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.
I can say that the above looks just like the first telephone that I ever saw in my apartment in the late 1960s. The good ol' rotary phone. Never got to use the even older model where people had to crank it up and yell "Maisie! Is that you? I'm calling Pennsylvania 65000!".
Earlier today, the first article for Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP was Mariko Tone's（刀根麻里子）"Private Number" and that got me thinking that among the many different themes I've had for Author's Picks, one common object that I had yet to highlight was the telephone. And yet, as soon as I put up "Private Number", suddenly all these phone-themed tunes came back to mind. So, to finish my contributions today, I'm putting up my telephone or denwa songs. Not all of them are City Pop, mind you, but enough of them are including the one with City Pop's most famous number.
No particularly good reason to do so but I just wanted to post up another Author's Picks with the theme today being "good" songs. That is to say, songs with "good" in the title and they are good songs, to boot. Plus, it is a Sunday so a lot of whimsy to share.
Let's see...the YouTube video has the title as "Novembre" while Ameblo has it listed as "November" and the JASRAC database even has it down by its Japanese translation of "Juu-ichi Gatsu"（十一月）. Well, shall we split the difference and go with "November"?
Regardless, "November" is a track on Satoshi Ikeda's（池田聡）October 1992 album, "Shijou no Ai"（至上の愛...A Love Supreme）. I've already covered one other track there, "Itsuka"（いつか）which is an interesting mix of City Pop and Shibuya-kei. But with this duet between Ikeda and another City Pop singer Keiko Kimura（木村恵子）of "Denwa Shinai de"（電話しないで）fame, despite Yasuharu Konishi's（小西康晴）presence on lyrics, I think that "November" is fully into jazz of the 1950s instead of the Shibuya-kei scene (well, there is that electric piano/organ near the end) of which Konishi is an architect. Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu（かまやつひろし）was the composer here, and the whole effect is of a tenderly delivered song in an intimate setting such as the old Dug jazz club in East Shinjuku (yup, brick wall interior and all).
I was actually doing maintenance on the 1992 file when I saw that the video for "Itsuka" had been taken down for the usual reasons, so as I found a replacement on Nicovideo, I stumbled upon "November" to my delight. By the way, I do like that cover for "Shijou no Ai" with that silhouetted Chet Baker-like figure with trumpet standing in front of those West Shinjuku skyscrapers. Very cool.
Man, what a day and night! Got plunked with a huge mound of files to translate so I was literally working in my steamy room for almost 12 hours. I did take my lunch and dinner breaks and kept myself hydrated so that I didn't end up needing to call 911. Can't complain, though, since it does mean more income that way.
Up to now, the only articles that I've written about Keiko Kimura（木村恵子）have dealt with the tracks from her debut album "Style" from 1988 which I would put across as a City Pop/Pop endeavor.
Well, I recently came across this number performed by Kimura which actually leads off her 2nd album"Ambiva" from 1989. The article by kaz-shin on his "Music Avenue" mentions that the singer-songwriter goes deeper into the pop vein this time, and first track "Natsu no Antenna"(Summer Antenna) illustrates that.
Even the cover for "Ambiva" shows Kimura in a different light when compared to the atmospheric visage she gives in "Style". There she is driving in style with her partner.... Pingu? In any case, "Natsu no Antenna" even has her singing style sounding a bit brighter as she takes thing from the city and onto the highway bombing toward the coast as a different form of that sophisticated pop with which I've often associated some female singers in the latter half of the 1980s. I'm usually not all that crazy about synths emulating jazz, but here it doesn't sound bad at all. Kimura apparently composed 8 of the 10 tracks on the album so it's likely that she's taken care of this one.
Long time, no see, Ms. Kimura. It's been quite a while.
Although it wasn't an official New Year's Resolution (I have steadfastly refused to make any of those anymore), I have decided to go back to the shelves and pull out a CD at random every day or every two days to listen to the various purchases. So, today was Keiko Kimura's（木村恵子）"Style" album from 1988. And indeed right from that cover photo to the music itself, there is that certain stylish mellow pop ripe for urban life.
I've already given the spotlight to two other tracks from "Style": "Denwa Shinai de"（電話しないで）and "Coltrane de Aishite"（コルトレーンで愛して）, so today's article is on "Good Morning" which is appropriately the first track. Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, "Good Morning" has that easy and breezy melody incorporating a languid version of the town clock's hourly chimes. Meanwhile, Kimura sings about a possible morning after scenario with a woman who invited over a male buddy to sleep the night. Some of the copious drinking is still giving her a bit of a buzz. According to the lyrics, she still considers the fellow a good friend since she feels that the wonderful city is truly her lover. From that line, I wonder whether Kimura's photo was meant to envisage Holly Golightly from "Breakfast at Tiffany's".
So far, I've only written about songs from "Style", so I figure sometime later, I'm going to have to try to get at least one of her other three studio albums....if they are still around online.
Back in early January this year, I wrote about Keiko Kimura's（木村恵子）"Denwa Shinaide"（電話しないで）and how much I liked that late 80s champagne-&-downtown Tokyo feel to it, much along the lines of what I often heard from ladies like Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）, Miki Imai（今井美樹）and the late Kaoru Sudo（須藤薫）at that time. It was quite the happy happenstance that I came across her on YouTube, and in the article, I mentioned that I would have to consider getting that album it came out on, "Style".
Well, nearly 3 months and a payment later, I have been able to acquire that very debut album. Considering how obscure the name was (didn't even see her on "Japanese City Pop"), I thought "Style" was gonna be something that I could only admire online. However, the good folks at CD Japan actually had it on sale.
One of the other tracks on the 1988 "Style" is "Coltrane de Aishite" (Love Me By Coltrane) which also served as Kimura's debut single (presumably in the same year). Written by Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）and composed by Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, it's a fairly dreamy ballad involving rain, hotels and jazz legend John Coltrane...about as atmospheric as a romantic City Pop tune can get. Kimura's vocals get all breathy to the hint of bossa nova as she gets into the torch song of it all. At the beginning of the imported video above, there is a picture of the singer as it was taken on the cover of the debut single, and I think she had that look which was a mix between Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）and Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）.
As for the rest of the album, "Style" keeps it nice and urban contemporary for the most part except for a cover of the Yuki Okazaki（岡崎友紀）hit "Do You Remember Me?"which also happens to be the B-side to "Coltrane de Aishite". Probably if I were to relate another Japanese city aside from Tokyo to the album, it would be the resort area of Hakone.
When I met the newest collaborator in the "Kayo Kyoku Plus" family, Larry Chan, on December 30th last year, I told him that when it came to Japanese popular music, I realized that I had only tapped the top 10% of the iceberg. There was still that 90% that I've only started digging into. The genre of City Pop was one definite example of how much I had to go through, thanks to all of these new folks I have been discovering through the pages of "Japanese City Pop".
And the crazy thing is that Keiko Kimura（木村恵子）isn't even in my bible of the genre. I discovered her purely by accident when I was grazing through YouTube. And frankly speaking, that picture of her on the cover of her debut album, "Style" (1988) stopped me in my tracks. I had wondered if she was one of those models that kinda fell into a singing career (rather like Miki Imai).
Then I heard the track that was on "Style", "Denwa Shinai de"(Don't Phone Me). And it had that splendid 80s City Pop groove that I've always swooned about. It was slick and urban contemporary, along the same vein that Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）classy "Nemurenai Diamond"（眠れないダイヤモンド）and Tomoko Aran's（亜蘭知子）cool "Slow Nights" followed. I mentioned once before that at least some of the output from ennui-laden chanteuses like Asami Kado（門あさみ）and Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）back in the early 80s was given that label of Fashion Music. Perhaps Keiko, Junko and Tomoko during the 80s were tapping Fashion Music II or a sub-genre that I would label as Sophisti-Pop. And yep, "Denwa Shinai de" makes me think that Kimura chose the right outfit for painting the town red. The song was created by lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）, according to the Japanese music blog, "Music Avenue". It was enough to get me wondering about acquiring "Style".
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of information on Kimura but I was able to glean some data from her J-Wiki entry. She was born in 1963 in Kanagawa Prefecture but spent part of her childhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before returning to Japan to attend junior and senior high school. From there, she was admitted into prestigious Keio University where she learned all about songwriting in the same music department that had Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）and Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）as members. Debuting in 1988, she would release 4 original albums and a BEST album along with 6 singles.
