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.
Showing posts with label Nash Music Library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nash Music Library. Show all posts
I really couldn't find an image that I already had on file that would match the tone of this song and it was quite the adventure to even find something appropriate on Wikimedia Commons. Finally, though, I could get this one by Spinnmaster for his Mutasect Core Ventus.
Considering my previous article based on the movie that I'd seen earlier today: "Spider-Man: Brand New Day", I figured that it was time to check out the good folks at Nash Music Library if they had something with a battle theme...considering there are quite a few of those in the Marvel flick.
Well, it didn't take long to track one down. And I have to admit that even though NML has covered a lot of genres in its huge storehouse of music...everything from jazz to disco, this is the first time I've come across "BATTLE X" with its arrangement that reminded me of many a magical girl anime with battle scenes. Specifically, I was thinking of the "Pretty Cure" franchise with their music directors' love of injecting some thrilling rock shreds into their battle music. Not sure whether Michael Giacchino would do so, though. In any case, this piece comes from their 2003 album"Dead Heat".
We're kinda getting close to the end of the work week once more so perhaps a little zip in the music here might help in the anticipation toward the weekend. Over here, there is even more significance since we have a long weekend coming up with Victoria Day happening on Monday.
Nice to have the good folks at Nash Music Library helping out again. This time, the music maker has come up with a synthesized version of swing jazz via The Andrews Sisters. Titled "Astro Swingin' Sisters", I think it's well named although there is no singing here by any sisters but the feeling is there, and I can imagine a sorority trio in spacesuits harmonizing out there while this is playing. The song comes from the August 2019 album"Sparkling Brass".
Well, it's a heck of a thing to come up with a summer song when spring here in Toronto doesn't arrive for another several hours. However, I know that Torontonians are absolutely biting their lips at even the slightest opportunity to enjoy the hot season once more after one of the more enervating winters in recent memory.
Unfortunately, I can't bring the heat and the rest of the summer weather but at least we can live a bit vicariously through music. Specifically, I can show another song from the vast discography of Nash Music Library. "Summer Things" comes from their March 2018 collection "Happy Hours" and it's a very skippy and heat-inducing song that even includes a bit of soft rap/vocalese near the end of this short and sweet tune.
Well, we're well into 2026 and I figure it's time to bring in the first Nash Music Library entry for the year. I think the last time I wrote about music maker NML was back on Christmas Eve last year when I had something seasonal.
This time around, today's NML entry doesn't have a particular seasonal purpose. "vi vi vid" is quite the title for this track which originates from the February 2020 collection "Neon Town". Even though it doesn't seem to have any special designation, it does have some spicy Latin rhythm along with a spacy electro melody. I can't help but think of some cute cartoon characters on a comically secret mission somewhere and making tons of mistakes along the way.
Ten days ago on the 14th, I posted a Nash Music Library Xmas-themed song titled "Kamakura de X'mas" from the October 2024 compilation by NML titled "Christmas Avenue". It got the two labels of Xmas and Traditional Instrumental which would certainly explain the title.
Another track from "Christmas Avenue" is more conventional. Well, at least the song itself. The title has made me wonder, though. "Tipsy Reindeer" sounds more like an occupational hazard for Santa Claus after his eight employees and perhaps Rudolph got too much into the egg nog. Still, the actual song is a very pleasant pop tune that almost approaches Smooth Jazz status. The entire album would make for some fine kitchen cooking accompaniment.
Well, it wouldn't be a KKP Christmas season without including something Yuletide from the good folks at Nash Music Library. I did have something from them last year with "Happy Christmas". And so, I thought "Why not have them aboard again?".
This time, I have "Kamakura de X'mas" (Christmas in Kamakura). Now, to be honest, Kamakura would be one of the last places where I would imagine anything having to do with Noel and the like, but hey, this ancient city gets snow and illumination so again, why not? "Kamakura de X'mas" is most likely the first KKP entry which has both the Xmas and Traditional Instrumental labels for the same song and with the piano and the jingling bells in there, I couldn't help but get images of Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）and even Studio Ghibli vibes via Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）. The song was part of the October 2024 compilation "Christmas Avenue".
With a wind chill factor in the negative double digits today, it was about as far from summer as one could get, and I had to get a major errand done outside. I've got a feeling that there may be an exodus later this month to the warmer climes such as the Caribbean. After all, not everyone wants to frolic in the Christmas cold.
Perhaps to give some support to the sun worshippers, I present another lovely instrumental from the good folks at Nash Music Library. "Havana Port" comes from their March 2025 collection known as "Caribbean Breeze" and it's a pleasant but pretty jaunty slice of Latin jazz (with the trombone at the fore) to go with your Cuba Libre in the sun. I actually put the YouTube link into the software of Sonoteller just for fun. Nothing all that revelatory but it was interesting.
Of course, tomorrow is Halloween in every place that celebrates the Jack O'Lanterns, ghouls, goblins and Trick or Treat. So, I figure that I should put something to commemorate that fact and tradition. I'll have to see what Shibuya Scramble Crossing looks like on YouTube tomorrow morning.
Anyways, I've got one track from Nash Music Library's contribution to October 31st, the 2013 "Halloween". Above is "Spooky Creepy Monsters", an appropriately eerie piece meant to send shivers up and down your spine...if you're in a haunted dance club. The one below comes from a sequel album "Halloween 2" from 2018, "Horror Nights Street" which has more of a vibe reminiscent of an All Hallow's Eve march led by Danny Elfman.
Now, what would be 7000 miles away from Toronto, Canada? Well, Casablanca and Lisbon are two such cities, but I've also read that Perth in Western Australia is also that distant. I had a student and friend who put up stakes there several years ago and she's been enjoying her time there like gangbusters. It's always wonderful when someone comes to a new place and declares "Yep, this is home for me!".
Let's start off a little gently for the weekly edition of Urban Contemporary Fridays on KKP. Once again, we have the good folks of Nash Music Library helping out and for today, we have their "7000 Miles Away". A breathy-voiced female vocalist comes on board this time to sing what sounds like the typical "absence makes the heart grow fonder" message. There's nothing like being 7000 miles away to push the melancholy knife deeper.
Still, this entry from the 2017 "Smooth & Groove" album is indeed smooth and groovy...and very relaxing. So the commiseration is heartfelt and comfy, preferably with a mug of cocoa. There's a hint of Xmas at the end, but I'd say that this is good for a cooling October as well.
And welcome to October! Add on to the fact that today is Wednesday, aka Hump Day, things might be feeling rather lazy out there, especially with the temperatures feeling more appropriately like autumn which has been here for almost a couple of weeks now.
I've decided to start the first day of the first full month of fall with something relevant to go with those pumpkin spice lattes. Here is "Autumn Morning" by the good folks at Nash Music Library, a cute pop piece that I have heard on "Weathernews Live" a number of times, often when the weathercasters are taking a break and the maps are just showing up onscreen. It might go well with that latte while taking a walk through the fall colours. This was apparently part of the October 2016 NML compilation "Autumn Leisure".
Well, continuing on with the Tanabata theme that started with the epic Author's Pick in the previous article, I was thinking about another artist. I was wondering whether the good folks at Nash Music Library had come up with a Tanabata-themed song because they seem to have covered all the bases in terms of music for different situations.
And I needn't have worried. Sure enough, NML came up with "Tanabata" in 2022 as part of their "File Supply Vol.10". Usually, the music makers have created short but sweet instrumentals but this time, "Tanabata" is a full ballad at over four minutes with what sounds like a classically-trained vocalist perhaps singing wistfully about the travails of Orihime and Hikoboshi. It feels otherworldly and old-worldly and somewhat timeless, so I was left thinking that this could have made for an ideal song for an isekai anime.
Happy Victoria Day to my fellow Canadians. Yes, it's a holiday Monday here in the Great White North and it usually signals the first big long weekend of the summer along with a few blockbusters on the way. I think we're getting the final "Mission: Impossible" entry coming out later this Friday, for example.
Of course, we can start this special Victoria Day's version of KKP with some of the good folks at Nash Music Library. Just by lucky happenstance a couple of days ago, I encountered one of their videos "Music is Free" from their 2018 album"Buttopi EDM"（ぶっとびEDM...Blasting EDM）, and I recognized it as the technopop theme song for Japan's "Weathernews Live Morning" 3-hour segment. Yes, it's pretty loud to be heard at 5 am in the morning but isn't it just the aural orange juice to get folks out of bed? The fans love to hear that "voice" in the song and characterize it as the trumpeting of elephants via icons.
And just to show you, these are some of the other theme songs during the "Weathernews Live" broadcast day.
I couldn't quite believe that this scene had been cut out of the DC movie "Justice League". I mean, it has one of the coolest examples of how the Flash can save people, and the effects here are better than a lot of what I saw in in his own movie back in 2023.
Now, if there had been a Japanese version of "The Flash" done for laughs, I could have recommended this ditty from Nash Music Library,"Miracle Tenshi Magical Q" (Miracle Angel, Magical Q), as an appropriately speedy background tune with a circus-like atmosphere for Barry Allen. It could have accompanied a typical rush job at going shopping for example.
Still, "Miracle Tenshi Magical Q" was part of the August 2011 album by NML, "Moe Moe Cute Pop"（萌え萌え Cute Pop）, so I gather that the song was more in line with a maid café rather than a day in the life of DC's fastest superhero. I certainly couldn't have imagined that this BGM would have been included in the typical "Weathernews Live" broadcast. It would have been too distracting and exhausting for the weather folks there, although I believe that at least one brief excerpt from the song has been used.
The above is the official symbol for thunderstorm...it looks like an "R" with an attitude. At one point in my childhood, I had been interested in meteorology and had even created my own book noting down the weather and utilizing those symbols. However, my interest switched over to biology before finally settling on all things Japan in my adolescence...as you all know by this point.
Now this video features our local news channel's morning show with weather forecaster Bill Coulter in the pastel green outfit doing his usual hijinks. The video must have come from pre-COVID days since he's pretty much the only person now still here with a relatively new morning crew around him. But what I found out from him this morning is that today is (soon to be was) National Weathercaster Day.
Let me go back even further...one of the earliest weather forecasters I remember is Dave Devall from CTV Toronto (formerly CFTO). Although he was no longer doing so in the above video, he had been famous for giving the forecast behind a plexiglass screen with an illustration of Canada where he would be able to write temperatures and weather words backwards on the screen (thanks to his experience in the military). Mind you, as a teacher at NOVA, I was soon able to write English words on paper in our crowded cubbyhole classroom upside down, so I guess I took a chip off of ol' Dave.
Of course, when it comes to weather and this blog, I'm always going to refer to Japan's "Weathernews Live" as I've been doing since summer 2022. The weather casting staff has changed over the past few years but the atmosphere has remained friendly and often funny. And at the same time, since this is a music blog after all, I'm always going to think about Nash Music Library's contributions of BGM for the show.
My first article on NML brought in some of the music that has been produced by them and featured on "Weathernews Live". However, this is the first time that I have brought on one of the themes for any of the three-hour shifts, and this particular song "EXtream EXtasy" is the theme for the final shift of the broadcasting day called "Moon" which goes from 8 to 11 pm JST.
"EXtream EXtasy" is a pretty energized technopop piece for a nighttime broadcast but I guess it could reflect folks finishing work and heading out for some play-hard time in the big city. It was first released in February 2018 as part of NML's album"Buttopi EDM"（ぶっとびEDM...Blastoff EDM）. Y'know...I'll have to play catchup and see if I can feature some more of the shifts' theme songs.
Now and then, I check in on the hijinks going on at Weathernews Japan. Weathercaster Rinon Oshima（大島璃音） seems to have become the main face of the network since Saya Hiyama's（檜山沙耶） departure earlier this year.
Of course, when I drop in on Weathernews, I usually think of the various music excerpts that play over the display of weather maps by good ol' Nash Music Library. Over the past several months, I've put up quite a few of them and perhaps I can place one more before the year is up. For one thing, I had been wondering whether NML ever whipped up anything Xmas-y.
Well, I no longer have to wonder. Of course, they did. I noticed a few Xmas-themed jingles by NML, one being "Happy Christmas" which made its presence first known on their regular series collection #32 known as "Lovers Pops" from September 1990. Yep, it does have that Muzak flavour but I can also imagine hearing it during a Weathernews broadcast with those jingle bells and toy store march arrangement. But I also gotta give my props to the bouncing bass.
When I was making my biannual crossings between Japan and Canada for the Holidays, it was usually the case that my Air Canada flights left in the early or late afternoon. I hardly took a morning flight since I'm not particularly all that enthused over waking up in the wee hours to take the cab over either to Narita or Lester B. Pearson Airports. There was that one time once the Holidays were over that I did try to head out back to Japan on a morning flight, only to realize that a snowstorm was going to end up cancelling all flights from Pearson that day. Ended up spending one night at the hotel right across from the airport and engorging on the buffet all by myself. The lone staffer in the restaurant was wondering "Does he have a bloody TARDIS in his belly?!".
Anyways, I prefer my afternoon flights out but for this article, we have Nash Music Library and his "Flight in the morning". After introducing the fusion band from the Netherlands, Fruitcake, the other day here, I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't abandoning good ol' NML for Dutch fare. It's been a couple of months since their last entry here so here is something that actually sounds like someone getting all giddy packing their bags and heading over to the airport for an adventure somewhere. To be honest, it may sound like something from a PreCure soundtrack where the girls are looking forward to a tropical vacation overseas. Coincidentally, this came out exactly twenty years ago on this day in 2004 on NML's "Fresh Morning" album.
Last month, my Nash Music Library contribution was "Sunday Breakfast", a languid Bacharach-inspired piece which had me thinking that ol' Burt was fighting a hangover and trying to make some of those scrambled eggs and pancakes, however difficult.
Well, this month, we've got "Rumbullion" which supposedly made its presence known for the first time back in March 2011 when it appeared with its track mates on the dully-titled "File Supply Vol.1". My guess is that perhaps this album was simply used by various television stations for appropriate music snippets in the background when certain segments were presented on their shows.
For one thing, "Rumbullion" and its bass-friendly beat sounds quite familiar to me although I can't quite remember where and when I heard it. It may have been on "Weathernews Live", one of NML's biggest clients, or perhaps it was another Japanese TV program. Whatever the case may be, it really pushes its message across in its brief 2 1/2 minutes, and it really does sound like a rumbullion, whatever a rumbullion means.
Considering the title of this song, it's perhaps a tad early especially because I'm typing this after Saturday Lunch (which consisted of a couple of hot dogs, a blueberry muffin, and yogurt). Still, it's a fine opportunity for me to show off this photo of my breakfast at the famous family restaurant Royal Host in Japan. Good golly, they like making their toast nice and thick over there.
Once again, Nash Music Library cordially brings over their menu of whimsical musical delights including "Sunday Breakfast" from their February 2024 collection known as "Morning Chill". It sounds like a very languid version of Burt Bacharach style as if good ol' Burt were waking up way too early after a large night and stumbling about in the kitchen trying to make the usual Sunday breakfast. Perhaps he was only successful in making a cup of coffee by the end.⛾
To think, it all began a few years ago with an earthquake report which had one Japanese weathercaster going from lighthearted to serious on a dime. Saya Hiyama（桧山沙耶）wasn't the first charming and entertaining weather forecaster on Japan's "Weathernews Live" but the video of her doing the quick change in attitude somehow got people's attention and amity outside of Japan and maybe even within Japan regarding the station with the relaxed approach to talking about the weather.
Well, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And Hiyama made her announcement several days ago that she would be leaving "Weathernews Live" as of March 30th. Of course, much lachrymal fluid was shed. 😭 To be honest, even before the announcement, I'd thought that Hiyama's presence on the channel was starting to wane a tad so perhaps there was something afoot. But in any case, the face that has launched a thousand clips including those of her belly laugh at microwave ovens and okonomiyaki and apples will be going onto bigger and better things since she has now appeared on other television programs and has even become a cultural ambassador for her native Ibaraki Prefecture.
Because Nash Music Library has been the provider of background music for "Weathernews Live" (and that's how I learned about NML), I thought it would be appropriate to come up with something from them to commemorate the occasion. I was fortunate enough to find the tenderhearted "Last Letter". After all, it's the tradition for a soon-to-be former colleague to read that last letter to the departing person, and that was the case for Hiyama as weathercaster Mizuki Tokita（戸北美月）tearfully read the message (I'd actually expected Saya's best bud Yui Komaki to do the honours but that could have ended with an even larger briny puddle...dangerous for wiring...that sort of thing).
Anyways, "Last Letter" is the first NML song that I've heard that has vocals and it hails from the 2022 "Kokoro Uta"（心歌...Songs of the Heart） compilation. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out the two ladies who were singing "Last Letter" but the song was a very sweetly delivered tune, and I thought that it could have actually made for an anime theme song.
Happy Weekend to all of you and of course, for those who celebrate it, a Happy St. Patricks' Day although the Irish holiday isn't until the 17th. The weather in my neck of the woods is kinda/sorta: not brilliantly sunny but not overcast either. The temps aren't exactly frigid but they aren't too warm either.
Anyways, I would like to start off this weekend's edition of KKP with a nice little something from the good folks at Nash Music Library. It comes from the February 2006 album"Resort" but the track itself has been given the very dry title of "SC-4702" which makes it sound like one of the minor starships in Starfleet. Maybe I could rename it into something more homey such as "Sunday Drive" since those are the images that I get. It's about that comfy trip in a British MINI through the countryside perhaps in that kinda/sorta weather I was talking about above.
Maybe this music wouldn't be City Pop but perhaps it can be called Japanese Countryside Pop. 😉
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