Prince -- When Doves Cry

 

A commenter told me a few weeks ago that the 10th anniversary of Prince's untimely death had occurred on April 21st and so I said that I would try and get another Prince song up as soon as possible. Well, just a couple of days shy of the 42nd anniversary since its release on May 16th 1984, I give you "When Doves Cry".

Prince already has half a dozen songs up on KKP but this is just his third ROY article as a performer after "Batdance"; the rest of the articles are up here because he contributed to the songwriting whether it be for Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）or other fellow artists such as Chaka Khan. But although I provided "Batdance" as his first ROY on the blog, I think it's safe to say that "When Doves Cry" is the more significant one in terms of his discography and legacy within music (it's ranked No. 37 on the "Rolling Stone" 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list).

Personally, my memories of "When Doves Cry" is the video which had heavy heavy airplay on the various music shows. For a period of several months, I frankly thought that it would become a permanent entry on any Top 10 video list. I had a friend who lived in a university dormitory who often woke up to this song along with one other tune; apparently he'd dance to it as well which is one good way to wake up for classes, although I'm not sure how his downstairs neighbour felt. 

Now that I've listened to it once more after a very long time, I realize that I'm having a tough time trying to categorize it. And apparently, Wikipedia has had a tough time of it, too, throwing a number of genres at it including avant-pop and neo-psychedelia which I never would have thought of. In the end, my Labels list has it as pop and R&B, but you readers may have different opinions. It is indeed a distinct song in the universe and many folks came to the same opinion as well as it topped the Billboard charts for months in America. It did the same in Canada, too.

Well, exactly 42 years ago to the day, what was up on the Top 10 of Oricon just about when "When Doves Cry" was released?

1. Checkers -- Kanashikute Jealousy （哀しくてジェラシー）

2. Akina Nakamori -- Southern Wind （サザンウインド）

3. Off-Course -- Kimi ga, Uso wo, Tsuita（君が、嘘を、ついた）

Chaka Khan/Prince -- I Feel For You

 

It was a good day today. Met up with a couple of friends, one of whom was Larry, co-administrator here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" who's back here in Toronto for a vacation. We had lunch at our favourite izakaya, Kingyo and then a lot of chat. Hopefully, we'll have at least one more opportunity for a meal together although there is that threatened transit strike looming at 12:01 am Friday. And indeed, for those commuters who depend on the TTC, I feel for you.

Today is Thursday which means we've got Reminiscings of  Youth where I post a song from the classic MTV era of my teenage and university years. And sure enough, I have "I Feel For You" by Chaka Khan from October 1984. Seeing that famous video and hearing that funkster of a song, I really get those nostalgic feelings; the 80s were a fun time. My brother and I also had a laugh at trying to sing Grandmaster Melle Mel's "Cha-cha-cha-Chaka Khan?" that starts things off. And in yet another case of a pop culture example of a mistake being made into an asset, the inadvertent scatting of the singer's name was just an error by the producer who decided to keep it in there to great effect.

"I Feel For You" is a great tune and just to see all those 80s breakdancers and a very happy Khan in the video again brought some nice memories of back then. Not that I actually got into breakdancing, though. The only thing I would have broken there was physics. But getting back to the song, look at the folks who were involved in it...alongside Khan was songwriter Prince, the aforementioned Melle Mel from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and the legendary Stevie Wonder on harmonica.

Of course, we gotta have the 12" remix like I used to hear on the Saturday-night radio remix broadcasts. In Canada, "I Feel For You" hit No. 2 while in America, it hit No. 3 on Billboard. It did reach the top spot in the UK and Ireland. 

Once again, it was to my surprise on finding out that Chaka Khan's splendid song was actually a cover version of the original by Prince who released "I Feel For You" in October 1979 as a part of his self-titled album. I literally listened to it for the first time last night, and I've been struck at not just the funk but also the smooth and mellow grooviness to it. It almost takes things into the AOR genre and it feels like one happy walk in the morning. One reason that I posted the song here tonight was that, as I'd mentioned back in GWINKO's "GET ON" a couple of days ago, Prince's birthday is on June 7th so I would like to wish all the fans a Happy Birthday for him, who would have turned 65.

So, which songs were on the Top 3 of Oricon in October 1984?

1. Kyoko Koizumi -- Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge （ヤマトナデシコ七変化）

2. Checkers -- Hoshikuzu no Stage （星屑のステージ）

3. Masahiko Kondo -- Eien ni Himitsu sa（永遠に秘密さ）

To wrap up, you gotta have all three of them here for this performance!

Sheila E. -- The Glamorous Life

 

When I arrived in Tokyo for my second stint as an English conversation teacher in the mid-1990s, little did I know that I would end up witnessing the Komuro Steamroller. It was the pop music phenomenon powered by music producer and musician Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）in which it seemed that any up-and-coming singer was not only being sponsored by the man but was also rolling sevens in success. Whether it be Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）, Tomomi Kahala（華原朋美）or trf, a good time was had by all under his aegis for a while leading into the last few years of the 20th century.

In retrospect, I think that was also the case a decade previously with the legendary Prince. At that time, I was an undergrad and seeing the flood of music videos which was constantly flowing through the television, Prince and his associates were taking over the airwaves to a certain extent for a few years in the mid-1980s themselves. There was Prince of course, but there was also Morris Day and The Time, Vanity 6 and Sheila E.

For me, Sheila E. was the one who stood out because of her dynamic percussion and "The Glamorous Life", her debut single from May 1984. Prince created the funkadelic dance song (and backed her up on vocals and instruments) about a woman swimming in all of the decadence and hedonism (in the 80s?! Pshaw...perish the thought!) of the titular glamorous life but finding it all rather empty without someone to truly love and to love her back. It might be a sad story but dang, the melody is irresistible along with the music video (especially when she kicks the cymbal).

Gotta have the 9-minute remix, too! Anyways, "The Glamorous Life" hit No. 3 on Canada's RPM and No. 7 on America's Billboard. It hit No. 1 on the Billboard Dance Club chart.

So, what was on top of the Oricon chart in May 1984?

1. Checkers -- Kanashikute Jealousy （哀しくてジェラシー）

2. Akina Nakamori -- Southern Wind （サザンウインド）

3. Seiko Matsuda -- Jikan no Kuni no Alice（時の国のアリス) 

The Bangles -- Manic Monday

Good Free Photos

I'll never not marvel at the observation that Canada's Thanksgiving and Japan's Sports Day fall on the same day...the second Monday in October, considering one nation feasts while the other nation promotes strenuous physical activity. Regardless, I wish my fellow Canadians a Happy Thanksgiving. Our family had the regular get-together last night but since I'm the only person who likes turkey, it was sushi for dinner. 

I figure that depending on the family and the logistics (or lack of them), there will be those who are having a pretty manic Monday getting ready to greet extended family after spending time, money and energy to create that traditional turkey dinner with all of the trimmings. So, as such on the usual special holiday edition of Reminiscings of Youth, I give you "Manic Monday" by The Bangles.

According to the Wikipedia article regarding the song, although it had originally been written and composed by Prince in 1984 as a duet between him and Apollonia 6, the deal with "Manic Monday" didn't quite make it, and a couple of years later, he offered it under the pseudonym Christopher to The Bangles. It was released as the band's single at the end of January 1986.

I remember first seeing the music video showing Susanna Hoffs singing while her fellow bandmates were making like regular folks trying to start off their Monday mornings. The lyrics and the music both come across as a relatable happy-go-lucky day-in-the-life pop tune about resignedly schlumping off to work while wishing that the weekend hadn't ended. 

For both the American and Canadian charts, "Manic Monday" hit No. 2, and even in Japan, it managed to get as high as No. 56 on Oricon. 

Interestingly enough, although I'd planned to consult the Oricon Top 10 for January 1986 for the comparative hits in Japan, I realized that I had already done so a couple of weeks ago for Sade's "Is It a Crime?" which was also released in that month. Therefore, let's go with the singles that were released back then.

Hideaki Tokunaga -- Rainy Blue

Misato Watanabe -- My Revolution

Yukiko Okada -- Kuchibiru Network (くちびる Network)

Kahoru Kohiruimaki -- Time The Motion (Follow-Up)

 

Happy Monday! Earlier this morning, there was this video on singer-songwriter Kahoru Kohiruimaki's（小比類巻かほる）YouTube channel for one of the tracks on her scintillating 1989 hit album "Time The Motion", and it was there that I found out that a video featuring the entire album was up. Very good news for me and KKP because when I wrote up "Time The Motion" all the way back in 2014, it was much more difficult to find tracks from there and Kohhy's channel wouldn't be up for a few more years. So it's time for a follow-up!

Along with the article for "Time The Motion", I've already written about the most famous track, the hit "Dreamer" and the uptempo "Wild Generation" which starts things off. 

As mentioned in the original article, most of the tracks (there are a few special exceptions) were created by Kohhy and the late Yoshiaki Ohuchi（大内義昭）but I failed to mention that the arrangement was handled by Canadian David Campbell and Junichi Kawaguchi（川口淳一）.

The above video from her channel has the whole album and beginning things here is Track 4 "In The Rain" at 14:33 with a great riff at the start and then some dramatic kickass horns. In fact, I think Kohiruimaki's work here seems to be weaving a contemporary film noir's final scene where the femme fatale and the anti-hero are in different cars going off in different directions. She's doing fine whereas the guy has a tiny permanent hole in his heart which she had once occupied.

At 24:38 is one of the special exceptions, namely "Bliss" which along with "Mind Bells" (that got its due in the original article for "Time The Motion") was created by the Prince and Levi Seacer Jr. "Bliss" is the aftermath of some rather heavy romancing, and it's so funky Prince (well, the guy is providing backup chorus) that it was a wonder that he hadn't included it with "Batdance" a month earlier. It is so out there that it took me a while to get used to it.

My opinion on "Everything's All Right" at 29:09 is also a bit out there since because of that synthesizer work in the song, I can't but feel that this could have been just at home on The Police's Stewart Copeland's soundtrack for the original CBS version of "The Equalizer" from the mid-1980s. But there is no need for an ex-CIA vigilante here since as the title says, everything is all right; heck, in fact the guy even took up a Cessna to do so some skywriting to emphasize this.

Remember at the very top where I mentioned that I saw this Kohhy video that started things off here today? Well, this is the video for the track "Asphalt no Kaeri Michi"（アスファルトの帰り道...The Asphalt Way Home） and it's one of my favourites on "Time The Motion". I just had to include this particular video although in the video for the entire album, it's located at 33:39. The music by Kohhy is more reminiscent of her earlier pop-rock material rather than the R&B that she was displaying on the rest of the album and that she would be singing more of in later albums. Lyrically, it's about remembering a childhood friendship that no longer exists due to the passage of time and circumstances.

The title track is at 38:24 and it sounds like Prince couldn't help but come back in at the intro, but "Time The Motion" is a purely Kohhy concoction. This was another song that I had always wanted to cover, and again "The Equalizer" pops up in my head. Wouldn't it be great to see Robert McCall dispense his special brand of justice while this song is playing? Keyboards are working overtime at time and a half here!

"Silent Blue" is the final track at 48:47 and it's a soulful and slightly jazzy mid-tempo finale bringing back those notions of film noir as someone stands on a nighttime pier realizing the good times and bad times of life. I guess that it would Kohhy's version of "Que Sera Sera". 

It's been a while since I got to put up a Kohiruimaki song or album so I'm glad that I could find all of the songs from "Time The Motion" to provide some finality to one of the first CDs that I bought in Japan during my time on the JET Programme. I think that it did prove to be a turning point in the singer's career.

Prince -- Batdance

 

Being a member of a certain generation, the first Batman that I got acquainted with was the TV version from the 1960s with the late Adam West as a campy Caped Crusader fighting with fists, batarangs and day-glow onomatopoeia on the screen. I hadn't known that Batman first appeared in comic books as a much darker and dangerous hero, but all that changed with Frank Miller's 1986 comic miniseries "The Dark Knight Returns" when the World's Greatest Detective was given his old obsessed personality back.

And that led to the stylishly gothic and ambitious Tim Burton 1989 film with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson. That year was indeed the Year of the Batman with all sorts of news features, trailers, merchandise and talk about how a comic actor who was the goofy Beetlejuice the year before could ever become cast as the Dark Knight. There were tons of howling protest about Keaton's casting but apparently all that went away when the movie came out during the blockbuster season. Still, the actor and character had a mighty duel to fight against Nicholson's Joker who almost stole the entire movie.

Interestingly that year was the same year that I graduated from University of Toronto and headed over to Japan to start my very first full-time job as a teacher on the JET Programme. In fact, I left Canada just a few weeks after "Batman" was released in theatres and it was the final film for me and my friends to watch together before leaving on my Japan odyssey. 

There are all those YouTube videos of frenzied audience reactions for "Avengers Endgame". I remember watching "Batman" on the big screen and the audience then was just screaming and cheering right from the start when the title came on to Danny Elfman's epic theme. And it simply continued when key scenes came on such as the "Get in the car" scene. It was quite the experience and a fine cinematic sendoff for me to Japan. Incidentally, "Batman" didn't get out into theatres over there until December.

The JET briefing manual which I had received as part of my kit to get ready to teach the masses instructed me on how to use pop culture to make English more palatable to the kids. So I tried to infuse some of Batman and Joker into the lessons instead of Dick and Jane but the sage observation was that the superhero and supervillain were still more (not-Adam) West-centric, so perhaps Anpanman and Baikinman were better. The whole "Dick Tracy" thing the following year fared even worse, though I tried.

Within all of the Batman hoopla in 1989, only one incredible artist could make his contribution stand out and apart from everything Bat. Prince already has representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" because he provided dynamic singer Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）with a couple of tracks for her "Time The Motion" album which had come out the same year. Well, he also provided the film with his own creation "Batdance" which got the regal welcome in June 1989 when "Batman" was released.

Perhaps just like the movie, "Batdance", the song and the video, is epic and bizarre...and in addition, it's Princely! Naturally I was listening to plenty of Prince songs throughout the 1980s (and I'll have to cover "When Doves Cry" sometime soon as a ROY article), and therefore when I encountered "Batdance" on MuchMusic here in Canada, I just thought that this song could have only come from the mind and soul of Prince. It's got all of the rock, the funk, the dance beats and excerpts from the movie itself all smashed into a chaotic whole and visually expressed in the music video which could have played every night on stage off or on Broadway if Prince had desired it. Not surprisingly, "Batdance" hit No. 1 in both Canada and the United States.

I've read that Keaton is putting on the cowl again for "The Flash" which is scheduled to come out in a little over a year from now. Can only imagine the cheering that he will get when he shows up again to say "I'M BATMAN!".

So what were the Top 3 of Oricon for June 1989?

1. Princess Princess -- Diamonds

2. Mari Hamada -- Return to Myself ~ Shinai, Shinai, Natsu（しない、しない、ナツ。）

3. Shizuka Kudo -- Arashi no Sugao （嵐の素顔）

Kahoru Kohiruimaki -- Time The Motion

Back in July 2012 when I put up my article on Kahoru Kohiruimaki's（小比類巻かほる） dynamite "Dreamer", I rather lamented the fact that I couldn't find any other of that song's companion tunes from her 6th studio album, "Time The Motion", released in November 1989. Well, there have been some developments since that time and I now have been able to hunt down some of the other tracks. Of course, I've put up "Dreamer" once more above from one of Kohhy's concerts.

I mentioned in the other article that "Time The Motion" was that transitional album in Kohiruimaki's career. Some of the tracks hearkened back to her early brassy pop/rock of the mid-late 80s while others started looking forward into the R&B she would explore from the 90s onwards. Track 3 is "Ii Ko wo Daite Nemuri na yo" （いい子を抱いて眠りなよ....Get That Girl） which is more in that old pop/rock vein. It's a fun bopping-along song which talks about keeping the good times rolling while performing those sets and then partying as if it were 1999 (the reason I used those last 6 words will become evident later for those 80s music fans). No matter which phase of her career it is, Kohhy has always loved having those horns provide that extra oomph. The live version of the song was actually released as her 13th single in February 1990. The singer wrote the lyrics while Yoshiaki Ohuchi （大内義昭）came up with the melody. 

The middle of the album goes into some rather unknown territory with tracks like "Mind Bells" and "Bliss" which were created by The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince and Levi Seacer, Jr, with Kohiruimaki providing the Japanese lyrics. I'm sure getting some of the album produced at Prince's Paisley Park Studios must have been a royal thrill for the singer. The above is "Mind Bells" which is a slice of Princely funk....a little esoteric for my tastes but interesting to hear nonetheless.

The final track I'll show for tonight is "Riverside Park" which is the 2nd-last track on "Time The Motion", and seems to act as musical denouement for the album. It doesn't really spark like some of the other big tracks and it's a bit of a breezy little tune which was once again made up by the singer and Ohuchi. The video above for the song was included in the VHS tape of the "Dreamer" video, and as you can see, "Riverside Park" was used as the background tune for the production of "Dreamer", and to show Kohhy enjoy that drive through Los Angeles via a BMW. Yes, imagine the possibilities....

I'm glad that I could finally concoct up an article for "Time The Motion", although there are some songs I would have liked to have featured such as Tracks 7 to 9: "Everything's All Right", "Asphalt no Kaeri Michi"（アスファルトの帰り道...The Asphalt Way Home） and especially the cool title track itself (with a Prince-like riff at the beginning) since all of them pack their own individual wallops. But perhaps someday, one of them will get up there.

June 6th 2022: All of them are up there now!