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.
Up to now, it's just been the one Masanori Ikeda（池田政典）song on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and that was his contribution to the "Kimagure Orange Road"（きまぐれオレンジ☆ロード）series with his "Night of Summerside" in 1987. He had a relatively short stint as a singer, but I was curious to see what else he had up his sleeves besides anything to do with anison.
Well, his debut album came out in October of that same year, "Quarterback", and one of the tracks is "Let Me Love". It's a smooth City Pop number with some of those silky keyboards and a snazzy horn section leading the way. I'd say that it would be perfect for a drive down the Shuto Expressway on a Friday night. Plus, listeners get another soulful electric guitar solo.
"Let Me Love" was written by Koichi Fujita（藤田浩一）, a guitarist for the Group Sounds band Out Cast（アウト・キャスト） and composed by Toshitsugu Nishihara（西原俊次）. I'd gotten some Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）vibes from listening to the song, and sure enough, Nishihara was a keyboardist for the band. At the same time, there is also something rather Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）about "Let Me Love" as well. In any case, it's a pretty classy tune.
First off, my admiration and respects to 6_6 tina for this wonderful drawing of the main characters of "Kimagure Orange Road"（きまぐれオレンジ☆ロード）, one of the quintessential anime from the 80s. I had just done an article on another Kanako Wada（和田加奈子）song the other day that had nothing to do with "KOR" so I thought I would do a KOR theme song today that had nothing to do with Wada.
Coincidentally, my anime buddy was playing his usual block of anison yesterday and that included a chunk of theme songs from that particular anime including the very first opening theme for "KOR", Masanori Ikeda's（池田政典）"Night of Summerside". I'm sure the producers for the anime version of the manga were probably knocking heads together about what type of song they would put in to introduce the story of Kyosuke, Madoka and Hikaru, and they obviously went with a tune that launched things off to a very zippy and urban tempo. Man, if those were indeed the opening credits to "Kimagure Orange Road" above, I would definitely recommend folks to watch them in a very well-lit room!
"Night of Summerside" was Ikeda's 3rd single from May 1987 and I was quite surprised on listening to it that the singer/actor/seiyuu was still only 20 years old when this was recorded. He sounded like an assured City Pop veteran who had been through the gamut of harbour-side and hotel-top bars. One commenter for one of the YouTube videos of the song remarked that the dynamic tune sounded so 80s, something that wasn't lost on me since there is something very Omega Tribe about the arrangement. And in fact, Kiyotaka Sugiyama（杉山清貴）, who had been the first vocalist for the very 80s Omega Tribe, was Ikeda's sempai in the same management company. According to Ikeda's bio on J-Wiki, Sugiyama presented Ikeda with a pair of his trademark sunglasses which Ikeda proceeded to wear when singing "Night of Summerside".
Yup, summery indeed. I had assumed that "Night of Summerside" was another collaboration between Chinfa Kan and Tetsuji Hayashi（康珍化・林哲司）who had whipped up a number of songs for the kayo-symbolic singers of summer, Omega Tribe and Anri（杏里）. However, as it turned out, Ikeda's representative tune was actually written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）and composed by the band NOBODY. It became the singer's first Top 10 hit by ranking in at No. 10. It would seem everyone was a winner with this one...success for singer and songwriters, and the successful launch of a legendary anime.
The J-Wiki bio also mentions that his music career ended sometime in the early 90s with Ikeda moving fully into acting.
