blog over the years, I realized that there was a time before the divine Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）and Shibuya-kei. There were the very early years starting in 1985 when Mamiko Sasaki（佐々木麻美子）was providing vocals for Pizzicato V, and my image of the band via "The Audrey Hepburn Complex" was that of a quirky technopop outfit predating PSY-S. Then I heard that in 1988, there was a second phase which featured Takao Tajima（田島貴男）as the lead vocalist.

When I first heard that news, I just kinda went "Whoa! Wait a minute...Original Love's Takao Tajima?!" And yep, indeed it was the same guy. The reason I was so surprised was that I had first heard his sweet soul/funk when he was already well into his time as the sole member of Original Love from the middle of the 1990s, and his music really didn't sound like the Swinging 1960s. It was his own style.

I was definitely intrigued by this second phase of Pizzicato Five but it wasn't until about a week ago when commenter ARIFURETA OTOKO let me know that "On Her Majesty's Request" and "Bellissima" were two of the best albums by the band. And those were the albums where Tajima was the lead vocalist.

So, tonight I'm presenting one track from "On Her Majesty's Request" (1989), "Top Secrets". When I was reading the J-Wiki article for this album, I was also interested by the fact that Pizzicato Five had produced "On Her Majesty's Request" under the concept of a fanciful spy movie soundtrack. I mean, the spy movie was one of the pop culture tropes of the 1960s, that very decade that Shibuya-kei purloined much from.

On first and second listenings, "Top Secrets" definitely stands out when compared to Sasaki's "The Audrey Hepburn Complex" and Nomiya's  "Tokyo wa Yoru no Shichi-ji"（東京は夜の七時）. Tajima was only in his early 20s when he recorded this paean to all things cool: the night, the weather, the vibe, the city. The man sounds like a very talented choir boy with those high tones when I think of his singing in the 1990s. Moreover, despite the spy movie concept, "Top Secrets" is more of a fusion of the pop feelings from the 1960s and 1980s: contemporary instruments conveying the atmosphere of being in Peter Gunn's favourite hole-in-a-wall. To throw in another analogy, perhaps I could compare "Top Secrets" with the Pierce Brosnan remake of "The Thomas Crown Affair" with its different sort of slickness.

Tajima and Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽）took care of the lyrics while Tajima also provided the music. Kayoko Isshu and Michiko Ouchi（伊集加代・大内美智子）were the backup vocalists.

Although I only occasionally drink, I could use a nice dry martini on hearing "Top Secrets"...shaken not stirred. I will hold off on any more stats on "On Her Majesty's Request" since I now intend to purchase the album, and once I do, I can write up an article devoted to it.

Kayo Ishuu -- Oshiete（おしえて）

Whereas CNN seems to have "Breaking News" almost every minute, it isn't everyday that TV Japan allows NHK to cut in suddenly for a breaking news story. But that is what happened last night between Sanma Akashiya's "Honmadekka!? TV" from Fuji-TV and the new NHK morning serial "Hanbun, Aoi". No commercials came in...just a sober-sided announcer to break the news that animator Isao Takahata（高畑勲）had passed away earlier on Thursday.

The name is familiar although to be honest, I wouldn't have immediately been able to identify his works just from hearing Takahata's name such as would have been the case with Hayao Miyazaki（宮崎駿）. However, I do know his harrowing "Hotaru no Haka"（火垂るの墓...Grave of the Fireflies）which is most likely his best work. Even to this day, I can't bear to watch a lot of the scenes from that movie and even when I was reading the synopsis on Wikipedia after hearing about his death, I couldn't help but get lumpy in the throat. There was a variety show in Japan that I was watching in which a group of the most hardened martial art students was asked to watch the movie in a room and pretty much everyone ended up as puddles of brine.

I was not aware that Takahata had earlier directed the TV anime "Alps no Shojo Heidi"（アルプスの少女ハイジ...Heidi, Girl of the Alps） back in 1974 but that show is familiar to me since I remember the climactic scene where Heidi's best friend Clara was actually able to stand up from her wheelchair. Cue tears.

The other thing I remember from "Heidi" is the opening theme song titled "Oshiete" (Teach Me) as sung by Kayo Ishuu（伊集加代子）with Nelly Schwarz providing the yodels. Bouncy and joyful thanks to composer Takeo Watanabe（渡辺岳夫）, the lyrics by Eriko Kishida（岸田衿子）reflect the main character's curiosity for things ranging from why whistles can be heard from so far away to where the winds go.

The single sold 1.2 million records in Japan alone and apparently even in Europe, "Oshiete" became a million-seller there as well according to Hidetoshi Kimura's（木村英俊）"The Anime Song ~ Hit wa Koushite Tsukurareta"（THEアニメ・ソング―ヒットはこうして作られた...The Hits Were Created This Way）. It even won a special award at the 1974 2nd FNS Music Festival held annually in December.

Kayo Ishuu & Hiroshi Okazaki -- Theme from "11 PM"

The "song" here is a mere 23 seconds long. However, most likely for those purveyors of Japanese TV born in the 80s and earlier, the rapid-fire scat will get that tinge of nostalgic recognition...and a slight leer on a number of faces.

When I landed in Japan in 1989 for my JET tour, I had already known that late-night TV there could get pretty weird and racy. Case in point: one time I was watching a video in Toronto from Nippon Video which featured a late-night suspense program. Before the suspense began, there was a first-person interview segment in which a pretty woman sitting on one of those Hollywood director chairs was babbling about something. A minute later, the scene faded out and back in. This time, the babbling continued but this time, the woman was completely naked and unfazed. Go figure!

Anyways, one of the slightly more normal programs that was fixture on the Japanese late-night TV circuit was the legendary "Wide Show 11 PM".  Broadcast weeknights on NTV from November 1965 to  March 1990, "11 PM" was the first late-night variety-and-information program in Japan which had the atmosphere of something that Playboy's Hugh Hefner would have created if he had ever emigrated to Tokyo. According to the J-Wiki article on the show, the hosts and guests covered the news of the day and leisure topics, did foreign location shoots, played games, showed some stuff that was definitely not for the kids, etc. And from the times I've caught the show near the end of its life, it did all that with a certain ring-a-ding style and with a lot of scantily-clad women.

And to top it all off, there was the theme song for "11 PM" itself. Composed by Keitaro Miho（三保敬太郎）, veteran session singers Kayo Ishuu and Hiroshi Okazaki（伊集加代・岡崎広志）scatted themselves into a lather each night as the old-fashioned animation flashed across the screen while various beauties were draped across the screen. With those brief opening credits, viewers were treated to a visual version of visiting the Playboy Mansion.

While the footage at the very top is from an 1989 show, the one right above these words is from 1983. The raciness of late-night TV continued for some more years after the end of "11 PM", but by the turn of the century, I think most of the titillation disappeared from the wee hours.

Now, for something completely different....speaking about old TV programs, I just had to include NHK's "Renso Game" which was the Japanese equivalent of the American game show "Password". Game shows in Japan almost exclusively have featured only celebrities as the contestants since as one TV official I read in an interview so snarkily put it, "Why would we ever put on boring ordinary people?" Ouch!

So the guys above in the video are all celebs (unfortunately, footage of the original show no longer exists on YouTube but there is the CG mockup above). "Renso Game"（連想ゲーム...Association Game） had a similarly long life on TV, lasting from 1969 to 1991. And it just happened to be the 2nd TV program that I viewed in a tiny restaurant near the Tokyo Prince Hotel on an even tinier TV set. Yup, I'm feeling nostalgic.