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.
Showing posts with label REICO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label REICO. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

REICO -- Navigator Lover(ナビゲーターラヴァー)


All these years, lyricist Shun Taguchi(田口俊)has been quite well-represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" through his works for other artists including enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa(石川さゆり)for which he provided the jazz torch song "Whiskey ga O-Suki deshou?" (ウィスキーが、お好きでしょ). Well, he actually started out as a singer in 1980 with the band Lorelei and then began the songwriting aspect of his career from 1982. Just a little after that, he teamed up with Kazuo Horiguchi(堀口和男)to form the singing duo REICO.


Their debut album "REICO" was released in October 1983 as you can see in the thumbnail above and the first track is "Navigator Lover". Man, the sound and the appearance of that album cover couldn't get more 1980s. Throw me that Rubik's Cube, will ya?

"Navigator Lover" has got that West Coast AOR sound down pat right to the fine print, and listening to Taguchi and Horiguchi, who wrote and composed all of the tracks on "REICO", I get nostalgic vibes from their contemporaries at the time such as H2O and Off-Course(オフコース). That guitar and their vocals had me thinking of a motorcycle ride on the Ventura Freeway one sunny Sunday.

Tuesday, March 6, 2018

Atsuko Nina -- Soldier Fish

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zsispeo/36968708711from zslspeo

Winter
is back in Toronto much to a lot of Torontonians' chagrin and knowing resignation. Heck, we even had a mini-blizzard in our neighbourhood for several minutes this morning.



Well, for those few folks in Toronto who may be reading "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I can perhaps provide a little bit of warm solace through this song. Actually, kudos should be given to commenter Daemonskald who was not only kind enough to send me larger copies of the liner notes for Mioko Yamaguchi's(山口美央子)"Nirvana" album (my eyes are saved and the retinal cells no longer have to pull overtime), but also gave me some nice tips about other singers out there in the kayo universe.

The first singer he recommended was Atsuko Nina(二名敦子), a singer-songwriter from Osaka who had her time in the sun in the mid-1980s. Actually, I had come across Nina's name through the pages of "Japanese City Pop" but had never come around to her until I got that nice nudge from Daemonskald a few days ago.

Anyways, he led me to this summery number called "Soldier Fish". Had no idea what a soldier fish was until I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently the proper spelling has the words merged into one: soldierfish. Looks good enough to eat. As for the song itself, "Soldier Fish" was a track on Nina's 2nd album "Windy Island" from 1985. REICO composed this one with veteran Yoshiko Miura(三浦徳子)providing the lyrics of somebody just enjoying a contented life in the warm waters just like the titular fish. I'm sure that a lot of my fellow citizens are desperately hoping for that sort of lifestyle right now.

The notable thing about Nina here is that she sounds a fair bit like another 80s chanteuse Kanako Wada(和田加奈子), except that the former seems to especially specialize in the summer beach experience. Nina herself, whose real name is Atsuko Iwai(岩井敦子), debuted all the way back in 1979 under the stage name of Eri Hayakawa(早川英梨)and perhaps had more of a City Pop bent in her music. According to her J-Wiki biography, she's been a fan of R&B singers including Chaka Khan, along with Janis Joplin.

More exploration to do...