SHOGUN -- You Turn Me On

 

Yup, my first article today was Xmas-based as would be the case on any November 25th on KKP, but I haven't forgotten that it is also Urban Contemporary Friday. In a way, I guess that I was psyching myself up for this last night since I was listening to a string of my old City Pop favourites: Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Jealous", Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）"Nemurenai Diamond" (眠れないダイアモンド）and Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）& Haruko Kuwana's（桑名晴子）"Who Are You?".

While listening to that last one, I saw a video off to the side titled "You Turn Me On" by the band SHOGUN, which had Yoshino as a member. Knowing the group primarily for uptempo songs such as "Otokotachi no Melody"（男達のメロディー）, I'd first assumed that a tune with a title of "You Turn Me On" would be something fairly funky and raunchy.

The English-language "You Turn Me On" is indeed upbeat but it isn't actually a sex machine of a song. It's actually a very sweet paean to the one the protagonist loves, and I can picture some fellow finishing up a long day at work heading back home to happily see his wife. With lyrics by Casey Rankin and lovely melody by Yoshino, it's a gently galloping New Music/City Pop sound with the typical synthesizer haze effect of 70s City Pop gone even more spacey. The arrangements were handled by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）with "You Turn Me On" included as a track on the band's debut self-titled album from June 1979. Not surprisingly, "Otokotachi no Melody" is also in there.

SHOGUN -- Lonely Man

 

Well...not a great start to the work week, although I don't think the news was unexpected at all. Ontario got walloped by 700 new infections today so people are wondering whether we will be dragged back to Stage 2 or worse. In any case, it's gonna be another bumpy trip.

Anyways, to go to something considerably more soothing...the above photo has my purchases over the last couple of weeks from CD Japan, two of which I've already written about: Masayuki Suzuki's（鈴木雅之） "ALL TIME ROCK 'N' ROLL" and Kiyohiko Ozaki's（尾崎紀世彦）"Kaze no Graffiti"（風のグラフィティー）.

It's always nice to discover a new "Light Mellow" CD that hasn't yet been purchased. This time, it's "Neon Nights" and there were some tracks that I've already heard and some new treats from the world of City Pop and AOR.

One of the tracks is SHOGUN's "Lonely Man", another band funk fest thanks to lyricist Casey Rankin and composers Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）and Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）. This was actually the band's 3rd single and the ending theme to Yusaku Matsuda's（松田優作）"Tantei Monogatari"（探偵物語...Detective Story） detective TV series, a single that also included the more famous "Bad City", the opening theme to that show.

Compared to "Bad City", "Lonely Man" has got more of that City Pop beat although from the intro, I first thought that "Lonely Man" was going to enter Big Band swing. Still, that feeling of jazz never quite leaves the melody entirely although that also goes for the funky strut. I believe that is indeed Yoshino and Rankin sharing vocals. Maybe "Bad City" is the more well-known of the two songs but there's nothing wrong at all with the A-side, and dang it does sound nice being performed on stage. By the way, that final CD in the picture that I've yet to mention? It happens to be Kirinji's "Neo"（ネオ） album

SHOGUN -- As Easy As You Make It

One of the side effects of staying at home as often as possible has been a gain in weight for me. Not a great thing, although it does say a lot about my family's cooking prowess to a certain extent. In any case, I actually had one of my longer walks around the neighbourhood, while practicing my social distancing, of course. But it's not too difficult here because even before the invasion of COVID-19, my walking area was always deserted. Even seeing three people also walking about from a long distance away during my 40 minutes out this morning made things downright "busy". Still, everything's cool and it was a nice and refreshing sanpo.

Stress levels have gotta go down and stay down during these difficult times. It's not all that easy when given the daily stats on the number of patients right now and worrying about the mortgage and job prospects. However, we all have to find our way to stay on an even keel. It seems like years ago, the good folks at SHOGUN concocted just the right song for that.

"As Easy As You Make It" is the first track on the band's 2nd album "Rotation" from December 1979. Launching with a blast of horns that had me thinking immediately of The Blues Brothers and James Brown, the vocals by Fujimal Yoshino (芳野藤丸), who composed it, and gang also started reminding me partially of Steely Dan once more although as the song went on, my memories turned to one of their big hits, "Bad City". Casey Rankin, who provided the lyrics for that song, also came up with the words for "As Easy As You Make It", his musical advice column for those who need to de-stress. Just move on, grin, and keep on the go...as long as you keep your distance for the next little while.

SHOGUN/Fujimal Yoshino -- One On One（You’re The One）

If' I'm gonna be finishing up the City Pop triplet today, there's no better way to wrap it up than with Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）.

From his "Romantic Guys" album released in July 1983, here is "You're The One", about as much of a courting song as any romantic tune out there in Japan. I guess that I can call it an AOR ballad with some more edge, thanks to some great horns, and of course, there's that marvelous creamy crooning voice of Yoshino. Then as we get deeper into the song, those nightside horns come further into play so maybe that's when the City Pop comes through. It's kinda like that franchise I remember from Tokyo, Pronto, which was a café during the day before making the switch to a bar at night.

I only found out earlier today that the "Romantic Guys" track is actually a self-cover of what Yoshino recorded with his old band SHOGUN a few years previously in their July 1980 album "You're The One". The title track, though, had a slightly longer title with "One On One (You're The One)", and there was a slightly jazzier arrangement. Fujimal composed the music while bandmate Casey Rankin provided the lyrics.

Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）has been praised for that romantic voice of his, but I also think that Yoshino possesses those love-me vocals.

Ikue Sakakibara -- C'est Drole ~ Fushigi ne ~（不思議ね）

Fushigi ne...it truly is. I ordered Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）6th album "C'est Drole ~ Fushigi ne ~"  (Strange, Ain't It?) along with one other Ikue album "Slow Memory" back on July 16th and then just this past Monday morning, I got the e-mail from CD Japan that the package has shipped. Now, usually that means the discs won't be entering my hands for another week.

Well, three hours later on Monday afternoon...

THEY'RE HERE!

Man, I wanna congratulate CD Japan for getting that hypersonic jet in the air finally. If it can take human passengers, I wouldn't mind hitching a ride on that plane rather than take the 11~13 hour flight to Haneda on Air Canada.

The slightly "Twilight Zone" anecdote ends here. As for "C'est Drole", which was originally released back in January 1980, I bought it after hearing its title track "Fushigi ne" and after hearing a few more tracks on YouTube. Plus, seeing that another Sakakibara release "Ready Lady" (which I may also get a little later this year) was actually incorporated into my bible of "Japanese City Pop", I was intrigued about what the future Peter Pan used to sing when she was an aidoru, especially since she's been seen more as the friendly TV presence for decades.

Well, I popped in "C'est Drole" into the player and for the next two-thirds of an hour, my opinion of me deserving to eat more crow was further strengthened. As was the case with Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）2nd album "North Wind" which also came out in 1980 (mind you, all the way forward in December), "C'est Drole" didn't strike me as what I had envisioned to be the typical aidoru album of happy bouncy uptempo tunes and super-sweet love ballads. In fact, I got a fair potpourri of genres here too on my first listen. Double in fact, I had actually wondered whether I should have even labeled this as an aidoru album.

Case in point, the first track "Two-Way Street". It launches very much with a romantic saxophone and a soft and mellow ballad which fairly screams AOR. It's an interesting mix of two styles. The jazzy AOR which fills the instrumental passages and then Ikue singing a pop love tune about a man and a woman who may have been together at one point or at least fantasized about it but now walking in different directions on opposite sides of the avenue.

Mayo Shouno（庄野真代）wrote and composed "Two-Way Street". She is famous for singing one of those exotic kayo which was fairly popular in the late 1970s, "Tonde Istanbul" （飛んでイスタンブール）. The other thing that struck me was how well Sakakibara could sing. Something like "Two-Way Street" sounds like a ballad that Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）would tackle but Ikue-chan takes care of it very well. There are also parts of the song which remind me of another more famous song which came out a couple of years prior.

The second track "Omoide no Irie"（思い出の入江...Bay of Memories）was written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Casey Rankin of the band SHOGUN. Although compared to "Two-Way Street", this mellow number is more on the conventional side of kayo/aidoru ballads that I've envisioned, the arrangement by Reijiro Koroku（小六禮次郎）still has the song lifted up a level. I could even imagine one of my favourite singers, Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）, covering this one.

Another bluesy number punctuated by the sax is "Toki wa Utsukushiku"（時は美しく...Time is Beautiful）which straddles that City Pop/AOR line. It's a nice slow twilight shuffle down a street as Ikue serenades her beau about how enjoyable her time is with him. Hearing that sax, I rather wish that somebody had actually put down who handled all of the instruments in the liner notes, but c'est la vie. In any case, Reiko Imamura（いまむられいこ）took care of the lyrics while Rankin once again came up with the music.

Singer-songwriter Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）, who I have also seen within the pages of "Japanese City Pop", was responsible for this happy and quirky "Sweet Sunny Side Up" about wedded bliss showing up over breakfast. Ikue not only sings about getting up early to make the most important meal of the day for her darling hubby but she does it in a faintly early 20th century style. I could almost see a giant NBC microphone materializing in front of her.

My last song for this article is "Kurenai Hana"（紅い花...Red Flowers）, one of my favourite tracks on "C'est Drole". It starts off rather gospel-like before it goes into this cool riff about heartbreak. My imagination once again flies here as I envision Ikue singing in front of a honky-tonk piano somewhere in Paris. Ahhh, l'amour....c'est drole, n'est ce pas? The only thing missing here are those rose petals just frittering away in the cold wind. Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and Koichi Sugiyama（すぎやまこういち）were responsible for this one.

I couldn't find out how "C'est Drole" did on Oricon but I think for Ikue fans, it was a good buy. There is a nice mix of songs by good songwriters and I realized that Sakakibara wasn't just the happy-go-lucky aidoru who popped up on the first few episodes of the Kohaku Utagassen that I had ever seen.

Before I finish off, I have to give thanks to the YouTube uploader who was responsible for most of the videos up here tonight, Dasu（ダス）. He is totally devoted to Sakakibara and thanks to him, I was able to pull the trigger on my wallet to get "C'est Drole" and "Slow Memory", the latter of which I will also talk about in the next week or so.

SHOGUN -- Bad City

Over the years of this blog, JTM and I have covered some of the theme songs for various police series in Japan such as "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）. Well, here is another one from 1979 that popped up now and then on various retrospectives. I wrote about SHOGUN's "Otokotachi no Melody" （男達のメロディー）as the theme song for the NTV detective drama, "Oretachi wa Tenshi da!". Six months after their debut song, the band came up with another memorable opening theme song for a detective show of a similar bent, "Tantei Monogatari" （探偵物語...Detective Story）starring the late Yusaku Matsuda（松田優作）.

Matsuda may have appeared as the fearful psycho gangster in Ridley Scott's "Black Rain" (1989), but in "Tantei Monogatari", he played the half-goofy/half-hardboiled good-guy private detective Kudo with the over-the-top fashion sense (may have been inspired by Lupin the 3rd). Going along with that feeling, SHOGUN inserted a bit of goofiness into the cool when they whipped up "Bad City". Written and composed by band member Casey Rankin, "Bad City" was actually the B-side to the band's 3rd single, "Lonely Man" which was actually the ending theme for the show. However, I think the B-side has had the far bigger legacy even if folks don't quite remember the band's name nowadays.

Listening to "Bad City", I was never quite sure whether SHOGUN was presenting the theme song for a hard-driving detective show or a parody of one. However, I can't deny that the horn section behind the guys works well, and getting further into the song, I am often reminded of some of the theme songs from shows like "Policewoman" and "Baretta" back in the States.

SHOGUN -- Otokotachi no Melody （男達のメロディー）

This is a song that I often heard on all those old music retrospectives such as "19XX", and considering what was being played in Japan during that decade of the 70s, I thought it was just one of the more cheerfully unusual tunes that I had ever heard.

SHOGUN was a band that was first brought together through a conglomeration of studio musicians including guitarist Fujimal Yoshino （芳野藤丸）which had released the album, "Yellow Magic" under the band name of One Line Band. A majority of that grouping stayed together to become SHOGUN. As for how the name came about, a staffer for the Nippon Television Music Corporation had gone to America for a vacation and at a US airport, he saw a ton of James Clavell's "Shogun" novels stacked up somewhere. So when he returned to Japan, he made the suggestion to his junior colleague Noriko Iida （飯田則子）who had taken an interest in Yoshino's group; Iida had always dreamed of a Japanese band whose name could be understood overseas, and with her senior's suggestion, that was that for this particular group of musicians.

The debut song for the new band of SHOGUN was "Otokotachi no Melody" (Melody of Men) which became the theme song for an action-comedy titled "Oretachi wa Tenshi da!"（俺たちは天使だ！...We Guys Are Angels!）about a group of motley detectives and their agency. Released in April 1979, it was written by Makoto Kitajo （喜多條忠）and composed by then-member Casey Rankin. Starting with a blast of anthemic rock guitar, the song quickly transitions into a comical country-style melody, perhaps reflecting how the TV show progressed, and one of the things I remember from the song was the English that popped up now and then such as "Pick up your head, throw away your blues". I thought it was more suited to the hills of Kentucky than the skyscrapers of Tokyo.

 The song became a big hit for the band which, according to J-Wiki, scored over half a million records (although entamedata shows a far more modest number) in sales and became the 64th-ranked song of the year. However, even more fame was to come in a couple of singles with "Bad City", another catchy detective show theme.