J-Canuck's Days of the Week

By Abby the Pup via Wikimedia Commons

And here I thought that all I needed for a bit of suspense during the Holidays was to watch "Die Hard". However, it looks like the next couple of days in Toronto will be seeing wind warnings which could lead to power outages. Not great during a cold time like now. A lot of folks here including myself still remember the Ice Storm of 2013 which knocked most of the city out for at least a couple of days and many for many days after that.

Still, I'm gonna still slog my way to 1000 articles as best I can. I've got another Author's Picks based on days of the week since I recall that certain Japanese songs have used days of the week in their titles and even their own artist names. All but one of the songs that will be included in the list are already represented on the blog.

(1998) Monday Michiru -- You Make Me

(2006) Ossan -- Kayoubi（火曜日）

(1991) Hideaki Tokunaga -- Wednesday Moon

(1993) Pizzicato Five -- Yasashii Mokuyoubi（優しい木曜日）

Yup, "Yasashii Mokuyoubi" (Sweet Thursday) is the odd group out this time, but it is most certainly not an odd song. It's a very pretty tune by Pizzicato Five evoking a pleasant spring walk in Paris on that day. With the feeling of Shibuya-kei, the Divine Ms. Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）vocally gives her version of a waltz along the Seine. I had a bit of a time tracking this down regarding when the song was originally released but thankfully its inclusion in "The Band of 20th Century: Nippon Columbia Years 1991-2001" gave me the big hint. It was just a matter of looking up those albums under Columbia and finding out that "Yasashii Mokuyoubi" had been placed in the June 1993 album "Bossa Nova 2001"（ボサ・ノヴァ2001）.

(1992) Dreams Come True -- Kessen wa Kin'youbi (決戦は金曜日）

(1982) EPO -- Doyou no Yoru wa Paradise (土曜の夜はパラダイス）

(2009) Chikuzen Sato -- Sunny Sunday Morning '09

Ossan -- Douka Christmas（どうかクリスマス）

 

Earlier in the summer, I discovered this band called Ossan（乙三．）with their mix of jazz and good ol' rock and roll, and so I wrote about their 2006 tune "Kayoubi"（火曜日...Tuesday）.

Ironically, it's Tuesday today and with 5 days to go before the 25th arrives, I'd like to go over their sparkling "Douka Christmas" (Please, Christmas) which was the lead track on their December 2014 album "Onsen e Ikou ka"（温泉へ行こうか...Shall We Go to a Hot Spring?）. I got that information directly from below the above video since apparently no one has been updating Ossan's J-Wiki page.

Whereas "Kayoubi" was accompanied by a depressing music video, "Douka Christmas" has got the band happily jamming away to cheerful nighttime scenes of Xmas. Vocalist Sohsaku Ohtake（大竹創作）has concocted a song of anticipation for one guy looking forward and praying for the greatest Holiday season with the love of his life as he notices the other romantic couples walking together. The arrangement includes some of that boss Spector sound from the 1960s, and hearing Ossan here, it comes across as a tune that I could imagine the house band on "Saturday Night Live" performing between skits.

I can certainly hope that Christmas in Japan will be as wonderful as it sounds here.

Ossan -- Kayoubi（火曜日）

 

Well, I did say that I would cover one of their songs in the next few days. I guess then that today is one of those days.

Last night, I was writing up former SMAP member Shingo Katori's（香取慎吾）"Kon'ya Saikou ne"（今夜最高ね）, a mix of urban contemporary and jazz that has been having the lad embracing his inner Michael Bublé, so to speak. When I was checking out the songwriting credits, the writer and composer was a fellow named Sohsaku Ohtake（大竹創作）who has been the vocalist and multi-instrumentalist for a band known as Ossan（乙三....Old Geezers）. I then listened to a couple of their own tunes and found them pretty snazzy and/or jazzy. One is a traditional Christmas tune so I won't be covering that one for a few months yet, but the other one is going to be taken care of right now.

"Kayoubi" (Tuesday) is the title track from Ossan's 2nd mini-album as a major act which came out in December 2006 (each track represents a day of the week). I'm such a sucker for some rousing jazz from a tight brass section, and well, here we are. "Kayoubi" was also written and composed and sung by Ohtake, and his voice reminds me of that of Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）from Mr. Children (just imagine him fronting a jazz band). Listening to the song for a few times now, I get vibes from Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, Ego-Wrappin' and Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）in her jazz mode.

Great song, depressing family video...and it was uploaded onto YouTube all the way back in the year 2007! But focusing on the song itself, I think that this would have made a theme song for a gritty detective drama in the roughest part of Osaka. All of the instruments are on hi-octane. 

The J-Wiki article for Ossan admits that the origins of the band are a bit murky but apparently they all got together in 2003 at a time when there were a number of brass-inclusive groups. How Ohtake and company came up with the name Ossan is also somewhat mysterious but one theory is that the guys figured that they would start to be called old geezers soon enough and so in that case, they may as well blunt the effect by calling themselves ossan first. In my estimation, although we will all probably be grabbing for the Metamucil and Ben Gay in the future, these guys still cook!