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.
Compared to Yellow Magic Orchestra and PSY-S, I don't know nearly as much about the technopop group P-Model and up to now, though I've known Susumu Hirasawa（平沢進）and band for their 1980s material, they have gone above and beyond. The latest single from their discography that I've covered is the quirky and infectious "2D or not 2D" from 1992.
Well, recently I've found a P-Model song titled "Ronri Kuugun"(Logic Airforce) which begins their 12th studio album, "Ongaku Sangyō Haikibutsu〜P-MODEL OR DIE"（音楽産業廃棄物...Music Industrial Wastes: P-Model or Die）, released in September 1999. Hirasawa was behind the words and music for this ominously-sounding technopop tribute anthem to a World War II movie soundtrack, complete with a cool CG video. According to Hirasawa himself, the planes that are "piloted" by the band members are German Stukas, and supposedly they are on their way to bomb a record company (not sure if P-Model was having some issues with their management at the time).
As the planes go off to war, from what has been shown in English on "Lyrics Translate", "Ronri Kuugun" is as much about what's going on in the mind as it is in battle. What I especially like is Hirasawa's delivery of those lyrics as if he's saluting the boys going off in their fighters and bombers. I can imagine the rain and wind being flung into the singer's face as he's singing. As a PS, the song was notable enough to get its own meme status.
I'm not really into zombie horror movies but I remember watching "Shaun of the Dead" at my friend's apartment in Jiyugaoka years ago and enjoying it. I give my thanks to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Continuing from the playlist of the University of Maryland radio station WMUC's Japanese Halloween-themed episode that one commenter cottoned me onto a few days ago which begat my first post of Tulip's（チューリップ）"Koi no Dracula"（恋のドラキュラ）, I'm picking out another song. This time, it's eclectic electronic rock band P-Model's"Zombi" from their March 1982 4th album"Perspective".
Having only relatively recently found out about P-Model as one of the Techno Gosanke（テクノ御三家）, I was fully expecting to hear something synthy with "Zombi". Actually though, aside from the Art of Noise-like pounding drums, the song comes across more as a strutting minimalist rocker than technopop while vocalist and songwriter Susumu Hirasawa（平沢進）sounds like a grown-up version of Milhouse Van Houten from "The Simpsons". As the Wikipedia article on "Perspective" states, the album has been categorized as post-punk, industrial rock and no-wave, and I think "Zombi" fulfills that third genre although I can also agree with J-Wiki's description of the album as an experimental rock project.
Reading the Wikipedia article, I discovered that Hirasawa had recorded all of the drum parts in the recording studio stairwell for that natural reverb. Apparently he had quite the battle with the recording engineer but Hirasawa won in the end. Good for Hirasawa. Incidentally, kinda like yesterday's Yuming's（ユーミン）"Corvett 1954", P-Model opted to go for a mistaken spelling of the title. Whether or not Hirasawa had been aware of the proper spelling of zombie in the first place I'm not sure but I'll just go with what has been officially written down on the album.
The whole thing about starting this Gosanke（御三家...The Big Three） file in the first place was on finding out about the Techno Gosanke as I was about to write an article on the technopop band Hikashu（ヒカシュー）for the first time back in October. Seeing how I already knew about the original Gosanke and the Shin-Gosanke and then discovering that there was a Techno Gosanke, I was inspired to find out whether there were other media-inspired gosanke trios for easy identification.
As I mentioned in Hikashu's "Atarashii Buzoku"（新しい部族）, the Techno Gosanke included the three bands Hikashu, P-Model and The Plastics（プラスチックス）. Why Yellow Magic Orchestra hadn't been included remains a mystery to me (although perhaps they were seen as being too big to belong in any conglomeration), but the fact that I could identify those other three bands easily now is fine to me. In any case, whereas The Plastics got their start as a band in 1976, P-Model and The Plastics debuted in 1979, so I will go with that year as a source year. Though the media may have coined the label of the Techno Gosanke for them, I don't think that the name was ever used in any promotions for them to show up together on TV shows and the like.
About a month ago, I provided my first article on the technopop group Hikashu which was made part of a Techno Gosanke（テクノ御三家）consisting of that band, P-Model and The Plastics. And then I figured that it's been a while since I added to the P-Model file here on KKP.
That first article for P-Model was for their 1979 debut single"Art Mania". Being a product of that time, there was plenty of New Wave thrown into the arrangement along the bleeps and bloops. Well, since doing that Hikashu article in October, I did some looking around and I discovered this P-Model song from many years down the line.
"2D or not 2D" was the second track on the band's February 1992 album"P-MODEL". There is none of that New Wave in this one. Instead, it's a purely twee technopop confection with some operatic flair and catchiness. Just think of a toy shop march on acid. The music video is also one for the "City Limits" file and it was obvious that the guys really got onto the morphing bandwagon (I remember when that became a huge special effects thing when "Terminator 2" was released back in 1991).
And before I finish up, I see that the Vocaloids got into the act, too.
It was an exciting time for me once the 1980s came in. With my trip to Japan in 1981 finally opening my ears and eyes up to music as an enthusiast...on both sides of the Pacific...the genres flowed right in. Two of the genres that hit me immediately were New Wave and technopop. Of course, at that time in my youth, Yellow Magic Orchestra was the band for the latter genre on the Japan side of things, although in Canada and the United States, the computer music was also getting my attention here, too, with acts such as Gary Numan and The Human League. At the same time, New Wave had gotten my attention with bands such as Blondie but also from Japan via Plastics. Quite heady bands, they were.
But I've been having to play catch-up over the past several years, and this blog has been helping out since it has inspired me to search through the long history of Japanese pop music. Some digging was needed, and I've realized that though YMO was the most visible of these way-out bands, there were other acts that should have gotten my attention. Plastics did get some of that, but now I've discovered this other group whose members had started their musical career as a progressive rock band called Mandrake only for the vocalist/guitarist Susumu Hirasawa（平沢進）to become disillusioned over its direction into commercialism, according to this Wikipedia article.
However, Hirasawa got his mojo back, so to speak, through witnessing the advent of punk music and then being introduced to the New Wave-loving Nylon 100% cafe/live house based in Shibuya, Tokyo. The band underwent a dramatic metamorphosis and emerged as P-Model, a New Wave/synthpop band born on New Year's Day 1979. Strangely enough, this was a group whose name I'd heard in the wind over the years but never knew what they were about until very recently.
Although it looks like the lineup has changed over a number of times, Hirasawa has been the one constant axis. Several months into the summer of 1979, P-Model released their first single, "Art Mania", created by Hirasawa, in July. The Japanese title was the far longer "Bijutsukan de Atta Hito darou" (美術館で会った人だろ...You're the One I Met at The Museum). Their first album came out the next month titled "In A Model Room".
With YMO, I've learned that initially at least, the technopop there was all about giving tributes through older genres such as surf music and exotica through the filter of synthesizers. But with P-Model, it was definitely embracing the New Wave. As soon as I heard "Art Mania", which is about a visitor to a museum getting rather hung up on another fellow art lover, memories of Plastics washed through me once more along with the weird and exciting music videos that I had seen as a kid sneaking in some midnight viewing through local Toronto programming such as "The All-Night Show" and "City Limits". I can hear Devo, Plastics and Blondie, and wonder whether Japanese outfits such as Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）and POLYSICS had gotten some inspiration from P-Model. All hail the spiky haircuts and loud plaid tight pants!
I mean, the music is as spiky and frantic as a punk rocker (although the band members had pretty conventional haircuts [very nice conditioner, it seems like] in the videos), and the arrangement seems to represent the transition from punk into New Wave with that thrash of the guitar and the tinkly synths that remind me of early video game music. Still, the relentless pinball-bumping music may have gotten folks into a slam-dancing mood. At this point, I may ask my old friend and fellow music connoisseur about his thoughts on "Art Mania".
