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.
It wasn't too long ago that I introduced this music group called ROUND TABLE with their long-time guest vocalist Nino as a unit that delved into the wonders of Akishibu-kei（アキシブ系）, music for the anime lovers out there done in the funky style of yesteryear. Not surprisingly, a lot of these songs were used as theme tunes for anime starting from the turn of the century, and my first article on ROUND TABLE featured one such song, the 2005 "Groovin' Magic" for the show "Top wo Nerae 2!"（トップをねらえ2!）.
ROUND TABLE and Nino's first collaboration though was back in 2002 when they came up with "Let Me Be With You", the opening theme for the anime "Chobits"（ちょびっツ）. Written and composed by vocalist and guitarist Katsutoshi Kitagawa（北川勝利）, it was indeed a match made in heaven when it was released as a single in April that year with the adorably high-pitched and silky vocals of Nino and the bouncy R&B. The bouncy and catchy "ooh, ooh" don't hurt either plied with the bass.
Happy Victoria Day! Hope my fellow Canadians have been able to get some relaxation over the long weekend.
With all of the myriad genres of music out there, it's inevitable that some of them have merged into something often new and fascinating...just like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (which I love, by the way). Jazz and rock joined into fusion, Caribbean genres met jazz/R&B to create ska, and even ska encountered New Wave and punk to make Two-tone. Even within Japan, Hawaiian and Latin got together with kayo kyoku to form Mood Kayo. It's kinda like seeing soap suds on the surface of water and having bubbles join up to form newer bubbles.
All this merging and evolution have continued up to the present day, and recently, I discovered that anison and Shibuya-kei had a mind meld of sorts as early as the late 1990s to give birth to Akishibu-kei（アキシブ系）, a portmanteau of Akiba-kei (after the Tokyo anime/electronics district of Akihabara) and Shibuya-kei. To me, this particular hybridized genre sounds like a new breed of Japanese dog but I've realized that sample songs are really bouncy disco-like anime themes. If this is indeed the case then perhaps I already have representatives of Akishibu-kei here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" such as "Egao ni Naru"（笑顔になる）by Rina Sato & Asuka Ohgame （佐藤利奈・大亀あすか）for the anime "Koufuku Graffiti"（幸腹グラフィティ）, seiyuuKana Hanazawa's（花澤香菜）"Moonlight Magic" and Kohmi Hirose's（広瀬香美）"Groovy!" from "Card Captor Sakura"（カードキャプターさくら）.
My realization that there was a genre known as Akishibu-kei came about because I found this song called "Groovin' Magic" by this musical unit called ROUND TABLE which delves into J-Pop, Neo-Shibuya-kei, guitar pop, soft rock, anison...and Akishibu-kei. The group formed in 1997 with vocalist and keyboardist Rieko Ito（伊藤利恵子）and vocalist and guitarist Katsutoshi Kitagawa（北川勝利）; not surprisingly, Kitagawa was behind two of the songs that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Between 2002 and 2012, there was also a guest vocalist by the name of Nino who helped with ROUND TABLE to provide songs, and so in those cases, the group was logically known as ROUND TABLE featuring Nino. One single from February 2005 under this name was "Groovin' Magic" which was the opening song for the 2004-2006mecha anime OVA "Top wo Nerae 2!"（トップをねらえ2!）or "Diebuster". The aforementioned "Egao ni Naru" for "Koufuku Graffiti" had its Burt Bacharach and Sunshine Pop influences but "Groovin' Magic" tends more toward the disco/R&B side of things a la Bird and Misia of the early 2000s. Vocalist Ito was responsible for both words and music.
