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.
The above is a Very Berry Shake that I got at a place called Petit Potato. It was indeed very flavorful and thirst-quenching. However, the theme isn't on the contents but the container. Early this year, I came up with an Author's Picks called "Substance Kayo" which focused on those kayo titled with various substances. But then, I realized after writing up one recent article and remembering a couple of oldies that I'd written early in this blog's history that a subset can be made of kayo kyoku containing the word "glass" in their titles. As such, let me start this Tuesday edition of KKP with some glass kayo.
Happy Thursday and welcome to another Reminiscings of Youth (or in this case, thirtysomething) for this week as I write about some of the non-Japanese songs that I enjoyed in my younger days.
It was a few years ago when I posted "Virtual Insanity" by Jamiroquai, a group, as I mentioned in that article, that had been first introduced to me by a student in the Voice Room of my NOVA branch in Asakusa. Took me a couple of tries to comprehend who she identified at first. But I did finally get to see and hear Jay Kay's cool and soulful delivery of the 1996 hit song with his video of smooth steps and mobile furniture.
Another few years would pass by and then just in time for all of that Y2K stuff and turn-of-the-century fear and excitement, we would get "Canned Heat", Jamiroquai's single from May 1999. Now, I do love my "Virtual Insanity", but this song that has been categorized as nu-disco on Wikipedia is also another supremely infectious banger of a tune. Plus its video is incredible as well (flying over red carpeting? Amazing!). "Canned Heat" could actually get me to dance off my seat again after so many years, but since I like to be kind to sighted people and the floor's structural integrity, I'll refrain. However, I was convinced that the music of my youth and childhood could return over and over again.
According to that Wikipedia article, "Canned Heat" hit the dance club charts at No. 1 on America's Billboard while in Canada, it peaked at No. 7 on RPM's Dance/Urban charts.
Well, what was also coming out in May 1999 according to the good folks at straw-wara?
Earlier this morning, I had the chance to join Rocket Brown of "Come Along Radio" and Scott of "Holly Jolly X'masu" among others for a few hours of exchanging Christmas stories and J-Xmas tunes via Masa's Discord Neo-Tokyo server. It was a lot of fun and I hope that this can become an annual tradition. As I'm typing this, I think Rocket has been keeping up the marathon of tunes (and will do so until 8 pm EST tonight) so I may drop by again in an hour or so just to see how he's doing. Just wanted to thank him for organizing everything.
We seem to be in the homestretch as we head into the final week before Christmas. Certainly, it's the final full weekend before the 25th so I'm hoping that most folks have been able to get in their shopping at the malls and stores. I was able to get mine done a few days ago.
For today's "Kayo Kyoku Plus" Christmas entry, we have KinKi Kids' 5th single"Happy Happy Greeting/Cinderella Christmas" which was released in December 1998. It was sold as a double-A-side single and with "Happy Happy Greeting", we have a cheerful shuffle done by the Domoto guys which was whipped up by a couple of veteran songwriters. The lyrics about looking forward to a wonderful Christmas and a new year were written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）while none other than Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）provided the melody and arrangement. Yamashita was also behind the KinKi Kids' hit "Garasu no Shonen"（硝子の少年）the previous year.
"Cinderella Christmas" can almost be thought of as a kissing cousin to Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）"Cinderella Express"（シンデレラエクスプレス）in that the former also deals with a romantic relationship being as tight as anything but separated by several hundred kilometres of a Shinkansen line (I did make a recent earlier referral to that song last week). Matsumoto was once again behind the lyrics about waiting for that Bullet Train to take one of the partners home while the other is biding time to give a Xmas present. Meanwhile, composer Arata Tanimoto（谷本新）and arranger Seiko Nagaoka（長岡成貢）came up with a good old-fashioned disco beat (Nagaoka has shown to be quite proficient in other genres). If I'm not mistaken, the KinKi Kids filmed the music video in Odaiba, Tokyo by Rainbow Bridge.
As was the case with all of KinKi Kids' singles, "Happy Happy Greeting/Cinderella Christmas" hit No. 1 on Oricon. It ended up as the 33rd-ranked single for 1999, going Double Platinum and selling over 600,000 copies. The chorus arrangement had its all-star lineup for both songs with Tats, Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）, and Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）helping out on "Happy Happy Greeting", and Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）involved in the latter.
OK...this is going to be a slightly off-kilter Reminiscings of Youth chapter this week since I'll be talking about something in the year 1999 when I was well into my 30s. Still, I can say that this is a ROY article if I just substitute "youth" with "youngishness" (yeah, I realize that this isn't a real word...it's been given a really angry red underline).
But first, let's go with some background for me and this song. Irving Berlin, one of the masters within the Great American Songbook of jazz songs and show tunes, created "Let's Face the Music and Dance" for the 1936 musical "Follow the Fleet" with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It's a song that I had heard from time to time since I was a kid although at the time, I hadn't known the title or its background, although usually it was through the famous scene above of Astaire and Rogers dancing to it that I kept hearing it.
When I look back upon it, I realize that I had been struck by the fact that it was an unusual jazz number with the key changes making it sound romantic, elegant and ominous at the same time. With the lyrics of "There may be trouble ahead, But while there's moonlight, And music and love and romance, Let's face the music and dance" in that first verse along with the succeeding verses, Berlin may have been hinting at the war to come but still asking listeners to not forget about hope and each other's company in a happier spirit.
While reading up on the song via Wikipedia, I discovered that Nat King Cole had done his cover of "Let's Face the Music and Dance" in 1964 with arrangement by Billy May. Compared to the original's feeling of being sadly resigned to a potentially dark future while savoring the moments before then, Cole's take is a joyful ring-a-ding-ding swing through Las Vegas, including a playful organ that seems to have been hauled out from Yankee Stadium. His version was apparently an inspirational one, getting other future singers to do their covers of the Berlin classic.
And that brings me to the present...well, actually 23 years ago. I was walking through the long mall underneath the Shinkansen tracks in Sukibayashi which is located midway between Ginza and Hibiya in Tokyo. There was a very long branch of HMV taking up a good chunk of the mall and when I came across the jazz section, I heard this familiar tune on the speakers which happened to be a new version of "Let's Face the Music and Dance".
Back around the end of the century, I did have my jazz-fixated age so I was more than happy to enter HMV Jazz and find out who was behind this classy, mellow and really romantic version of the song; nothing ominous. It was much longer than any other take and it also had a very pleasant bossa nova kick in there. Fortunately for me, it just so happened that jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall had released her latest album, "When I Look in Your Eyes" from June 1999.
Before that fateful encounter at HMV, I had never heard of Krall, so it was wonderful to hear that she's a fellow Canadian of my generation, being born in Nanaimo, British Columbia. One of the things that was another winner for her along with the amazing arrangement was indeed her voice. It smoked pleasantly like the rising wisps of a Cuban cigar and there was even a swagger in there and on her face which was strangely reminiscent of Elvis...so how ironic that she would end up marrying another Elvis.
It won't be a surprise for you to read that I bought "When I Look in Your Eyes" lickety-split, and it's good to know that it did end up with some pedigree since it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Album of the Year, and won the awards for Best Jazz Vocal and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical in early 2000. Since then, I've bought a few more Krall albums (including her Christmas one) and I even got to go to her concert in Bunkamura in Shibuya a few years later. It was just after that she'd gotten married to Mr. Costello and I thought it ran a tad short but becoming a fan, I think that any length of concert would seem short.
I'm sure that Ms. Krall has been to Japan quite a few times since my time in seeing her, and the above displays her 2019 tour in the country. As a coda for this story, her "Let's Face the Music and Dance" remains my favourite version of the song.
So, which three songs were in the Top 10 of Oricon in June 1999?
Never liked amusement park rides although I know that there are far more people who enjoy them during the summer. For me though, the rides are basically massive wood-and-steel invitations for me to show fellow park visitors what I had to eat in the past 12 hours. "Ma'am...I'm very sorry that my partially digested kielbasa sandwich splattered you in the eye, but really, it is that good, and you can get it for $5.85 at the stand behind the roller coaster."
All that gruesome prelude is to introduce another one of KinKi Kids' trademark hits, "Jet Coaster Romance"(Roller Coaster Romance) from April 1998. Written and composed by the big tandem of Takashi Matsumoto and Tatsuro Yamashita（松本隆・山下達郎）, this song indeed is fully imbued by the breezy sea winds and bright sun of summer along the Japanese coast...especially obvious considering that latter fellow.
Yet, the jet coaster of the song is merely a metaphor for the thrilling ups and downs of romance during the hot season. Matsumoto and Yamashita had also created KinKi Kids' first big hit, "Garasu no Shonen"（硝子の少年）the year before but I think unlike that debut single, the Kids' 3rd single doesn't seem to have that hint of yesteryear or classic Yamashita. Mind you, there is that feeling of disco in the first couple of seconds, but otherwise, "Jet Coaster Romance" does sound like an independent animal for the Domoto boys.
Selling 500,000 copies in its first week, "Jet Coaster Romance" hit No. 1 with a bullet train, and not surprisingly, it became a million-seller, eventually becoming the 18th-ranked single of 1998. It was also used as the campaign song for All Nippon Airways for Okinawa in that year.
Watching TBS' "Countdown TV" in the wee hours of Sunday morning in Ichikawa, I was somewhat impressed at how much the producers were able to crunch in those rankings, sometimes all the way from No. 100 to No. 1 within 45 minutes (although I've read that "CDTV" has now been expanded to 70 minutes). The No. 50 to No. 100 songs were always given that one-second exposure at such a speed that if I hadn't had my lights on, I would have been afflicted with seizures.
The other night when I was watching "VS. Arashi"（VS嵐）, some of the Arashi fellows were reminiscing about dramas that they had appeared in years and years ago with one of them being "Bokura no Yuuki ~ Miman Toshi"（ぼくらの勇気 未満都市...Our Courage: Not Quite A City） back in 1997. Basically, this was a couple of years before Arashi even debuted as a singing and dancing Johnny's group. The sci-fi drama was actually a showcase for their senpai, Kinki Kids.
As they were referring back to "Bokura no Yuuki", the theme song was playing quietly in the background, but I heard enough of it to plunk myself on the head and go "OMG! I remember this one." It basically blew through the windmills of my mind all these years. The theme was "Aisareru yori Aishitai" (I Want To Love Rather Than Be Loved) by Kinki Kids.
Now, I did mention "CDTV" at the top there. Well, it turns out that I kept hearing excerpts of the song during the ranking reports on the show, and although it did very well on the Oricon charts (for which I will give the stats later), I could only remember the brief excerpts. I don't recall ever hearing the whole song.
Until very recently. As it turns out, "Aisareru yori Aishitai" sounds pretty darn good. As was the case with their hit debut single, "Garasu no Shonen"（硝子の少年）, created by the veteran hitmakers Tatsuro Yamashita and Takashi Matsumoto（山下達郎・松本隆）, Kinki Kids' 2nd single was also handled by a couple of vets, lyricist Hiromi Mori（森浩美）and composer Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）, and "Aisareru yori Aishitai" also had that touch of past music infused into it...perhaps some 80s disco. I only ever heard the main refrain but on hearing the rest of the song with that decade's melodic essence in there, I could only go "Where have you been all my musical life?".
I mentioned in the "Garasu no Shonen" article that even songwriting masters Yamashita and Matsumoto felt a really large sunlamp on them since Johnny Kitagawa slapped down the conditions that the Kinki Kids' debut had to be a No. 1 from the get-go and a million copies sold. The song did deliver in huge spades but now according to the J-Wiki article for the 2nd song, Mori related that he had felt tremendous pressure in helping make this song due to the huge success of "Garasu no Shonen".
He and Makaino needn't have worried. Although "Aisareru yori Aishitai" debuted in November 1997, it not only did two 2-week stints at No. 1 on Oricon by the end of the year, it became the 59th-ranked single for that year and even ended up as the 8th-ranked single for 1998. In fact, it sold half a million copies in its first week alone and would become the second-best selling single in Kinki Kids' career, just below "Garasu no Shonen" with over 1.6 million copies sold. This may only be the second time that I've mentioned that a song actually went Quadruple Platinum.
Mori and Makaino must have really celebrated with a goodly amount of libation on getting the good news.
On last week's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, I was surprised to hear that one-half of the Kinki Kids, dark-haired Tsuyoshi Domoto（堂本剛）, has been indisposed for almost a month due to a sudden bout of deafness in one ear. So it was only his partner, Koichi Domoto（堂本光一）, present on the show. I hope Tsuyoshi-san is well on the mend.
I think until Arashi（嵐）was able to get on top of the Johnny's Entertainment heap, the Kinki Kids were the Johnny's group that I could reliably depend on for comic zingers as well as music. It explains how they were able to front a late Saturday night music variety show for several years way back when.
And around that time, the Kinki Kids came up with another hit from their 7th single"Flower". Released in May 1999, this is a very happy song with a slight reggae beat which was written and composed by the music group HΛL, and its memory came back to me when "Uta Kon" devoted a couple of minutes to a quick retrospective of the Kids' music.
What I also found out is that City Pop guitarist Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）arranged the chorus sections. And even more importantly is that this was yet another Kinki Kids hit that reached the No. 1 spot. What I hadn't done in the previous Kinki Kids articles was mention that the Domotos have the Guinness record of scoring the longest consecutive run of No. 1 singles since their debut in history! Yup, they have released 38 singles including one that came out less than a week ago, "The Red Light", and all of them hit the top spot on Oricon. Not B'z, not Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）and not Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）can claim that record.
In its first week alone, "Flower" managed to sell close to 370,000 copies and overall sold a little over a million copies, their 4th million-seller. It would also become the 10th-ranked single of 1999. Plus, it was the song for ANA's Okinawa campaign.
"Flower" was also a track on Kinki Kids' 3rd album"C Album" which came out in August 1999. That album also hit No. 1 and went Triple Platinum, becoming the 28th-ranked album of the year.
This was an interesting one for a Johnny's Entertainment song. I think there have been tunes done by various Johnny's groups in the past which had a bit of a Mood Kayo twist in it, but for some reason, "Garasu no Shonen"(Glass Boys) struck me as being less pastiche than usual. But then again, when you have Tatsuro Yamashita and Takashi Matsumoto（山下達郎・松本隆）behind its creation, expectations can be high.
And according to the J-Wiki article on the song, head honcho Johnny Kitagawa told Yamashita and Matsumoto regarding what would eventually become the debut tune for the Kinki Kids that he would only accept a million copies in salesANDa debut ranking of No. 1 on Oricon as the minimum levels for success. Even for those guys, I could only imagine that their deodorant was probably working overtime with that commandment from the enigmatic Johnny. The two started raising questions like "If I were (songwriter) Kyohei Tsutumi, what kind of song would I make?" Pressure was indeed on.
Even when "Garasu no Shonen" was completed and released in July 1997, there were criticisms of it being "too old-fogeyish" and "can't dance to it". However, there was the more generous other side which praised the song as being nostalgic to the point that it sounded fresh and which apparently brought attention from people who weren't usually fans of Yamashita or Matsumoto. In fact, crazily enough, both of Johnny's requests were met: it started Oricon life at the No. 1 position and sold over 1.6 million copies! It would finish the year as the No. 2 song, just behind Namie Amuro's（安室奈美絵）massive hit, "Can You Celebrate". I can only think that the Domoto guys probably still send Christmas cards the size of a Toyota to their songwriters.
Listening to "Garasu no Shonen", I had no doubt that it was sung by a Johnny's duo. However there was also that strong echo of yesteryear almost to the point that I could imagine the karaoke video of it having the usual Mood Kayo trope of a couple dancing on the floor and then sipping their glasses of booze at the bar. And this was a song created by a couple of guys who helped pioneer City Pop/New Music in the 1970s.
I don't know when Yamashita did a cover of the song but here it is.
I guess when I look back at it, one of my television viewing hubs when I was in Japan was Saturday nights. During my Gunma years, I used to watch The Tunnels'"Neruton Club" and then the sketch show "Yume de Aetara" on Fuji-TV at 11:30 p.m. (Lindberg's "Believe In Love" was one of the theme songs). Then, several years later, when I got into my Ichikawa years, there was another variety show in that time slot called "Love Love Aishiteiru"(Love Love 愛している....Love Love I Love You）.
The half-hour show (1996-2001) was a literal potpourri of tarento and singers, with Johnny's Entertainment duo, Kinki Kids, and veteran singer Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎） headlining the festivities. Each week, a musically-inclined actor or a bona fide singer would appear for a bit of humourous chit-chat and then some music, with an assist by the Kids and Yoshida. The backup band consisted of one-third of Alfee, half of the Bubblegum Brothers, R&B guy Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三） and zany teen tarento Tomoe Shinohara（篠原ともえ） among others. There was someone for everybody.
I was a pretty faithful viewer of "Love Love Aishiteiru" for some of the back-&-forth quipping amongst the hosts and guests. But I think one of the running gags for the whole show was seeing whether the Kinki Kids could get the stone-faced and bespectacled Yoshida (whose nickname was The Sphinx, mostly due to his hairstyle back in his folkie 70s) to crack a laugh...didn't happen often but it was delightful to watch when it did.
In any case, one of my highlights was whenever the show started and the whole gang goes into the rendition of the theme song, "Zenbu Dakishimete"(Embrace All), a good time tune which was composed by Yoshida and written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）. It was also great at the time to pick it as a karaoke selection at the boxes since just like when the Love Love All-Stars (the collective name for the cast) perform it, one has to quickly zip through the lyrics, and usually even the Kinki Kids and Yoshida aren't entirely successful which encourages the rest of us common folk.
Though Kinki Kids and Yoshida did their song together on the show, they also had their own versions of "Zenbu Dakishimete" with Yoshida's take included on his 1997 album, "Minna Daisuki"（みんな大好き....I Love Everybody）, and the Kids released a single the following year. The above video is for Yoshida's self-cover.
As for the Kinki Kids, the duo is Koichi Domoto（堂本光一） and Tsuyoshi Domoto（堂本剛）...same family names but no relation whatsover. They first met up at a Hikaru Genji concert in 1991, and as they went up the Johnny's Entertainment ladder, they were given a variety of names until they settled on Kinki Kids since both of them were from the Kinki region of Japan, which is also known as the Kansai region including Osaka, Wakayama and Mie Prefectures. Their first single actually came out some months after the debut of "Love Love Aishiteiru" in 1997, the hit "Glass no Shonen"（ガラスの少年） created by Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）.
I have to finish this by including one of the segments from the show. The overcaffeinated and oversucrosed Tomoe Shinohara started things off at 11:30 with her "Puri-puri-pretty" gig in which she invaded the dressing rooms of the guests and basically got abused. On another variety show, Shinohara even had a chance to meet Robin Williams for a short interview. Much hilarity ensued, but suffice it to say, Williams won the insanity match handily.
