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.
Oh, dopey me. I'm four days late in wishing singer-songwriter Mariya Takeuchi a Happy Birthday! But here's hoping that her family enjoyed themselves on the special day. Last year (when I did remember her birthday), I acknowledged the day with a Yutaka Kimura Speaks translated piece about the singer. When I thought about whether to do a Creator article about her, I quickly realized that I had already done one back in 2019.
However for that first entry, I introduced some songs created by Takeuchi in that article that had never been covered before. Well, then, I decided that for this one, I'll bring the comfort food...songs by her that have their own articles from way back when just to remind viewers about what she has given other singers. And of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list.
I realize that I should have done this yesterday when the Lunar New Year began but it was getting late into the night and I was just too tired. Anyways, perhaps it's just as well that I'm doing this today on Hump Day when I need to get some energy expended especially on a dreary stormy day. So, allow me to give my Happy Lunar New Year greetings to everyone who's celebrating it this week and they include some of my friends and some of my brother's in-laws. Hopefully, you have eaten very well so far.
To be frank, I'm kinda surprised that I hadn't done an Author's Picks based on the Lunar New Year before but that simply means that I get to do it today when folks are celebrating the Year of the Horse. My picks here don't have any significantly deep meaning aside from the fact that they include song titles connected to areas whose populations would celebrate the holiday. Among the five I'm listing here, three of them already have their own articles on KKP, while the last two are newbies, so I guess this article is a hybridization of an Author's Picks and a regular posting.
The entries above and below are the newbies as I mentioned at the top and they're being included now since I had been looking for these songs on YouTube for years (and giving up) before they finally popped up. I actually borrowed Naoko Kawai's （河合奈保子）March 1985 11th studio album"Stardust Garden ~ Sennen Teien"（STARDUST GARDEN -千・年・庭・園-...Millennium Garden） from a friend back in my university days but never got my own copy, and the one song that I remember from it is "Chinatown Rhapsody" which also has the English subtitle of "Missin' Girl" which hints at some sort of neighbourhood intrigue. Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）, composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranged by Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博）, the song goes at a good clip with a certain mysterious aura imbued throughout. I do like that twanging instrument in the intro.
(1987) Koji Tamaki -- Hong Kong
Honestly speaking, I hadn't gotten a great impression of Koji Tamaki's（玉木浩二) "Hong Kong" in the intro which sounded like a combination of a soundtrack from an episode of "Doctor Who" deep into the 1980s when the show was frankly going downhill and a little smidgen of a Pet Shop Boys tune. Now that I've gotten to hear it for the first time in many years, "Hong Kong" still won't enter my Top 5 Tamaki songs but it's a pretty tight and sexy song thanks to his considerable vocals and the simmering arrangement by Chris Cameron. Tamaki was responsible for melody while Goro Matsui（松井五郎）provided the lyrics.
I'd never seen the music video for "Hong Kong" before and it appears that the director was going for a Neo-Noir look in the titular city with Tamaki cutting quite the figure as someone reminiscent of the late actor Yusaku Matsuda（松田優作）. Tamaki's naturally saturnine looks can have viewers wondering about which side he's working for. "Hong Kong" is a part of his debut solo album"All I Do" which was released in August 1987 and peaked at No. 2 on Oricon.
With the 76th edition of the Kohaku Utagassen on NHK less than 24 hours away as I type this, it appears that unless there is a mind-blowing sudden addition or deletion from the list, the participant list is all set and ready to go. I may just be crazy enough to wake up early and crank up the computer to watch the live version on Jme (although Jme will be broadcasting the special a few times for the next few days).
Anyways, in commemoration of the occasion and just to get those nostalgia juices flowing once more (since this is the blog for that sort of thing), I've decided to show the Top Batters for the first three editions I ever saw which are 1981, 1982 and 1983. For those who are new to the network's annual New Year's Eve event, the top batters are the first singers/bands representing the Red and White teams to perform. They set the tone for the gala atmosphere and back then, they were usually the youngest folks since it used to be the case that the aidoru and pop singers got their chances in the first half of the program before the moodier and more traditional stuff came in the second half of the show.
Let's enjoy the show and at least one of us will be posting an article on how we thought of this edition's Kohaku.
Once again, I bid you welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth where I post an article on an old song from outside of Japan that I have cherished since my days as a young lad in Toronto. It's been a while, so I wanted to write something on one of my favourite pop groups, The Manhattan Transfer.
I actually saw the guys perform this on an episode of that music show "Solid Gold" decades ago, and thought it was a pretty darn cool tune. This would be "Mystery", straight from The Manhattan Transfer's September 1983 album "Bodies and Souls" which also has one of their biggest hits, "Spice of Life" that I've covered in a past ROY article. And as with "Spice of Life", the late great Rod Temperton took care of this urbane and soulful ballad. Both songs were the many examples of the Transfer's urban contemporary phase spanning from the late 1970s going into the 1980s.
Now, it was just a couple of weeks ago that I devoted the ROY that time to Anita Baker's scintillating "Rapture" album. It was there that I mentioned that there was especially one track on the album that I wanted to focus upon, and indeed, it's this one, the Queen of Quiet Storm's own cover of "Mystery". Her take fits very well with the overall mood of the album and she handles it with absolute aplomb. If I had to make a choice between the two, though, I would have to go with The Manhattan Transfer's original because of those wonderful harmonies elicited from the group.
Going with the September 1983 release of "Bodies and Souls", what were some Japanese singles being released that month?
Welcome to another Reminiscings of Youth entry for this Thursday, the final day of July 2025. And what better way to end it with something nice and groovy from the 1980s? Referring back to my article "If I Had an All-Night Radio Show...", I rather regret not having included DeBarge in my midnight playlist but I just had so many candidates to put up. Still, easily, something like their "All This Love" would have gotten airplay on that first episode.
This would be another sure bet from them. "I Like It" was their 3rd single from August 1982 and it was the one that preceded "All This Love" which was my introduction to the singing family. Instead of the swaying love ballad that "All This Love" is, "I Like It" is more in the mid-tempo range but still has Randy and El singing about someone fully in love with his significant other through all things big and small. I like it...or I love it rather for those mellow horns, the bass and the overall rhythm which could represent that someone constantly eyeing his girlfriend or wife as she's doing the most mundane things such as washing the dishes or trying out a new dress. The song managed to reach No. 31 on US Billboard.
I'm going to go way down on the Oricon list to see what else was hitting the Japanese charts in August 1982. I have Nos. 18 and 19.
Well, this is not only the 12,001st article for "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but it looks like I missed out on someone's birthday by a couple of days. Yes, July 24th was Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子）62nd birthday so many congratulations to her.
In commemoration, I have this one track from her 7th original album"Half-Shadow" which was released in October 1983. When I read Hiroko Taniyama's（谷山浩子）lyrics for her "Weather Song" before even listening to the song that was also concocted by her, I'd had the impression that it was going to be a rather melancholy ballad about a young lady tracing raindrops on the window while wondering when her Prince Charming would come to finally sweep her off her feet.
Actually, I should have gotten the clue when "Weather Song" was placed as the first track on Side B of "Half-Shadow" which has been labeled as "Sunny Side". Indeed, it's quite the happy-go-lucky tune with Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）arranging things so that it sounds like something from the Beatles collection. At the same time, I could imagine an entire song-and-dance performance with Kawai leading a group of dancers in rain gear and umbrellas prancing about on the wet floor. Nothing sad about this one...the aforementioned lady is happily waiting for that prince.
A few weeks ago, I devoted my Reminiscings of Youth article to the 50th anniversary of "Jaws"which came out on June 20th 1975. Coincidentally enough, director Steven Spielberg, who had made us terrified of getting into the water back then, was the same man, now as producer, who thrilled us with a DeLorean, a mad scientist and a hard-luck teenager. Yup, today is the 40th anniversary of the release of "Back to the Future".
When it comes to missing out on first-run releases, I have two regrets. I missed out on watching the first "Superman" with Christopher Reeve in 1978 and then "Back to the Future" in 1985. I wasn't one to go racing to the theatre unless a movie was truly remarkable like "Star Wars" (and I finally only saw that one two years after its release), and to be honest, I never saw "Family Ties" which was Michael J. Fox's breakthrough sitcom so the invested interest hadn't been there. Plus, though I liked Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim on "Taxi" several years earlier, it wasn't quite enough for me to plunk down my money for this crazy flick about time travel.
But then a few years later, I finally caught "Back to the Future" on VHS when for some reason, the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association decided to show it at its old home base in the International Student Centre. Even on a far tinier screen, it was quite the thrill to see Marty and Doc in the 1950s fixing time and getting the former back to his 1980s including the crazy climax when everything that could go wrong did go wrong until it didn't.
Now back in 2022, I provided a ROY article on Huey Lewis and The News' "The Power of Love" for the movie's 37th anniversary and even there, I had to include the orchestral theme by Alan Silvestri because it was just that epic.
Well, this time around, Silvestri's theme is now the topic of this ROY because it is just that epic. I remember reading somewhere that when legendary composer Hiroshi Miyagawa（宮川泰）asked about how to approach this proposed theme song for the anime adaptation of "Uchuu Senkan Yamato"(宇宙戦艦ヤマト）back in the early 1970s, he was simply told that it had to be heroic. And Miyagawa probably looked upward to the heavens and went "How the heck?!". Silvestri was apparently told the same thing when it came to "Back to the Future"; something orchestral and something that can be recognized within the first few notes.
Silvestri was coming into this particular project some years after he'd come up with an upbeat theme for a show about California motorcycle cops and many years before he would come up with the ultimate theme for assembling superheroes, and luckily for him (and Miyagawa), he did whip up one mighty overture that would help immortalize the first movie and the franchise (though I've enjoyed the former more than the latter). I can't remember scenes from the movie without having that theme play out in my head.
I have to finish off this ROY by including Silvestri's rousing dedicated theme to the final movie in the trilogy "Back to the Future III". It has parts of the original theme but it also contains elements of the composer's obvious love for the themes from Westerns such as "The Magnificent Seven" and "Bonanza".
Time for a bit of Canadiana once more on the regular weekly Reminiscings of Youth. I first posted his 1978 "I Just Wanna Stop" a few years ago, and another frequent radio presence by singer-songwriter Gino Vannelli in my youth was his March 1981 song "Living Inside Myself". A single and a track on his seventh album"Nightwalker", it's another lush and epic ballad about the huge regrets being suffered by a man after a breakup. A song about a heart crushed like so many graham crackers shouldn't sound so wonderful, but it does.
In Canada, "Living Inside Myself" went up to No. 13 on RPM while on America's Billboard, it soared even higher by placing in at No. 6. Another wonderful thing is that a number of those YouTube reactors have been discovering and delighting in this sad song.
I put this particular celebratory birthday photo of Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）up and then checked when her birthday was. Well, as it turns out, I'm still about a couple of months away from the big 62 for one of the 1980s' most representative aidoru.
Anyways, as I've always said on KKP, never forget about those B-sides. And for Kawai today, I've checked out the B-side for her 2nd single "Young Boy"（ヤング・ボーイ）released in August 1980. "Aoi Shisen"(Blue Gaze) is a slightly less dramatic song than its A-side, but it's still a spirited number that has hints of disco and summer-side fun...kinda like a lot of other aidoru tunes from those days. Written by Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）and composed/arranged by Makoto Kawaguchi（川口真）, those Naoko-chan vocals soar like crazy and I do like it when the synthesizer warps from one headphone to another a couple of times.
As is the case with "Young Boy", "Aoi Shisen" deals with some innocent romantic sturm und drang. A boy and a girl who have feelings for each other are still literally and figuratively distanced from each other at some beach locale...neither willing to make that forward move and even having problems trying to initiate even the most furtive eye contact. Talk about hard to get! 😳 I think they both need Orange Mimosas to take the edge off.
That was my first reaction to Boy George when I heard Culture Club's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me". There was so much old-time soul in those vocals and yet they were coming out of someone who looked to have been residing on the dividing line between New Wave and New Romantic. As well, the music was something that I couldn't immediately identify but that was because there was a blend of genres coming together: New Wave, soul and reggae. But again, I go back to that voice with the smokiness and vulnerability. And she was pretty, too.
Ah, and then I'd find out a few months later that Boy George really was a boy, George...George Alan O'Dowd, in fact. Still, dang fine voice.
And Culture Club became a sensation from that point for the next several years as Boy George and his band were frequent visitors on the charts. But "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" was the first one, Culture Club's fourth single from September 1982 and it was hitting No. 1 all over the Earth including Canada, the UK and France among other nations while it peaked at No. 2 in the United States.
Well, not surprisingly, such was Culture Club's popularity that corporate Japan came calling.
I also remember that Boy George's appearance was so iconic that there were Boy George lookalike contests all around the world. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any footage on YouTube but I recall the one that had been held in Japan somewhere. I don't think I'd seen so many Japanese New Romanticists in heavy makeup before.
So, what else was being released in Japan in that busy month of September 1982?
It took its sweet time but it's finally here...American Thanksgiving! Of course, on behalf of everyone at "Kayo Kyoku Plus" including Kayo Grace and Mr. Calico, I hope everyone down in America is having a Happy Thanksgiving with all of the trimmings. I realize that Kayo and her feline manager/pet are living in Canada and Japan, but heck, they seem to enjoy celebrating holidays all over.
As an appropriate holiday song on the weekly Reminiscings of Youth, I'm going with Madonna's "Holiday" from September 1983. I mentioned this song when I posted about her "Borderline" which came out several months later. And as I said there, it was often the time that my family were in the car driving around Toronto doing errands in the evening so we got to hear the old local radio station CFTR doing the "Top 6 at 6" countdown. Madonna's "Holiday" was often at the top of the list and at the time, I was like the many people who had thought that the late Bobby Caldwell, behind the amazing "What You Won't Do For Love", was black. I had assumed that Madonna herself was black after hearing "Holiday" many times.
So, cue ahead several months, and I would finally get to see Ms. Ciccone performing at what I think is "Top of the Pops" from the UK. I first saw three backup dancers prancing away on the stage and once I heard the singing, I started wondering where Madonna was. And then I find out that the young lady in the middle is singing away, and that was Madonna! Well, count me gobsmacked! That's how I made my first acquaintance with the Material Girl.
"Holiday" was created by Curtis Hudson and Lisa Stevens-Crowder with the producer being Jellybean Benitez as an antidote of sorts to all of the bad news that seemed to be infesting television at that time. Folks need a holiday and certainly we could all use a similar musical antidote right now. The song has always been upbeat and infectiously catchy with Madonna's plaintive vocals begging for that vacation in happier climes. The song reached No. 32 in Canada while in the States, "Holiday" got as high as No. 16. As one website put it, Madonna's classic is one of the most memorable songs of the 1980s up there with Rick Astley and Pet Shop Boys.
Now, what was also being released in the same month as "Holiday"? Well, the first of the three below came out on the same day as Madonna's tune.
Just for fun...and for the fact that I have just completed posting the lineup (for now) for the 75th edition of NHK's Kohaku Utagassen, I thought that this particular entry for the AI Gallery can include a few songs from the very first Kohaku that I got to watch as a teenager, the 32nd edition on New Year's Eve 1981. Enjoy!
The veteran sibling songwriter duo of Etsuko and Takao Kisugi（来生えつこ・来生たかお）as lyricist and composer respectively has given me the image of lush and introspective balladry for a lot of their songs. One prime example is Hiroko Yakushimaru's（薬師丸ひろ子）"Sailor Fuku to Kikanjuu"（セーラー服と機関銃）from 1981.
Of course, I'm sure that the Kisugis have brought somewhat more upbeat fare to other singers but it was still a bit surprising to hear something like "Straw Touch no Koi"(Straw Touch Love). This was aidoru Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子）12th single from March 1983 and it is a song that is perfect for the ever-beaming teenybopper singer from Osaka. It is also a very light and airy tune about going on that promising beach date which has struck me as being a bit atypical for a Kisugi-penned tune.
According to J-Wiki, this was the Kisugis' first time with Kawai in terms of writing a song for her. One question that I would ask the songwriters though would be about the title itself. Does the "straw touch" have anything to do with the straw hat that Naoko-chan is wearing in the performance above? Etsuko's lyrics did mention a hat blowing off toward their beach destination. There's nothing else indicating straw anything so I can only assume it was the hat. There is also that Japanese obsession about two people sharing one drink with two straws which would have their contemporaries hooting with glee at a possible new relationship in the school or at work, but there was no mention of taking it easy at a café in the song. Regardless, "Straw Touch no Koi" was another Top 10 hit for the singer by reaching No. 9 and ending up as the 90th-ranked single for 1983, selling around 142,000 copies. Kei Wakakusa（若草恵）took care of the arrangement.
On this special holiday edition of Reminiscings of Youth, I'm keeping a promise I made when I posted Tracey Ullman's cover of "Breakaway" which had come out as her official debut single back in 1983. In actual fact, the first song that I and millions of other music video watchers had heard by the future godmother of The Simpsons was "They Don't Know", released in September that year. The video is very familiar to me and yet I had completely forgotten about Paul McCartney's cameo at the end.
As was the case with Ullman and "Breakaway", I didn't find out until much later that "They Don't Know" was a cover of an original version released in June 1979 by the late singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl. Listening to MacColl's version, I got the impression of a gentle contemporary pop ballad. Meanwhile, Ullman's cover several years later (along with the video) has always hit me as a tribute to 1960s girl pop. What I hadn't known was that the cover had MacColl returning to help out in her pipe of "Baby!" from the original since Ullman couldn't really hit her note that high.
In Canada, Ullman's "They Don't Know" peaked at No. 5 on RPM while in America, it got as high as No. 8. The video is one that I remember having a long run on the music shows and basically "They Don't Know" ended up as being my one reminder of Ullman until she showed up several years later on FOX TV with her own comedy-variety show.
It was all the way back in 2014 when I wrote up a "Kayo Kyoku Plus" article on the very first single record of a Western pop song that I had ever bought and that was "Ai no Corrida" as originally sung by Charles "Dune" May. As I mentioned in that article, I first heard the disco or post-disco classic through a cover version done by a whole bunch of young 80s aidoruin one of the special segments of the 1981 Kohaku Utagassen on NHK. The single version was also a hit in Japan.
"Ai no Corrida" hit me with such good vibes that I soon ran over to the local Sam the Record Man shop to search for this unusually titled tune, and it was a surprise and delight that I could find the 45" single even in that tiny branch. The single version though was only a few seconds north of three minutes. I wouldn't find out for several years that the album version from Quincy Jones'"The Dude" has more than double the goodness. I stated this in the "Ai no Corrida" article as well, but the Jones version was also a cover for the Chaz Jankel original from the previous year.
Yup, "The Dude"...released in March 1981. It's an album that I wouldn't buy for several years since I was frankly intimidated by that cover. In fact, I finally bought it in Japan in the late 1990s, nearly 20 years after it had been first put onto record shelves. And since then, I've been happily catching up on what I'd missed by playing it in heavy rotation.
But let me get the accolades for "The Dude" out of the way. To lift a quote from the Wikipedia article for the album: "The Dude was nominated for twelve Grammy Awards (including Album of the Year) and won three at the 24th Grammy Awards: for Best Instrumental Arrangement; Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal; and Best Instrumental Arrangement (Accompanying Vocalists). It also earned Ingram three Grammy nominations for Best New Artist, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (for "Just Once") and Best Male R&B Vocal Performance (for "One Hundred Ways"), which he won."
I also read somewhere that "The Dude" was the Michael Jackson album that Michael Jackson had never recorded. It's just that cool and special. So, without further ado, let me go through this classic album version of Reminiscings of Youth this week.
Second up on "The Dude" is the title track itself. And Jones himself is The Dude here with his kakkoii rap. Created by Jones, Rod Temperton and Patti Austin, one couldn't have a cooler power song for a patriarch of the neighbourhood. The backing vocals by Austin and others (including a certain one-gloved wonder...I believe I did cite him earlier), Ernie Watt's sax, James Ingram's heraldic vocals and those Jerry Hey horns come together magnificently to craft a potential theme tune that would come as a reassuring message to some and a warning to others.
One of the reasons that I've been happy with "The Dude" is that there is a good amount of variety in the types of music. Case in point, Track 3 is the late James Ingram's"Just Once", a pleasant soul-pop ballad that I had only known for years as a song that would frequently get played on AM radio before buying the source album. Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil were responsible for this second single (September 1981) to come out of "The Dude". I also remember it for its performance by Ingram on an episode of "SCTV" in which the singer was also more than happy to goof it up with the rest of the comedians. David Foster was on the keyboards here.
Smooth and velvety is how I would describe "Betcha Wouldn't Hurt Me" as performed by Patti Austin and created by the Stevie Wonder. This is the type of song that I wouldn't mind hearing in a car while heading down to paint the town red.
Austin was in front of the mike here, too, for "Somethin' Special", a truly special and slightly smoky urban cool tune which hits me like aural bacon. Rod Temperton took care of words and music here and I think that is Watts once more on the saxophone.
"Razzamatazz" is once more fronted by Austin and this is the track to hear when we are in the midst of painting the town red. Rod Temperton was also responsible for this disco flashback and another highlight is also hearing all of those background vocals percolating through the tune from all directions.
"One Hundred Ways" was the third and final single from "The Dude" which came out in December 1981. Sung by Ingram, the song was created by Kathy Wakefield, Ben Wright and Tony Coleman, and it's really a whimsical and heartfelt recipe on how to keep the heart lights glowing fiercely. Not surprisingly, this was also getting a lot of play on the radio, perhaps especially on Valentine's Day.
The penultimate track "Velas" by Ivan Lins and Vitor Martins is the lone jazz instrumental track on the album. It was the first time that I realized how soulful a harmonica can be since up until that point, I'd assumed that the instrument was used just in cowboy movies. I have to therefore give my compliments to the legendary Toots Thielemans for opening my eyes (he also provided the whistles). His work along with the creamy keyboard work by Greg Phillinganes and Johnny Mandel's silky strings add to a very romantic nightscape.
And we finally come to "Turn on the Action", another look back at disco and good ol' R&B by Rod Temperton and Patti Austin. As soon as I saw that title, I figured that I was going to get something from the old 1970s dancehalls.
I couldn't come anywhere near mentioning all of the players involved in "The Dude" here, so have a look at the personnel on Wikipedia. On America's Billboard 200, the album reached No. 9 while hitting No. 1 on the R&B and jazz charts. For the year, "The Dude" reached No. 25 on the 200 overall. Also, take a look at the article on the "EBONY" website.
With "The Dude" having its release in March 1981, what else was being put out there in Japan in that month?
I remember when I wrote up Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子）1980 "Ohkina Mori no Chiisana O-uchi"（大きな森の小さなお家）on Sunday May 31st 2015. I reported that the day before, the Humidex had hit a steamy 35 degrees Celsius but that Sunday showed a massive plummet in temperature down to a single-digit 9 degrees. Well, guess what? Yesterday, we had a -29-degree C wind chill factor but today's high will be a relatively tropical +3 degrees.
And yep, here is another Naoko Kawai single. Her 18th go is "Kuchibiru no Privacy" (Privacy of the Lips) is another one of those weirdly-titled aidoru tunes that perhaps are still plentiful even today. It was released in August 1984, and it's a fairly rat-a-tat speedy song punctuated with an electric guitar about the drama that ensues following a sudden kiss a young lady experiences.
Masao Urino（売野雅勇）took care of the lyrics with Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）behind the melody and Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）handling the arrangement. It hit No. 4 on the Oricon weeklies and ended up as the 76th-ranked single of the year while winning a number of awards including a Gold Prize at the Japan Record Awards. Kawai also got her invitation to the NHK Kohaku Utagassen for her fourth consecutive appearance at the end of 1984 to perform "Kuchibiru no Privacy".
Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth article, and today I have a song whose music video has been seen as one of the more incredible productions ever. It also terrified the heck out of me when I first saw it as a teenager.
"Shock the Monkey" by Peter Gabriel did indeed alarm me initially because of the title and the unsettling video because I had wondered whether it was one of those creations which showed some poor monkey undergoing tortuous experiments. Instead, as I gradually discovered, Gabriel had actually wanted to address the issue of jealousy as represented by the gibbon in the video (not technically a monkey as noted in Wikipedia). It was the first time for me to see Gabriel as the premise seemed like something out of a psychological spy thriller with an intelligence agent eventually succumbing to those mysterious external forces.
I'd heard about Peter Gabriel all throughout 1982, the year that "Shock the Monkey" was released as a single in September. I had known about his time with the band Genesis although I never listened to them when they were an artsy progressive rock band in the 1970s. My knowledge of the band grew when they decided to go into a more pop and chart-friendly direction while Gabriel who had left Genesis went into other pastures of music.
"Shock the Monkey" is a synthpop sensation with a great and immediately recognizable hook and I will always love Gabriel's exhortation of "SHOCK!" in the middle of the song. For that matter, I'd never heard vocals like his before; somewhere between a mix of rock star and siren. In Canada, the song hit No. 10 on RPM while in America, it did somewhat more modestly by peaking at No. 29 on Billboard.
Now, what was making the Oricon chart in September 1982? I have No. 1, No. 2 and... No. 10.
I found out some minutes ago that former 80s aidoruNaoko Kawai（河合奈保子）will be celebrating her 59th birthday tomorrow on July 24th, so of course, many good wishes to her. Realizing that it's been over 40 years since the 1980s, it's still a surprise to know that Ms. Kawai will just be a year away from celebrating her kanreki. To me, she'll always be the eternally snaggle-toothed smiling teenybopper in the fluffy white dress.
As such, let's go with a Naoko song to start this Saturday edition of "Kayo Kyoku Plus". On May 31st 2015, I did the article for her June 1st 1980 debut single"Ohkina Mori no Chiisana O-uchi"（大きな森の小さなお家）. I did mention back then that it was a scorching-hot day and it's turning out the same here today in Toronto.
Well, I've got the B-side to Naoko's Single No. 1 today, and it's "Hurricane Kid". Created by the same team behind "Ohkina Mori no Chiisana O-uchi": lyricist Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composer/arranger Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）, it's got the same jaunty and friendly beat as its A-side, albeit with a some added electric guitar. This time, though, the story has a young high school girl looking probably like a 1950s poodle-skirted Lori Beth Allen as she dates the titular Kid, judging from the mention of a lightning bolt on the back of his jacket. The wonderful thing is that although I've only heard this particular song just a few times, it's still got that happily familiar Naoko-ness in the delivery.
Yesterday's Page 5 was about what Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）would say or sing to the younger generation. Today's Page 6 will go into his professional relationship with his wife, singer-songwriter Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）, and then there is that question about streaming services.
As Mariya Takeuchi's Producer
Interviewer: Along with creating songs for many other singers, Yamashita has helped arrange and produce all of his wife Mariya Takeuchi's music since 1984. There was something that he noticed there.
Yamashita: At first, Mariya had debuted as a singer who sang whatever she was given, but she grew tired of doing activities that she wasn't meant for, and so she took 2 1/2 years off. To do something like that in the Japanese music industry of that time and then make a comeback was extremely difficult to pull off. Fortunately, during that hiatus, she came up with songs like "Kenka wo Yamete" for Naoko Kawai in 1982 and for other singers, and then I got to completely produce Mariya's 1984 album "Variety". And during the preparation time up to the album, she asked me to listen to the songs that she'd written up of which the first was "Plastic Love". I was blown away by it and when I asked her "Why haven't you released these when you could make this kind of music?", she answered "No one ever gave me the chance". And after that, the songs just kept coming out with her writing and composing all of them and making this epic breakthrough.
To put it succinctly, there are a variety of positions when one is called a singer. Do they just sing, do they write lyrics, do they compose melodies, and is their main job to compose and arrange although they help in the singing? Mariya can be called that sort of singer since she's experienced all of those, and she's been successful at all of these to some extent. When "Variety" became a hit, what I was thinking at the time was whether there were other people who had that sort of possibility. I think there are many cases where the chance was not there. Because I have been her producer from time to time, I have been able to pull out those opportunities. Therefore even now, I think that there are many other bands and singers who haven't fully utilized the potential within them.
Subscription Streaming Services: I Probably Won't Ever Get Into That
Interviewer: The ways of listening to music have evolved over the past fifty years. When I asked Yamashita whether he would allow his music to be released onto these subscription streaming services, he said at this point "I probably won't ever get into that".
Yamashita: C'mon, people who have had nothing to do with the expression of the music are freely distributing it and making money off it. That might be a win for the market, but it isn't one for music. In the past, music had to be created without thinking about that.
Questions like is it OK to sell them, is it OK for fans to come in, is it OK to get excited?...that's a whole lot of mass noise*. Music is just music, after all. What is being said as music? Without that answer, we wouldn't be able to know who we are doing this for and what we want to say to them. Expression will always be what we say to people.
*J-Canuck back here. I'm going to have to ask for some help in that final paragraph. There is that expression in the source 「集団騒擾」in that final paragraph at the bottom for which I couldn't find a straight expression although "shuudan" 「集団」and "soujou"「騒擾」can be separately translated as "group" and "disturbance" respectively. The best that I could do was put it in as "mass noise" as in all that stuff about selling and fans is simply extraneous when compared to the pure music. Is that exactly what he is saying, I wonder?
Also, I should mention about Masa's petition to get Tats to change his mind about his feeling on streaming services. You can check out the link. At this point, he's gotten 268 signatures including mine.
Belated birthday by almost a couple of months, but Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）did turn 58 on July 24th this year so all the best to her and hers.
The more I delve into this early 1980s aidoru'salbums such as "Summer Delicacy", "Daydream Coast" and "9 1/2", the more I'm convinced that Kawai was just as much a City Pop-influenced teen idol as Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）. My previous article regarding the Osaka native was the relaxing "Home Again, Alone Again" from "Daydream Coast" and before that was "Natsu no Hi no Koi"（夏の日の恋）, a more City Pop take on Junko Yagami's（八神純子）straight-on Latin original.
Like "Natsu no Hi no Koi", "Machikado" (Street Corner) is a track on the 1984 "Summer Delicacy", and both of them are A-siders on the original LP. As such, they were both written by Masao Urino（売野政男）and composed by Yagami. However, arrangement for "Machikado" was handled by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）. The song is quite the interesting track in that I feel that it straddles that dividing line between City Pop/J-AOR and aidoru exactly. The rhythm has that urban vibe but the instrumentation with the strings and the keyboards still comes across as being very aidoru-friendly twinkly. The overall effect is happy and breezy, just the thing to feel before summer technically goes away in the middle of next week.
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