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.
Just a couple of days ago on Wednesday, I provided Part 1 of The Works of Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）and there I included one of his brief projects which was the band MASH with their variety of City Pop and AOR.
Well, it was just the one 1981 album for MASH, titled "MASH", so I'm bringing over another track called "Poreus". Composed by Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）, who was the co-keyboardist alongside his Padawan Shimizu, and written by Yumi Kojima（児島由美）, "Poreus" is more on the West Coast rocking AOR side of things with Yumi Murata（村田有美）behind the mike.
To be honest, I had no idea what "Poreus" meant so looking up the Cambridge Dictionary, I found out that it is the Dutch word for "porous". Not sure whether there's anything about liquid being allowed to pass through in the creation of the song, but then again, Matsuoka and Kojima may have just come up with the name out of the air rather than liquid.
Being only a couple of months away from his 64th birthday in December, let me wish Nobuyuki Shimizu a very early Happy Birthday. My, he really cut a dapper figure on the cover of his sophomore solo album"Anything Goes" in 1982. It's been a long while since I posted a Creator article on the blog, and as I noted in Yasuhiro Abe's（安部恭弘）"Kanojo ni Dry na Martini wo"（彼女にドライなマティーニを）last Friday, I figured that Shimizu needed to get his due here soon.
The Tokyo-born Shimizu has had plenty of mentions on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" over the years. It's no surprise since he's not only a musician on the keyboards (main), guitar, bass and drums, having begun in the 1970s, but he has been a composer and an arranger since the 1980s. His connections with other figures in the Japanese music industry began very early in his life with one of his classmates in piano lessons being future fellow musician and songwriter Yuuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）. Additionally, during his time at Tokyo Metropolitan Matsubara High School, he created a band with his kohai EPO, Yoshiyuki Sahashi（佐橋佳幸）and others after which he became a student of the late Latin jazz pianist Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）.
From my view, Shimizu has been one of the most prolific songwriters and arrangers in Japanese pop music, so I realized that I need to divvy up this tribute to him in two parts. The first half will go into his early days as a band man and then arranger entering the 1980s.
When I first wrote about Kinokuniya Band（紀ノ国屋バンド）in 2018, it was for this jazzy cover of Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"4AM" on their one-and-only album "Street Sensation" (1979). What I hadn't realized until later was that a 17-year-old Shimizu was a part of the band when they started up in 1976. Afterwards, he would also act as a support musician for Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Ohnuki and Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and become a general session musician.
Shimizu may be primarily known as someone who supports other singers but he has put out his own discography beginning with his 1980"Corner Top" album. From that one is the romantic and urbane "Sayonara Mata Itsuka". Enjoy the sunset! 🌇
Shimizu was also involved in another short-lived if slightly flashier urban contemporary band project, MASH, with their own self-titled album in 1981. This time, he was matched up with his mentor Matsuoka, vocalist Yumi Murata（村田有美）and drummer "Ponta" Murakami（村上秀一）.
The way the J-Wiki timeline posits, Shimizu's arranging career started with his kohai and former school bandmate EPO's classic "Downtown", her debut single. A marked contrast from the original Sugar Babe New Music/rock tune from the mid-1970s, the half-decade-later cover has that added funkiness with synthesizers that make her "Downtown" a City Pop favourite and not a technopop tune. It really did sound like a welcome to bright and sparkly Tokyo of the 1980s, and for me, the template was set for Shimizu's arrangement style at least where this decade was concerned.
EPO was a frequent client of Shimizu but so was another City Pop veteran, Yasuhiro Abe, beginning with his own debut single"You Got It!". The fantastic and wailing electric guitar leading the way has struck me as another Shimizu trope during that time. Abe and Shimizu co-arranged this one.
Well, the aforementioned Abe and Ohnuki helped out on backup vocals for this Shimizu-arranged "U, Fu, Fu, Fu", a huge hit for EPO. The singer and the arranger collaborated to shape the melody into this bright and cheerful tune matching her style with the help of the keyboards and strings. The strings near the end really send listeners soaring into the ether.
Composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）and lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）created the most well-known song from the "Macross"（マクロス）anime franchise, and it was with Shimizu's arrangement that "Ai Oboeteimasuka?" became this epic aidoru-cute yet Zentraedi-destroying ballad. There wasn't anything urgent nor military about it at all; just a simple love song to the universe and a career-making song for Mari Iijima（飯島真理）.
The first time that I heard about this group, I couldn't help but be reminded of the old CBS sitcom-turned-dramedy "M*A*S*H" based on the movie which had in turn been based on the 1968 novel by Richard Hooker. I watched the show in its later years when it was far into providing more drama than loony comedy so I had to rely on the nightly reruns on Canadian TV to catch up on the early years.
Browsing through YouTube, I did discover this group MASH and its funky City Pop tune "LOVE". Couldn't have asked for a more genre-specific song for Urban Contemporary Fridays on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" than this one; it's quite the enjoyable romp through the megalopolis. I just had to find out who these guys were.
Well, it wasn't that difficult to find out at least some information about this MASH which had just that one sole album "MASH" from June 1981. According to his profile on J-Wiki, the group was jazz/fusion keyboardist Naoya Matsuoka's（松岡直也）brief project which didn't last too long since the costumes and the sound level were apparently a little too loud for comfort when his group did appear on stage. That was too bad though since it was quite the lineup in MASH with Yumi Murata（村田有美）on vocals, "Ponta" Murakami（村上秀一）on drums, and Matsuoka himself and Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）on keyboards among other famous studio musicians. On the blog "The Listener of Music Media", I also found out that it was Matsuoka behind the melody and Konosuke Fuji（藤公之介）on the lyrics.
I've seen some sites selling the presumably rare "MASH" for somewhere between 5000 and 6000 yen, but Tower Records has some copies at the saner price of 1,430 yen.
