Keiko Nose -- Bon Voyage（ボンボヤージ）

 

A little under five years ago in 2018, I posted the second single of aidoru Keiko Nose（能瀬慶子）, "Hadashi de Young Love"（裸足でヤングラブ）. The lass had her very brief time in the singing spotlight with all four of her singles and a lone album coming out in the one year of 1979.

Not the strongest of singers, Nose did have the cuteness and the "Let's win this game for the coach!" gumption though which showed up in "Hadashi no Young Love", and it also showed up in "Bon Voyage". This wasn't a single but a track on that one album by Nose, "Hohoemi Prelude"（ほほえみプレリュード...Smile Prelude）, which was released in June 1979. As was the case with many an aidoru song at the turn of the decade, there is plenty of appropriately breezy and summery vibes in "Bon Voyage", and I'm guessing that the warp-powered electric guitar is being played by rocker Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）, who composed this song as well as "Hadashi no Young Love". Makoto Kitajo（喜多条忠）was responsible for the lyrics while Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）arranged the tune to sound like it should accompany a nice romantic run down the beachside. The interesting thing is that I could catch the strings playing what sounds like a reprise from Percy Faith's "Theme from a Summer Place".

Keiko Nose -- Hadashi de Young Love（裸足でヤングラブ）

As much as there has been a backlog of parcels and mail due to these rotating Canada Post strikes over the past month, I've had somewhat of a backlog of bookmarks for YouTube videos of songs that I have wanted to feature. Slowly but surely, I'm starting to plow through and get them shown on the blog.

One theme that has cropped up in my own backlog is that of the many unsung aidoru who came and went during the 1970s and 1980s. I've shown some of them already and here is another one by the name of Keiko Nose（能瀬慶子）. Born in 1963 in Chiba Prefecture but raised in Bunkyo Ward in Tokyo, according to the Shukan Asahi journal from 1979, she had been selected from 38,700 girls in the Hori Pro Talent Scout Caravan contest in 1978 while she was in high school.

Making her first appearance in show business as an actress, she later made her debut as an aidoru in January 1979 with "Attention, Please"（アテンション・プリーズ）which was composed by Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）. Then, her second single (and topic of this article), this time written and composed by Hamada, was "Hadashi de Young Love" (Barefoot Young Love) was released just a few months later in April. A typically summery and breezy aidoru tune that is of its time (memories of very early Seiko Matsuda come to mind), "Hadashi de Young Love" has those middling-but-cute aidoru vocals by Nose with some interesting 50s beach party sax thrown in there.

Nose would release two more singles and one album before she retired from the industry at the age of 20 in 1983. She married a musician and raised three children.