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.
It was almost a couple of months ago when I posted Nanako Sato's（佐藤奈々子）"Muse no Koibito"（ミューズの恋人）and I got quite a few complimentary comments about the cover for the source album, her December 1977 "Sweet Swingin'". To use an old phrase: hubba-hubba.💓
Well, remembering all that, I've decided to post an article on another track from "Sweet Swingin'" and that would be her "Cheap Dance". Like "Muse no Koibito", this was also written by Sato and composed by Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）but this time, I wouldn't say that this was a City Pop tune per se. It's more of a good ol' honky-tonk rock n' roll number and I could actually imagine young Sato dancing and singing it up in a farm-fresh summer dress at some dive bar in either America or Japan with those hard-working horns behind her.
On a PS note, I finally got to throw the YouTube link into Sonoteller AI after a few failed attempts, and what I got was rather interesting, to say the least:
LYRICS ANALYSIS:
The lyrics depict a scene of waking up in the afternoon surrounded by a swirling vortex. The imagery is vivid, with references to bright lights and summer activities. The language used is Japanese. The emotions conveyed are energetic and playful. There is no explicit content in the lyrics.
MUSIC ANALYSIS:
Genres
Pop (80), Rock (70), Indie (60), Electronic (50), Dance (40)
Subgenres
Pop rock (80), Indie pop (70), Electronic rock (60), Dance-pop (50), Indie rock (40)
This song by City Pop chanteuse Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）had me by the throat right from its rolling piano intro which sounds like a fresh babbling brook in the forest.
"Muse no Koibito"(The Muse's Lover) is a ballad from Sato's December 1977 sophomore album"Sweet Swingin'". Composed by the singer along with her own muse Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）and written by Sato as well, it flows across the score sheet like a one-day thrill of a romantic adventure from morning to night in those 1970s. From her vocals and the arrangement, it also sounds like something that another up-and-comer from those days, Junko Yagami（八神純子）, would also tackle. It has that feel of a midtown-to-downtown escapade but I think the City Pop tones are more subdued here. Instead, what comes more to the fore is the flavour of female pop balladry from America. You can also try another track from the album, "Shuumatsu no Highway"（週末のハイウェイ）.
Well, I figure if I can reference the latest Marvel flick "Thunderbolts*" a few days ago, I can throw in Johnny Storm the Human Torch for this one.
A few years ago, I profiled a 1979 album "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz", a collaboration between the band Moonriders（ムーンライダーズ）and singer-songwriter Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）which came about from the latter's relatively recent discovery of recorded but unaired tunes that she had done with the former decades previously.
One of the songs on the album that I hadn't covered in the original 2022 article is Moonriders and Sato's cover of the former's "Hinotama Boy"(Fireball Boy). Written and composed by Keiichi Suzuki（鈴木慶一）, it's a combination of hot and sultry Sato with Suzuki giving a bluesy rock vocal performance along the lines of a young Tom Waits (still a few bottles of hard liquor away from getting that Waits growl) as the lyrics tell of a life of a young lad living life rough in the big city...maybe an updated version of Hibari Misora's（美空ひばり）Shoeshine Boy (or Girl). Can't help but think of the two sashaying across a rough wooden floor in a honky-tonk dive bar deep downtown as they are performing "Hinotama Boy" which strikes me as something rather prog rock, especially with the violin in there.
As I mentioned above, the track on "Radio Moon" is a cover of the original Moonriders' title track from the January 1976"Hinotama Boy" album, and that original is even snazzier with some jazzier arrangements in there. This time, the venue isn't an alleyway honky-tonk but a cabaret club a grade higher with room for those cool horns. Also, the video above provided by kun hoh is absolutely top-notch and an obvious labour of love that was first put up about a decade ago.
There were a number of stars helping out on the original such as Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）, Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）and Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）. In fact, according to the J-Wiki writeup on the album, Suzuki had based the song on Hosono's way of music. Finally, if I were to Marvelize this song, it wouldn't be "FLAME ON!" but "Simmer...".
I barely remember her since I was only a toddler at the time, but Twiggy is a British model and actress who set cameras and the fashion world ablaze in the 1960s thanks to that thin appearance, short hair and large doe eyes. Happy to hear that she's still around at the age of 75.
So, it's not a surprise at all that a Pizzicato Five song used her name twice for the title. "Twiggy, Twiggy" is a track on the band's September 1991 5th album,"Josei Joui Jidai"（女性上位時代...This Year's Girl）, and it's definitely an up-and-at-'em Shibuya-kei tune with timpani and dance-luring rhythms (including a barrage of orchestra hits) along with the Divine Ms. Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴） singing sweetly in our ears. The big surprise though is that it wasn't Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽） behind words and music for "Twiggy, Twiggy" (although he was behind them for most of the other tracks); it was actually 1970s City Pop chanteuse Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）taking care of those.
I'll be honest...the music video with Nomiya and perhaps Konishi and other member Keitaro Takanami（高浪慶太郎）had me so mesmerized as I was about to write this article that when my screen suddenly went all crazy eights necessitating me to shut down and reboot my computer, I had assumed that it was all part of the P5 "Twiggy, Twiggy" experience. Well, no it wasn't. And I took a good look at the security protocols. I'm hoping that what happened was just one of those glitches of an aging unit. But yeah, it's quite the song.
Despite the fears of a huge blizzard yesterday, the worst actually didn't come to pass. In fact, although the transit ride downtown took about twice as long as it usually does, I was able to head down to a good yakitori restaurant to meet up with fellow KKP contributor Larry Chan for dinner. Good conversation and food although my gastronomical excesses have become a thing of the past due to age (and sarcastically speaking, divine punishment). And then, I took a leisurely ride on the streetcar route that I hadn't ridden in about thirty years. There was barely anyone aboard and I could comfortably sleep off some of the cassis orange haze I'd built up at the restaurant.
Well, back to Urban Contemporary Fridays here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", and we start off this batch with Nanako Sato's（佐藤奈々子）"Powder Game" from her July 1979 album"Kissing Fish". It's definitely Sato City Pop but with the singer-songwriter being even perkier as her lyrics seem to be tackling about a couple of common household powders: baby and baking. She's even perkier perhaps due to the influence of Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）who came up with the melody. Just the way that Sato rides her delivery like a roller coaster reminds me so much of the Yano vocal style; actually, I think Yano herself contributes a bit of background chorus.
There was contemporary J-Pop playing over the speakers at the restaurant last night which I could barely hear. Maybe if something like "Powder Game" had been playing instead, perhaps I could have ended up devouring more skewers of yakitori.
Just when she sings "...outside the window..." in her languid voice, the atmosphere suddenly shifts, and it's at that point when the world according to Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）unmistakably opens up. "Shuumatsu no Highway" is representative of the "Subterranean no Futari Botchi"（サブタレニアン二人ぼっち）honeymoon period between the singer and Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）due to the comfortably swinging melodies they contributed. The city scenes that she was looking for are always seemingly lonely and precious even now.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised"(2020).
Well, it was about a year ago when I first discovered that City Pop princess Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）had opted to go into another direction with her music. That's right...she formed a band SPY in 1980, a group which veered more toward the new New Wave and synthpop. So, last year, I could only find one song from their lone self-titled album represented on YouTube, "Hello Mr. SPY".
Since then though, I was told by one commenter that the remainder of the songs from "SPY" have apparently gotten onto YouTube. That includes the second track on Side B, "Taiyo to Mannequin" (The Sun and the Mannequin). Sato wrote and composed the tune which begins briefly with something approximating her old City Pop and there's even some fusion being filtered through some of those synthesizers. However, there is always that haze hovering overhead signaling that indeed, SPY is a different animal before some bouncy ska makes its presence known. Meanwhile, Sato's voice gets into a rather jumpy and slightly hiccoughy rhythm, almost approaching the style of future pop star Cyndi Lauper.
Well, let's see here. I put down the instructions in the AI art generator for a City Pop highway in Tokyo and the above is the result. Not too bad but maybe next time I'll also request a driver's-eye view instead of the sky one.
Now the reason that I opted once more to go to the art generator was this song. "Shuumatsu no Highway" (Weekend Highway) is a track on Nanako Sato's（佐藤奈々子）Christmas Day 1977 2nd album"Sweet Swingin'" and it fits the bill in terms of what I envisaged to be a 1970s City Pop tune. There is that lovely keyboard, the shimmering strings and the bluesy saxophone (Sato even calls out for that last instrument in the song). As well, there is a guitar in there that made me wonder if the player ended up helping out on the "Law & Order" theme song.😀
Written and composed by Sato with Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）also co-composing, the singer relates her story about how much she loves a ride on the highway at night. Oh, to be on one of those City Pop drives in a Japanese metropolis. Perhaps I should have asked for a night scene in the AI generator if I had listened and read her lyrics a bit more closely.
Welcome to another Reminiscings of Youth to start off Thursday. Y'know...I mistakenly thought that Carly Simon's big hit "Nobody Does It Better" had been used as a commercial jingle for Heinz Ketchup when it had actually been Fleecy Fabric Softener which got the song (strangely enough, it was Simon's "Anticipation" which got the ketchup gig). There was some vague remembrance that "Nobody Does It Better" was used to hawk some household product, and I think that it was the first time that I had ever listened to the hit.
I can imagine that as a kid I must have done a double take when I found out that "Nobody Does It Better" had actually been a theme song for the third of Roger Moore's James Bond outings "The Spy Who Loved Me" which was released in July 1977 in the UK (August in the USA). The first 007 flick which I ever saw on the big screen was Moore's final outing as the superspy, "From a View to a Kill" in the mid-1980s so anything before that was simply through reruns on television. With the usual rule of motion pictures finally hitting TV perhaps three years following their initial run at the theatres, it would have been around 1980 that I finally got to see "The Spy Who Loved Me", so maybe around the same time that I first saw the Fleecy ads. It's ironic then that a song that was used to hawk softener had once been used to advertise a spy whose hidden weapon often...well, you get the picture.😱
Getting back to "The Spy Who Loved Me", it has remained my favourite of the Moore Bond outings, partly because of Simon's theme but also because of 007's Lotus Esprit, the final battle against villain Stromberg, Jaws, and that opening sequence before the credits. I heard that British audiences had gone absolutely gangbusters when the parachute opened up into the Union Jack.
"Nobody Does It Better" was released as a single in the same month as the movie by Simon with lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager and music by Marvin Hamlisch. It's been one of the better-received Bond themes and it's one of my favourite Bond songs as a work that has been reflective of how a lot of those 007 themes were going for the more contemporary sounds of that decade compared to the swinging jazz of the 1960s including the James Bond theme itself. The combination of piano and strings of that time, which was also part and parcel of "Nobody Does It Better", has always struck me with the label of "POWER BALLAD OF THE 1970s" and I think that Japanese pop music picked up on that, too.
Apparently though, somebody did it better than "Nobody Does It Better" since despite the fact that it had been nominated for awards such as an Oscar and a Grammy, it didn't win anything. Still, I cherish it much more than those winners. It hit No. 2 on both the charts in America and Canada.
A few months ago, Nick Luscombe interviewed another City Pop chanteuse for his "City Pop Stories" series, and this time it was Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）! He did point out that kittenish and whispery jazz-pop voice of hers from the 1970s which may have influenced some other singers such as Miharu Koshi（越美晴）and perhaps even Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）to some extent. It's interesting though that Koshi and Ohnuki did make that turn in their musical stylings to a technopop/New Wave adventure going into the 1980s.
And so did Sato, if perhaps for just one album. But before that, she had to form a band called SPY with Kenji Iwakura（岩倉健二）, Yoshinori Toda（戸田吉則）and Hiroshi/Yu Nagata（永田裕）in 1980. Yup, that is indeed Sato on the cover for that one-and-only LP "SPY". Gone are her long and luxurious auburn tresses to be replaced with something a bit more post-punk spiky.
From "SPY" is "Hello Mr. SPY" which is that New Wavy bounce-fest and the crazy thing is that Sato's voice works well with the melodic dancing, vocal strutting and chirps. Indeed, although the music by Sato and Iwakura grabs that new genre of 80s music and runs with it, I couldn't help but feel that the underlying rhythm especially in the intro was still a final tether to the singer's City Pop days. Sato was behind the lyrics, too. I also see that there is at least one more track from "SPY" on YouTube, so I'll have to give that a listen as well.
Not quite sure what triggered that idea for a cover for Izumi Kobayashi's（小林泉美）December 1981"Coconuts High" except maybe Kobayashi did get high on coconuts. Anyways, we should get over to the final track for this album, "Mr. Cool", which does sound like a finale with its languid and relaxing melody by Kobayashi herself. Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）was responsible for the lyrics which are delivered by the singer in her characteristic breathy and caressing way.
With the classy AOR spiced up slightly with some Latin, I entertained the thought that this could have also been covered by fellow City Pop/J-AOR artist Junko Yagami（八神純子）.
However, Kobayashi's sultry take on "Mr. Cool" was itself a cover of the song that she provided fellow singer Tomoko Kuwae（桑江知子）the previous year for her April 1980 album"Mr. Cool". There seems to be a little more heartache in Kuwae's vocals while overall, the title track has some more City Pop vibe compared to the Resort Pop of Kobayashi's cover.
I've already mentioned the fact in the last few days on Twitter, but as I was scrolling down "The Japan Times" online, I found an article titled "Nanako Sato brings back the groove of a bygone era" dated August 22nd, 2022. In it, the singer-songwriter（佐藤奈々子）that I had first discovered in the pages of "Japanese City Pop" related her surprise reunion with a spate of songs that she had recorded live with the rock band the Moonriders（ムーンライダーズ）in a radio station studio back in 1979 via a long-lost CD that was passed onto her via acquaintances. Those songs have now been placed into an album titled "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz" which was earlier in August on CD and Spotify. It consists of songs that both Sato and the Moonriders recorded in their respective earlier works; for Sato, her songs came from her 1977 album"Pillow Talk", while for the Moonriders, their tunes originated from the following albums: their 1976 "Hinotama Boy"（火の玉ボーイ...Fireball Boy）, "Istanbul Mambo" from 1977, and "Nouvelles Vague" from 1978.
By the way, "The Japan Times" allows unsubscribed readers to go through an entire article just once unscathed before they stop you from reading a second time so that you can set up an account with them. So, unless you are interested in getting a subscription with the newspaper, get to the article that one time and do a copy-and-paste if you plan to peruse it more than once.
I'll cover about half the album since I don't want to steal all of your spirit of adventure in exploring this fascinating set of eight tracks, although I may decide to check out some of those other songs in future individual articles. Let's begin with the first song "Swimmer"（スイマー）which was originally on the aforementioned "Nouvelles Vague". Written and composed by vocalist Keiichi Suzuki（鈴木慶一）, it's a hit-the-surf-running tune in this version as it takes on the rock side of New Music, and especially with Moonrider Masahiro Takekawa（武川雅寛）going off on his violin, I thought things were pretty progressive rock or progressive pop. If I've read the lyrics correctly, the song is about comparing getting into the love game with trying to swim through turbulent waters.
Nanako Sato is on the lead here as she purrs her own "Coin Laundry"（コインランドリー）which originated from her "Pillow Talk" LP. Sato took care of words and music along with her boyfriend at the time, Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）, also helping out on the melody. With all of the tracks coming from previous albums, I'm interested in hearing them all on those records, but I'm especially intrigued by "Coin Laundry" which may be the sexiest tune about a clothes-washing establishment ever made. I have to check out the original version, but I'm already sold on the song as-is here on "Radio Moon", thanks to the 1970s City Pop "haze" synthesizer effect, the jazziness of it all, and Sato's breathy bedroom vocals (plus Takekawa's violin) which has me thinking this as a Fashion Music piece. Mind you, instead of her draped on a grand piano, she must be lying on top of a Maytag.
"Black Pepper Jealousy"（ブラックペッパー・ジェラシー）is also from Sato's"Pillow Talk" and has Sato and Sano working on this one as well. It's not only got more of a tropical paradise feeling, but it sounds like a number that Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）would have shaken up like some cocktail at a Tiki bar. By the way, Sato's thank yous and introductions are very appealingly distracting.
The final track on "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz" is "Jub Up Family" (ジャブ・アップ・ファミリー), a song which got its KKP article all the way back in March 2013, thanks to contributor nikala. Armed with a truly Devo-esque music video and a New Wave spirit that predated the genre by a couple of years, this was one bizarrely fun song to first hear. As performed on "Radio Moon", "Jub Up Family" takes on more of a Gypsy Jazz and Hosono tropical feeling once more as even Sato gets involved in this lyrical fight between a married couple.
By no means is my selection here a representation of my favourite tracks. I think that all of the tracks are great and would like to read some of your comments about the above and the ones that I have yet to talk about. "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz" is a wonderful discovery by me and a delightful re-discovery for Sato and presumably the Moonriders themselves. It's always nice to unearth some long-lost treasure.
Friday night...and the sight is unfortunately rather drab and wet here in Toronto right now but hopefully the restaurants have been able to bring countermeasures to their patios in the form of awnings or something similar.
It's too bad since this song is the type of song that City Pop fans would like to hear adorning their nursing of their beer or cocktail on some sunset balcony of a bar or other eatery. This is Nanako Sato's（佐藤奈々子）"Saigo no Tejina" (The Last Sleight of Hand) from her 3rd album"Pillow Talk" released in October 1978. I've actually written about one other track from "Pillow Talk", "Koi no Ryuusei"（恋の流星）.
As would befit the times, there is that "haze" effect from the synthesizer to start things off before the Fender Rhodes and a Latin guitar escort Sato's always relaxing and sultry vocals. Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）was the lyricist here and I have to give my compliments to the person running the keyboards especially during the instrumental bridge, and it turns out that it is the keyboard master himself, the late Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）, who composed the bossa nova-tinged "Saigo no Tejina".
Well, if you can't get to a bar tonight, at least you can enjoy that beer in front of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" or YouTube listening to this one.
Not sure how to describe the architecture for this part of Asakusa along Okuyama Omairi Machi. Is it reflective of Taisho Era or early Showa Era? Hard to say...but it looks quite classy at night.
I'm including another track from singer-songwriter Nanako Sato's（佐藤奈々子）1977 debut album"Funny Walkin'" that also has the breezy 70s City Pop of "Subterranean no Futari Botchi"（サブタレニアン二人ぼっち）. This time, though, "Yoru no Isadora" (Isadora of the Night), has much more of an overnight/early morning vibe and Sato's breathy and slightly woozy vocals work as the image of a young tipsy woman stumbling home after a long fun night coalesces in my head.
Written and composed by Sato with Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）also helping out in composition duties, I do wonder if Sano hadn't dived into rock n' roll from the early 1980s whether he would have gone the jazz route. And "Yoru no Isadora" has that jazziness with the added inclusion of the muted trumpet near the end, but it also feels like a New Music tune of that era thanks to the contemporary arrangement. Not surprisingly, it is the final song on Side B of the original LP. It's time to wave nighty-night!
Happy Friday, and for my fellow Torontonians and folks in Peel Region, let's all welcome ourselves to Stage 3 of recovery, although I think that we will all need to straddle that tightrope between enjoying our return of lost freedoms and keeping safe from COVID-19. On the other hand, I'm hoping that somehow Tokyo and the rest of Japan get a handle on another wave of the pandemic that has been washing ashore for the past several days.
On a happier note, I've encountered another YouTube video, this time by Kimi no Station: The Home of City Pop, on which a Japanese talk-variety show covers the international appeal of City Pop that has been grabbing the attention of Japanese media over the past several months. Seeing these fellows voraciously browsing and buying up genre albums and CDs in areas like Shibuya has me reminiscing about the old days when I engaged in my pastime of frequently hitting Tower Records, Tacto, Yamano Music and RecoFAN for any of the good ol' stuff. I probably won't be able to head back to Tokyo any time soon but hopefully, when I do hit my old home, I will be flipping through the discs and LPs once more.
The amusing thing about the above report is how while one of the City Pop browsers holding the Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）LP actually sounds quite calm and collected about his potential purchase, the fellow providing the Japanese voiceover translation comes across as if he were about to experience his first orgasm.😤
In any case, it is a Friday so let's provide the first City Pop song of the day. It's actually been over a couple of years since Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）has made her last appearance as a performer on the pages of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", so I'm more than happy to bring her back. This time around, we have "Koi no Ryuusei" from her 3rd album"Pillow Talk" released in October 1978.
Written and composed by Sato and with co-composing help by Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）, "Koi no Ryuusei" (Meteor of Love) is a smoothly-running song of the genre, perfect for that sunset or early evening drive on the main thoroughfares of Tokyo. Sato's kittenish vocals are very enticing over the driving rhythms and the snappy percussion. It's almost as if the singer is beckoning us listeners by curling her fingers inward through her voice. Of course, there has got to be the sax solo.
Now, the title "Koi no Ryuusei" is very similar to the title of another City Pop classic "Koi wa Ryuusei" (恋は流星...Shooting Star of Love） by Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）who had introduced it the year before, so if you're searching for either, keep an eye out for those Japanese grammatical particles.
Fushigi ne...it truly is. I ordered Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）6th album"C'est Drole ~ Fushigi ne ~" (Strange, Ain't It?) along with one other Ikue album "Slow Memory" back on July 16th and then just this past Monday morning, I got the e-mail from CD Japan that the package has shipped. Now, usually that means the discs won't be entering my hands for another week.
Well, three hours later on Monday afternoon...
THEY'RE HERE!
Man, I wanna congratulate CD Japan for getting that hypersonic jet in the air finally. If it can take human passengers, I wouldn't mind hitching a ride on that plane rather than take the 11~13 hour flight to Haneda on Air Canada.
The slightly "Twilight Zone" anecdote ends here. As for "C'est Drole", which was originally released back in January 1980, I bought it after hearing its title track "Fushigi ne" and after hearing a few more tracks on YouTube. Plus, seeing that another Sakakibara release "Ready Lady" (which I may also get a little later this year) was actually incorporated into my bible of "Japanese City Pop", I was intrigued about what the future Peter Pan used to sing when she was an aidoru, especially since she's been seen more as the friendly TV presence for decades.
Well, I popped in "C'est Drole" into the player and for the next two-thirds of an hour, my opinion of me deserving to eat more crow was further strengthened. As was the case with Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）2nd album"North Wind" which also came out in 1980 (mind you, all the way forward in December), "C'est Drole" didn't strike me as what I had envisioned to be the typical aidoru album of happy bouncy uptempo tunes and super-sweet love ballads. In fact, I got a fair potpourri of genres here too on my first listen. Double in fact, I had actually wondered whether I should have even labeled this as an aidoru album.
Case in point, the first track "Two-Way Street". It launches very much with a romantic saxophone and a soft and mellow ballad which fairly screams AOR. It's an interesting mix of two styles. The jazzy AOR which fills the instrumental passages and then Ikue singing a pop love tune about a man and a woman who may have been together at one point or at least fantasized about it but now walking in different directions on opposite sides of the avenue.
Mayo Shouno（庄野真代）wrote and composed "Two-Way Street". She is famous for singing one of those exotic kayo which was fairly popular in the late 1970s, "Tonde Istanbul"（飛んでイスタンブール）. The other thing that struck me was how well Sakakibara could sing. Something like "Two-Way Street" sounds like a ballad that Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）would tackle but Ikue-chan takes care of it very well. There are also parts of the song which remind me of another more famous song which came out a couple of years prior.
The second track "Omoide no Irie"（思い出の入江...Bay of Memories）was written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Casey Rankin of the band SHOGUN. Although compared to "Two-Way Street", this mellow number is more on the conventional side of kayo/aidoru ballads that I've envisioned, the arrangement by Reijiro Koroku（小六禮次郎）still has the song lifted up a level. I could even imagine one of my favourite singers, Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）, covering this one.
Another bluesy number punctuated by the sax is "Toki wa Utsukushiku"（時は美しく...Time is Beautiful）which straddles that City Pop/AOR line. It's a nice slow twilight shuffle down a street as Ikue serenades her beau about how enjoyable her time is with him. Hearing that sax, I rather wish that somebody had actually put down who handled all of the instruments in the liner notes, but c'est la vie. In any case, Reiko Imamura（いまむられいこ）took care of the lyrics while Rankin once again came up with the music.
Singer-songwriter Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）, who I have also seen within the pages of "Japanese City Pop", was responsible for this happy and quirky "Sweet Sunny Side Up" about wedded bliss showing up over breakfast. Ikue not only sings about getting up early to make the most important meal of the day for her darling hubby but she does it in a faintly early 20th century style. I could almost see a giant NBC microphone materializing in front of her.
My last song for this article is "Kurenai Hana"（紅い花...Red Flowers）, one of my favourite tracks on "C'est Drole". It starts off rather gospel-like before it goes into this cool riff about heartbreak. My imagination once again flies here as I envision Ikue singing in front of a honky-tonk piano somewhere in Paris. Ahhh, l'amour....c'est drole, n'est ce pas? The only thing missing here are those rose petals just frittering away in the cold wind. Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and Koichi Sugiyama（すぎやまこういち）were responsible for this one.
I couldn't find out how "C'est Drole" did on Oricon but I think for Ikue fans, it was a good buy. There is a nice mix of songs by good songwriters and I realized that Sakakibara wasn't just the happy-go-lucky aidoru who popped up on the first few episodes of the Kohaku Utagassen that I had ever seen.
Before I finish off, I have to give thanks to the YouTube uploader who was responsible for most of the videos up here tonight, Dasu（ダス）. He is totally devoted to Sakakibara and thanks to him, I was able to pull the trigger on my wallet to get "C'est Drole" and "Slow Memory", the latter of which I will also talk about in the next week or so.
Quite the interesting title here. "Subterranean no Futari Botchi" (Just A Subterranean Couple) is the first track on Nanako Sato's（佐藤奈々子）debut album"Funny Walkin'" from June 1977. Seeing her name and picture in "Japanese City Pop" for the first time, I had never heard of this singer-songwriter so I was surprised to see that she was represented on YouTube.
Frankly the first time I listened to "Subterranean no Futari Botchi", I was a little unsure of Sato's singing especially in the first number of seconds but after giving it a second try and then a third, things settled down pretty nicely. But among tries, I began the Sato file with her "Doyou no Yoru kara Nichiyou no Asa e"（土曜の夜から日曜の朝へ）instead which was also a track on "Funny Walkin'".
As I mentioned in that first article for Sato, she had that fateful encounter with singer-songwriter Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）which got her behind the mike. And "Subterranean no Futari Botchi" is one of their collaborations with Sano helping out in the melody while Sato took care of both words and music. For those Sano fans, this song may sound somewhat atypical since it comes across as a sunny70s City Popnumber instead of a jeans-and-T-shirt rock song but I can't deny the appeal of a percolating Fender Rhodes.
"Subterranean no Futari Botchi" has Sato singing about a couple just knocking about one Saturday night, footloose and fancy-free...akin to a pair of Coney Island lovers as is mentioned in the lyrics. The hint is also made that perhaps the two are living life somewhat on the edge as Sato even coos that they may be hitchhiking on the road. That brings my paragraph to this reference that shows up in the lyrics as 「サム・トリッピング」. At first, I had assumed it was about some famous person named Sam Tripping (singer? novelist?) but actually, the singer was referring to a 1972 movie titled "Thumb Tripping". The Wikipedia article gives one sentence for the plot: Adventurous hitchhikers decide to accept every ride they are offered and end up with more than they bargained for.
Returning to that interesting title...I gather that the subterranean part might be talking about the couple going underground, doing their own thing without any one from their respective families and friends being the wiser. But unlike the ominous note that "Thumb Tripping" strikes, it looks like the couple will continue their daring escapade up to the morning...and then get back to their ordinary lives according to that last lyric.
Ultimately what I got from "Subterranean no Futari Botchi" is a young man and woman playing out that American fantasy of painting the town red deep into the night, and I think that's what City Pop was all about: Japanese pop music to transport listeners across the Pacific for a bit of the exotic good life.
Been a while but I got to meet a few old friends tonight (Saturday night) down in Greektown on the Danforth at the Pantheon Restaurant. It was busy as all heck and there was a sizable lineup but we got in easily due to some wise reservations, and I can understand why. Tasty souvlaki and flaming saganaki came courtesy of a friendly and witty waiter along with endless bread and butter, and some honey cake for dessert on the house. I gave an appropriately generous tip.
The event tonight gave me an in to talk about the singer Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）for the first time on the blog. For years, I've been seeing her visage on the pages of "Japanese City Pop" but never really got to know her at all. The notable thing about her is that when I first saw her face on the albums that were listed, she reminded me a bit of current R&B songstress Thelma Aoyama（青山テルマ）.
She's got an interesting backstory according to the J-Wiki article on her. Sato was born in Tokyo in 1955 and she had been groomed to become a gymnast along the lines of her aunt who had taken part in the Olympics. However, a head injury during her high school days brought her athletic career to an end. During university, though, she met singer Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）at a mini-concert during the annual campus festival at Keio University that he had participated in, after which he proceeded to teach her the ins and outs of making music. Having her listen to Bob Dylan was part of his curriculum. After winning a songwriting prize at a contest organized by the university, she and Sano worked together to produce Sato's first album"Funny Walkin'" in June 1977 as well as her first single, "Street Corner Betty"（ストリート・コーナー・ベティ）which came out in the same month. And all this happened a few years before Sano himself debuted as a solo singer.
Side-B to "Street Corner Betty" is "Doyou no Yoru kara Nichiyou no Asa e"(Saturday Night to Sunday Morning) which is also a track on "Funny Walkin'". It is the only track that didn't involve either Sato or Sano; Masayuki Okubo（大窪雅之）took care of the writing and composing duties here. And it does stand out since it is a playful jazz ditty that evokes the feeling of those smoke-filled gin joints in the rundown alleys. Just add Sato with a piano, a wood bass and a snare drum.
Sato has a whispery voice filled with a sense of ennui so I think the jazz ballads were a good fit for her although she was known as a City Pop singer. In her first stint as a singer, she released 5 albums including "Funny Walkin'" and 5 singles between 1977 and 1980. She also started to help in writing songs for other artists such as Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）before taking a new path as a professional photographer. In 1993, after living in Paris for 5 years, Sato returned to Japan to take up music once more but this time under the name of nanaco.
Anri's（杏里） 3rd album, "Kanashimi no Kujaku"(Sorrowful Peacock), is not my favourite album of hers ("Boogie Woogie in Mainland", "Circuit of Rainbow" or "Wave" rank quite a bit higher), but it is one of the more interesting that I've come across, and one that I've wanted to profile for a while.
Released in September 1981, I came across it in one of the CD shops in Tokyo. I'd already bought a number of her late 80s/early 90s discs when she was in full thrall with American R&B, and their covers consisted of a very vivacious and smiley Eiko Kawashima standing against a very summery setting. On the other hand, the cover for "Kanashimi no Kujaku" from those early years had Anri looking very pensive in a heavy jacket standing against a tall rugged man with 5 o'clock shadow. Later buying her first 2 albums, "apricot jam" and "Feelin'", the cover for her 3rd album also had her looking more mature when compared to her teenage sylph-like looks on those covers.
In any case, looking at that distinctive cover, I snapped up that album in a jiffy. I listened to the 12 tracks and found them revealing in that Anri sounded very un-Anri-like. Her creamy vocals were still recognizable, but they were pushing in a totally different direction. Case in point, the 2nd track, "Espresso de Nemurenai"(エスプレッソで眠れない....Can't Sleep Cause of the Espresso) is basically Anri's telling of an Italian romance-comedy in which a love 'em-and-leave 'em Casanova takes off in his green Fiat while his latest conquest is left wondering whether he'll return. The lyrics were by prolific Shigesato Itoi（糸井重里） and the song was composed by Keiichi Suzuki（鈴木慶一） (I wonder if Suzuki had been a few of those small cups of the killer coffee when he was creating this song). The video is up above. The song was also Anri's 9th single released in February 1982.
Like "Espresso de Nemurenai", the rest of the tracks in this album took on a more European New Music feeling which, as Anri fans would know, was a dramatically different bent for the singer, who had just turned 20 at that time. The official age of turning into an adult in Japan is the big Two-Oh, so perhaps Anri may have wanted to reflect this more mature turn of musical phrase. In the album, she took on old-fashioned French pop, something that sounded more Central Asian, and even a touch of New Wave via Blondie mixed in with some of that old summer pop through Track 10, "Itsu no Hi ka Happy End"（いつの日かHappy End...When Is My Happy End?) which was written by Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）, who herself had been going through some musical changes at the time as well.
(full album)
Keiichi Suzuki, the producer of the album, was also the lead vocal for The Moonriders, a pop and rock band that had started up in 1975, and he and a couple of other members of the band were helping out in the production. The above links have a couple of more songs from "Kanashimi no Kujaku". First up is the mournful title track (composed by Anri and written by Nanako Sato[佐藤奈々子]) at 36:17 which finishes the album; Anri sings of waking up beside a lover in the morning and realizing that the relationship was coming to its inevitable end. And the next song is probably the shortest Anri song in her very long repertoire at 16:34, "Riviera kara no Tegami"(リビエラからの手紙...A Letter From The Riviera) (composed by Suzuki and written by Sato), which is a Dear John letter with a musically spooky sinister edge. If you're detecting a theme through the three songs profiled, I can assure you it's not all romantic gloom and doom....about half of it is, but not all.
In any case, listening to the album again today after so many years to prepare for this profile proved to be a fascinating experience, especially in light of what was to come for her in the form of another producer by the name of Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）. There wasn't much information even in Japanese concerning "Kanashimi no Kujaku", but what little I could get I found on The Moonriders website which did give some insight into this very different Anri album. After Anri's debut success with "Olivia wo Kikinagara" in 1978, the singer went through a dry spell for a number of years. I mentioned that perhaps the coming-of-age for her may have influenced her temporary direction into this European sound, but it could also have been an attempt to break out of the slump. Thanks in part to Kadomatsu and Anri's efforts, she could finally achieve that lasting success two years later with "Cat's Eye".
The streets of Manhattan
Anri -- Kanashimi no Kujaku
As a bit of a PS, I came across this cover version of "Espresso de Nemurenai" by a singer/model by the name of nAo, which was released in 2011.
