Rei featuring Ginger Root -- Love is Beautiful

 

Welcome to another round of Urban Contemporary Fridays on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and hopefully all of you down in the United States have been able to digest most or all of your turkey dinner in the past 24 hours. I gather then that we are about to enter the Yuletide season. Officially on the blog, we'll be doing that from tomorrow on November 25th so stay tuned for some Xmas songs for the next few weeks leading up to Christmas Day.

A few days ago late at night, I pulled off what I call the equivalent of skipping a stone on the pond at least a few times across to the other bank when I discovered a succession of interesting tunes. Let's say that I didn't get to bed until rather late because I had to peruse these new gems for some time past midnight.

The first one is actually a collaboration of a couple of people who already have representation on KKP: snazzy and twinkly 80s-loving Ginger Root finishing up his Kimiko Takeguchi arc last year and guitar princess Rei who I wrote about a few years ago with her "Lazy Loser". Rei's new mini-album, "VOICE", is due out next week on November 29th but her own YouTube channel has put out the first track's music video in the last couple of weeks.

"Love is Beautiful" is the first track with Ginger Root and Rei working together on the song and the result is a calm and groovy tune combining Rei's slightly husky vocals and strumming guitar with Ginger Root's quintessentially sparkly keyboards. The music video has Ginger ravenously searching music store after music store for that one rare album, something that I can relate to very well after my own occasional quests in the CD store-filled neighbourhood of Shibuya and beyond. I've gotten lucky from time to time. Hama Okamoto from OKAMOTO's is also helping out as well with the music and donuts.

Okamoto's -- 90s Tokyo Boys

 

Having arrived in Japan for my second stint in the mid-1990s, I still clearly remember about the yamumba（ヤマンバ）phenomenon and the loose socks that the high school girls wore back then, but I can't really wrap my memories about the guys at the time. Mind you, though my trips to the Youth Mecca of Japan, Shibuya, were mostly during the day, there were a few times that I got to move around the neighbourhood late into the night. There was plenty of busking into the early morning hours with dedicated fandom and unfortunately quite a few teens who were still looking for their sea legs when it came to drinking and not quite succeeding. 

Those images came to mind as I was listening to Okamoto's' "90s Tokyo Boys" although it looks like the setting in the lyrics was Shinjuku rather than Shibuya. But it's still about having that wild Friday night with the guys and gals in the clubs, and considering that this was a track from their August 2017 7th album "No More Music", I gather that the band may have been doing their own reminiscing. "90s Tokyo Boys" is an interesting blend of alternative rock and funk which also had me thinking of Suchmos to a certain extent.

Okamoto's got started in 2006 when the four members were junior high school students. They were all fans of the late artist Taro Okamoto（岡本太郎）so they took on his name for the band. In fact, taking a page out of The Ramones, every member stylized his name to take on the family name of Okamoto so at this point, the lineup consists of Sho Okamoto (vocals/guitar), Kouki Okamoto (guitar), Hama Okamoto (bass) and Reiji Okamoto (drums) with former members Masaru Okamoto and Ryosuke Okamoto. Sho and Kouki were responsible for "90s Tokyo Boys".

Their first album, "Here are Okamoto's" was released in June 2009 and the guys became the youngest group at the time to perform at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas in 2010. Okamoto's covers rock, hip-hop, and alternative R&B although in their early days, they also covered garage rock.