Pet Shop Boys -- Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)

 

It's Thursday night so it's time for another weekly entry of Reminiscings of Youth, and this duo already has a few entries on KKP under this Label, but that's how good and popular they are. Pet Shop Boys have been one of the anchors for my beloved music of the 1980s.

Reading up on this particular song on Wikipedia, I was surprised that "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" had come out in the mid-1980s. The first version of the song was apparently released in July 1985; I assumed that it had first made its appearance a couple of years earlier because as the very first PSB song that I'd ever heard, I made my first encounter with it as I was in the car listening to the "Top Six at Six" on CFTR-AM when our family was making the weekly drive to Nippon Video to return and rent out new Japanese videos. Indeed I am now aware that their ticket to the big time was "West End Girls" which was an earlier single but for some reason "Opportunities" was the first one for me.

Some months later, I was able to see the music video as shown above for the original version. The practical effects done to Neil Tennant were a bit on the scary side, admittedly, but the song was catchy, and along with Canadian singer Gowan's "A Criminal Mind", "Opportunities" was the first tune that I heard that dealt with planning the so-called perfect crime. Tennant seemed to have the perfect voice for the lyrics: silky and oh-so-slithery, although him and his partner Chris Lowe have stated that the partners-in-crime in the song were total losers, so I'm kinda thinking Harry and Marv from the "Home Alone" franchise.

The original version did very modestly, coming in at No. 116 on the UK charts. On the other hand, its slightly rearranged version which was released in May 1986 with a slightly more strident approach hit No. 11 in Great Britain while reaching No. 10 in the United States and No. 22 in Canada. There was even another music video for this new version which looks like a synthpop band's attempt at Penn & Teller. Strangely enough, I still rather prefer the original 1985 version because it comes off as a bit more sinister.

Now, what was in the Top 10 for July 1985 on Oricon? I have here Nos. 1, 7 and 8.

1. Akina Nakamori -- Sand Beige - Sabaku e (砂漠へ)

7. Ayumi Nakamura -- Tsubasa no Oreta Angel （翼の折れたエンジェル）

8. Anzen Chitai -- Kanashimi ni Sayonara（悲しみにさよなら)

Commuting to Work with City Pop (and more)

It’s Oliver Ebisuno, coming back to Kayo Kyoku Plus after a long break. For some time now, in spite of work and personal stuff, I wanted to make an update on the blog, but always felt either unmotivated or drained from strength when sitting in front of an open draft editor. I think the time is right for a special post; to be specific, an Author’s Pick text. Shamelessly, I admit that J-Canuck’s Driving to City Pop two-parter provided me with much needed dosage of inspiration.

Evidently, I do not live in Japan and there are no prospects of me visiting the country in the nearest future, but I thought it would be fun to mix my love for Japanese music with my personal experience, that is, commuting to work.

The city I live in is such a hole in the middle of nowhere (and forgotten by the Almighty) that basically right after finishing high school I had to get used to commuting. I had to undergo a one-hour trip by bus while studying for 5 years, the same applied to PhD studies, and my first employment. Last year, I switched jobs and now I also commute by bus, but this time to a different city, which is located roughly an hour away from my place of residence.

Being on the bus for two hours per day (please bear in mind that this is a “there and back again” route) gives me a lot of time to do various sorts of stuff like reading, browning the web, but also listening. For years, I was never that keen on the idea of listening to music outside of the comfort zone of my home, but I warmed up to the idea after the pandemic.

Now, en route to work (and most importantly coming back from it) I can’t help but listen to Tomoko Aran. Her albums Fuyuu Kuukan and Last Good-bye really calm me down and put me in a positive mood, especially in the morning. The same also goes for Toshiki Kadomatsu’s After 5 Clash and Hitomitoi’s City Dive albums.

When I am in a more adventurous mood, then I reach for music that is more charged with Synth-Pop or Rock. In such instances, Yoko Oginome’s Route 246 Connexion and Chisato Moritaka’s Mi-ha prove to be invaluable. Very rarely, when I feel deeply melancholic, I decide to desperately turn to Wink’s Best of selection or Naomi Akimoto’s Poison 21. Please refer to the selection of my favourite songs from the aforementioned albums here:

 1. Tomoko Aran -- Midnight Pretenders (1983)

 

2. Tomoko Aran -- Last Good-bye (1986)

 

3. Toshiki Kadomatsu -- Step into the Light (1984)

4. Hitomitoi -- Dive (2012)

5. Yoko Oginome -- 246 Planet Girls (1987)

6. Chisato Moritaka -- 47 Hard Nights (1988)

7. Naomi Akimoto -- Lion in My Pocket (1984)

8. Wink -- One Night in Heaven (1989)

That’s it for the moment, I sincerely hope that you enjoyed my list of suggestions. I should also add that apart from the aforemtioned songs/albums, I also tend to listen to either Pet Shop Boys or Animotion while commuting. Thank you for reading.

Image sources: The feature photograph at the top of the post was taken by me on a bus to work on wintery night at 5 AM. I usually sit at the back, so it was easier for me to make sure that the faces of other commuters won’t get caught by the phone camera. The image of Akina Nakamori next to Mercedes was found on Pinterest. All the hyperlinks lead to previous Kayo Kyoku Plus posts.

Pet Shop Boys -- Flamboyant

 

Never wore an Issey Miyake although I do love the colour black as a fashion choice. His clothes were too expensive for me although even I heard about this Japanese designer who came up with the duds for a lot of celebrities (and perhaps the vast majority of citizens in chic Daikanyama, Tokyo) including the mercurial Steve Jobs via those black sweaters. It's been unfortunately a crowded week with celebrity deaths including the one for Olivia Newton-John, and as was reported a few days ago, the one for Miyake. He died on August 5th at the age of 84 due to liver cancer.

The late Miyake for me was immortalized in music thanks to a shoutout given to him in Pet Shop Boys' March 2004 single "Flamboyant" which was also included in the duo's big BEST compilation, "PopArt: The Hits". Being a fan of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe, I was more than willing to part with my yen when the album came out some months ago in late 2003. As soon as I heard the mighty bass thrum of those synthesizers with the following suspenseful arrangement and Neil's familiar warblings regarding the enticement of celebrity, I just thought that "Flamboyant" was the catchiest PSB song which I'd heard in a good long while. Considering some of the amazing hits that they've provided since the early 1980s, that is indeed saying a lot. Ironically, the whole sound of the song made me think that this would have been the ideal theme for a master thief or assassin, someone who would absolutely eschew celebrity.

"Flamboyant" on its own is a great song but the music video takes the message of the song and puts it on its ear via the wonderfully wacky world of Hollywood stars and Japanese commercials. For those who have been their fair share of silliness with folks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver spouting out nutty catchphrases surrounded by surreal images while hawking everything from isotonic drinks to ramen to real estate, this really hits the spot. But interspersed with PSB going WTF with the J-ads is a story of a salaryman trying to grab his fifteen minutes of fame by appearing in a real NTV contest show called "Kasou Taishou"（仮装大賞...Kinchan and Katori Shingo's All Japan Costume Grand Prix） despite the disapproval of all around him including his wife.

The whole video used to be on YouTube but for whatever reason, it was taken down (even the Wikipedia entry on "Flamboyant" mentions that it isn't currently featured in my nation). Maybe there were copyright strikes involved or Neil and Chris were just a little too embarrassed about their tongue-in-cheek shenanigans (personally I thought the latter looked great with long flowing hair). However, it can be seen on Vimeo. The video above just has the Boys' appearances which is hilarious enough.

Although nothing is mentioned about how "Flamboyant" did in either America or Canada, it did hit No. 3 on Ireland's dance charts. As for what else was doing fine on the Japanese Oricon charts in March 2004, it looks like I'll be going with multiples of 3 for this week's Reminiscings of Youth.

No. 3 Ayaka Hirahara -- Jupiter

No. 6 Ai Otsuka -- Sakuranbo （さくらんぼ）

No. 9 Yo Hitoto -- Hanamizuki （ハナミズキ）

Pet Shop Boys -- One of the Crowd

 

It's time for another Reminiscings of Youth session this week and for the second time, we have Pet Shop Boys following one of my very favourites of theirs, "Left to My Own Devices" from 1988. 

As they say, timing is everything, and as it turns out, I had just arrived in Japan on the JET Programme when Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe put out a Japan-only short compilation album commemorating that country's part of their MCMLXXXIX Tour in 1989. Titled "In Depth" and released in July 1989, it contained their hits including "Always On My Mind" and the aforementioned "Left to My Own Devices" but it was Track 2 that got some new attention from me.

"One of the Crowd" is, as would usually be the case for a Pet Shop Boys song, immensely catchy and it was through "In Depth" that I first learned about this earworm by Tennant and Lowe, although I later read that it was a coupling song with the single "It's Alright" that was released the previous month. Still, it has remained the most notable song from "In Depth" for me because of those tribal rhythms, Lowe's vocoder intoning of fishing and my long wondering whether PSB was channeling either YMO or Kraftwerk when they came up with "One of the Crowd".

It's been over 30 years since this one came out but I certainly hope that some enterprising fellow might be able to put up some sort of computer graphics video based on the tune. All this time, I'd assumed that "One of the Crowd" had been placed in "In Depth" as a sorta/kinda comic admonishment against Japanese society's tendency to follow the crowd and fashion trends and so forth. But then, I went to the Pet Shop Boys Wiki where I found out that Tennant had once mentioned that "...Chris said in an interview on TV that he liked following fashion and that he didn't like to stand out, he liked to be one of the crowd" which became part of the lyrics for the song. It ended up that "One of the Crowd" was just Lowe goofing about, with his partner and the rest of the production staff having a belly laugh at the silliness of it all.

Nothing profound or philosophical at all. However, it says something that even when the Boys are taking the piss out of something, it still comes out great. "In Depth" peaked at No. 18 on Oricon. So, what were the Top 3 Oricon singles in that hot and hazy month of July in 1989?

1. Princess Princess -- Sekai de Ichiban Atsui Natsu （世界でいちばん熱い夏）

2. Wink -- Samishii Nettaigyo （淋しい熱帯魚）

3. Yumi Matsutoya -- Anniversary

Pet Shop Boys -- Left to My Own Devices

Indeed, it is Thursday night and so once again, it's time for Reminiscings of Youth!

I've long been a Pet Shop Boys fan ever since I first heard their "Opportunities" in the early 1980s. My first...opportunity...to hear Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe was on the car radio because that particular song was regularly getting on "The Top 6 at 6" on the old CFTR-AM station. Then, of course, there came their other danceable synthpop confections such as "It's a Sin", "West End Girls" and the cover of "Always on My Mind". Of course, I ended up getting some of the remix versions on vinyl as a kid at the local Sam The Record Man.

However, it has been "Left to My Own Devices" which was released as the Pet Shop Boys' November 1988 single that has imprinted itself on my brain as their theme song...personal choice, I know. Along with Che Guevara, Debussy and that Roundhead general, "Left to My Own Devices" simply has this epicness with the regularly amazing PSB beats paired with a pop orchestra which must have been channeling the soundtrack of the greatest spy caper ever made as they played this. In fact, I'm surprised that this has yet to become part of a motion picture and I would say that it belongs with a montage credit sequence on the level of "Mission: Impossible".

Nope, I'm not one who particularly went to a lot of concerts (ironic for a guy with a music blog) but I actually had a charleyhorse of envy when I saw the above performance. Just imagine being among fellow Pet Shop Boys fans when the opening dramatic strings from "Left to My Own Devices" activated. When I first heard this on the radio in the late 1980s, I knew it was a PSB song but it took me a couple of days to track down the title, which I did ravenously and when I finally did get the title, I went "Aw, that's so Pet Shop Boys!". And yet, the lyrics were all about a guy who just wanted to spend some time alone with an imagination the size of Godzilla.

I ended up buying the 1988 album "Introspective" (the album cover looks like a TV test pattern designed by Benetton) on the fact that it contained the extended version of "Left to My Own Devices", a slightly less intense take on the original single but with added French horn and an opera singer to compensate. "Introspective" also has a very special place in my heart because it is the very first CD that I ever bought in my life, and it was one of the few albums that I brought over with me to Japan when I started my job on the JET Programme in the summer of 1989. 

Strangely enough, the single wasn't all that much of a hit in the United States or Canada, only getting into the mid-80s on Billboard and RPM respectively but it did reach No. 4 on the UK charts according to the Wikipedia article about the song.

So, what were the Top 3 singles on Oricon in November 1988?

1. Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi -- Tonbo （とんぼ）

2. Akina Nakamori -- I Missed "The Shock"

3. Yui Asaka -- Melody