Well, I've got one final challenge as we all rush to the end of 2025. I'm not too far away in terms of the number of articles for this year to reach 1000. However, I'm gonna have to increase my output by a fair bit to reach that goal before Wednesday the 31st and I figure by that point, I'm going to be busy watching this year's Kohaku Utagassen.
Anyways, let's begin the push with a band that I've been fascinated by for some years. Unfortunately at the time, I had only been able to find one complete tune on YouTube by Makkin & The New Music Stuff and that was back in 2019. Bassist Toshiro "Makkin" Matsuki（松木俊郎）began this solo project of bringing together a lot of the groovier stuff from the 1970s such as soul, funk and other New Music influences to show some of the really nice old-school stuff once more.
Happily, one YouTube channel cba abc was kind enough to upload Matsuki's first album of this project, "Makkin & The New Music Stuff" from June 2006, and though this was a solo thing for him, he did love his collaborations with various other professionals. Case in point, the second track from 33 seconds is "Kimi ga Suki" (I Love You) with Genki Ohmori（大森元気）from the indies band Zanzow Cafe（残像カフェ）handling the vocals. As expected from the sound that Makkin had wanted to bring back, "Kimi ga Suki" is one nostalgic sunny and summery trip that would probably have the good folks at Sugar Babe smiling in approval. And the way Ohmori sounds here, I'd think that his girlfriend was right in the studio with everyone else. She would be smiling in approval, too.
