Steely Dan -- FM (No Static at All)

 

I'm providing this week's Reminiscings of Youth under false pretenses since this song by Steely Dan, unlike "Peg" and "Time Out of Mind", isn't something from my youth. I never heard this on the radio while I was growing up although I was certainly alive at the time of its release in 1978. In fact, I didn't hear it for the first time until I was well within my odyssey in Japan between 1994 and 2011 when I picked up that Steely Dan BEST compilation.

As well, I had never seen nor heard of the April 1978 film "FM" with its eclectic cast which included two stars from Mel Brooks' classic "Blazing Saddles": Alex Karras and Cleavon Little. It wasn't particularly well reviewed but looking at the trailer, I'd be interested in taking a gander at it.

However, it's the theme song by Steely Dan, "FM (No Static at All)", that has managed to grab me by the wide lapels of my leisure suit of the 1970s. But I'm a huge Steely Dan fan so that's no surprise. What's also no surprise is that Wikipedia has provided a rather lengthy article on the song itself so please peruse that for that analysis that I could never create. 

For me, "FM" is this heady combination of jazz, rock, R&B and romantic sophisticated pop that hits all the right places. The first three genres drive me on the nocturnal and perhaps not-so-safe streets of the metropolis while the final genre manages to lift me up into the clouds and penthouses thanks to those really silky strings. And once again, it seems as if Donald Fagen and Walter Becker managed to attract some of the best of the best in studio musicians and jazz greats such as drummer Jeff Porcaro of TOTO and saxophonist Pete Christlieb. Plus, I only found out recently that some of The Eagles had helped out as background singers. The contrasts and comparisons even extend into the relationship between the song and the movie with the lyrics condemning FM radio while the John A. Alonzo project wants to save it. As a kid who only really knew about AM radio at the time, this whole argument was lost on me. But I'll be more than happy to take "FM" for my own now. I'd also say that this would be one song that I'd play on my own radio broadcast that I mentioned some months ago.

"FM" the single was released on May 19, 1978. A few days prior, there was the Oricon Top 10 list for May 15. Let's see what was up at Nos. 1, 3 and 5.

1. Pink Lady -- Southpaw （サウスポー）

3. Momoe Yamaguchi -- Playback Part 2 （プレイバック・パート２）

5. Candies -- Hohoemigaeshi （微笑がえし）

Computer Tunes

Wikimedia Commons
via Adam Schuster

Hello there! Some of you faithful viewers of KKP may have noticed that I was absent yesterday from any new articles. That is because Monday was saved for a computer parts shopping spree downtown with my good friend who is also someone very blessed with computer-creating and computer-repairing skills. We brought back everything to my place and he used a few hours to give some fine upgrades to my two computers and they're now humming with increased speed and capacity now. My great gratitude to him. There's still one more part to come in but basically we're done.

As such, I thought I would put up another Author's Picks with the theme here being songs which have something to do with computers. One entry might seem a bit odd but in that case, you can take a look at its original article to find out why I chose it.

(1978) Yellow Magic Orchestra -- COMPUTER GAME ~ Theme From The Circus

(1981) NHK Jido Gassho Dan -- Computer Obaachan （コンピューターおばあちゃん）

(1982) Donald Fagen -- I.G.Y.  (What A Beautiful World)

(2015) Natsume Mito -- 8-Bit Boy (8ビットボーイ)

If I Had an All-Night Radio Show...

from Discogs

I had family over tonight for dinner after which most of us ended up watching the New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game and the Edmonton Oilers-Florida Panthers Stanley Cup matchup. Drowsing off a bit in my armchair which is something that I tend to do with alarming frequency these nights, I started entertaining one of my fantasies which is wondering how it would be like to be an all-night radio DJ.

"Man, you must have been hitting the Canada Dry pretty hard, J-Canuck!" is probably what a lot of you might be thinking. But yeah, I've always wondered about a career in radio, and not just during the daytime drive time but also in the wee hours of the morning. After all, although I'm not sure whether I have a voice for radio, I certainly have a face for it! Plus, not only have I loved Donald Fagen's classic 1982 album "The Nightfly" as you can see above, I've also loved the cover of Fagen himself dressed up as a 1950s or 1960s disc jockey handling the overnight shift in that tiny room while he's charismatically spinning tales and records between midnight and 6 am.

One reason that I would love to try to give this particularly distinct job a whirl despite the hours is that I've read recently that live overnight radio in North America, at least, has been dead for a long time now (wherever you're reading this, perhaps you can tell me if this is also true in your neck of the woods). Financially speaking and in terms of personnel, I can understand why a radio station manager would cut all ties to all-night radio with a real human being; subscribing to a nationally-provided streaming service from a computer while the lights are all out at the station can save a lot of dough. However, I've also read that there had been DJs in the past who relished the overnight shift because they were a whole lot more free to talk and play their own kind of music and talk with the other all-nighters out there ranging from desperate university students cramming for exams to security guards at their lonely stations. Maybe they could have their own favourite guests or buddies come by to keep them company and nosh on pizza and stuff. As someone who used to man the Tuesday night shift at the International Student Centre at the University of Toronto, I was accustomed to seeing and chatting with all sorts of people who passed by the front desk and enjoyed it most of the time. I could enjoy that too as a DJ perhaps (of course, as long as the station manager was a nice and generous person).

But what would I play? Well, this is something that I was musing about for a long time and the six choices that I have are only a mere fraction of what I would like to play during a stint in the booth. Not surprisingly, it would be a mix of Japanese and non-Japanese music. So, typing this close to 11 pm EDT, here's a sextet of cool-down nighttime music coming up here on WKKP in Toronto. I'd also welcome any contributions by you out there.

Anita Baker -- Sweet Love

Earth Wind & Fire -- After the Love Has Gone

Donald Fagen -- I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)

Tatsuro Yamashita -- Blue Midnight

(karaoke version)

Minako Yoshida -- Hoho ni Yoru no Akari（頬に夜の灯)

Toko Furuuchi -- Dare Yori Suki Nanoni （誰より好きなのに）

Steely Dan -- Deacon Blues

 

For this week's Reminiscings of Youth, I'm going with Steely Dan once more because I heard yesterday that Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker will be inducted into the Songwriters' Hall of Fame in June in New York City. Many congratulations to them.

So, I guess that it would be appropriate to talk about Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" which was a track on the iconic "Aja" from 1977 and even a single released in March 1978. The song has been admired for both its warm and honeyed sound and the lyrics for which, as Becker has put it, describe a loser  or "...a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life". 

Although I wouldn't truly and finally appreciate Steely Dan until my years in the Tokyo area, I had been listening to their songs including "Peg", the track mate for "Deacon Blues" on "Aja" for years since they were coming onto the radio. However, I wouldn't even know of the existence of "Deacon Blues" until I finally bought "Aja" about a decade ago, just a few years after getting home from Japan for good and starting "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Talk about a very late discovery. I think one reason for that is the fact that I never heard "Deacon Blues" on the radio due to the fact that it is over 7 minutes long and back then, we were absolutely an AM radio family...usually it's the songs that come in at 3 to 4 minutes which were featured on those stations.

But what a song for that demographic in society known as losers! Having listened to "Deacon Blues" for the past several years several times a year, I think that the song is probably the quintessential Steely Dan entry in terms of the arrangement, delivery and the ironic lyrics. Now I know that for a band that has lasted as long as Steely Dan has, their sound has evolved since "Do It Again!" and "Reelin' In The Years" and going forward from "Aja", but I guess it's been the late 70s and early 80s that has been my favourite period for the group and it's the precise mix of jazz and rock during this time that has seared itself into my head as the Steely Dan sound.

The interesting thing is that I may have to disagree a tad with Becker (hopefully he won't slap me with his bass while I'm sleeping tonight) about his interpretation of the lyrics. "Deacon Blues" may be about the ultimate loser having his dreams dashed over and over again, but the way that his partner Fagen repeatedly yells out "Call me DEACON BLUES!", there seems to be a defiance and pride that demands respect from even those who've disdained the poor guy. "Hey, we deserve a cool nickname, too!" comes through to me. Perhaps "Deacon Blues" isn't so much about a loser but a fellow who may lose a lot but he still stands right back up to take on the next challenge, and he's accompanied by a theme which is one of the coolest things made into music.

On the US Billboard Hot 100, "Deacon Blues" ranked in at No. 19 while in Canada, it got as high as No. 14. March 24th 1978 was the date of its release and the next day, three Japanese singles got their release, too.

Circus -- Mr. Summertime

Pink Lady -- Southpaw （サウスポー）

Yutaka Mizutani -- Omotesando Nanpa Street（表参道軟派ストリート）

Steely Dan -- Time Out of Mind

 

Time for another weekly ROY article. Steely Dan made their presence known on the radio when I was a kid through multiple songs with arguably the most famous one for me being "Peg" from their famous 1977 album "Aja".

Another song that managed to filter into my brain through heavy rotation over the airwaves was "Time Out of Mind" from Donald Fagen & Walter Becker's 1980 album "Gaucho". I've got "Aja" but I have to admit that "Gaucho" is not up on my shelves as of yet, although it and "Aja" have vied among the Dan fans to be the best album that they've ever put up.

"Time Out of Mind" actually came out as a single from the album in March 1981, and when I was listening to it on the strawberry milk-pink Sony, I never knew that the lyrics were referring to drug use (then again, I also didn't pick up on the lyrical content of "Peg" until many years later), and little did I know that Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler handled the guitar solo.. As I've said a number of times on the blog in the past, I was far more of the melody persuasion than I was for lyrics (although "perfection and grace" did enter my brain), and "Time Out of Mind" was another one of the funky and cool shuffles by Steely Dan alongside "Peg".  If I only had appreciated them back then as I do now.

So, who was in the Top 3 of Oricon for March 1981?

1. Chanels -- Machikado Twilight （街角トワイライト）

2. Akira Terao -- Ruby no Yubiwa (ルビーの指輪)

3. THE CRAZY RIDER Yokohama Ginbae ROLLING SPECIAL -- Tsuppari High School Rock n' Roll（ツッパリHigh School Rock' n Roll）

Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra -- BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007 (Disc 1)

 

Yep, the cover does say it all: a trumpet with fire blasting out of it like a volley from The Human Torch. This belongs to Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra's（東京スカパラダイスオーケストラ）3rd compilation of BEST hits, "BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007" that was first released in March 2007. If you're looking for some Saturday-night partying at home with that ska beat, this can help.

I don't think that I ever gave a proper introduction about TSPO so I will import this edited quote from the Wikipedia article on this group that has been around since 1985: Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (東京スカパラダイスオーケストラ), commonly abbreviated by fans as Skapara or TSPO, is a Japanese ska and jazz band formed in 1988 by the percussionist Asa-Chang, and initially composed of over 10 veterans of Tokyo's underground scene. At the time, the band's sound was unlike that of any of its contemporaries in the then fledgling Japanese ska scene, and over the course of the past 31 years, they have been influential on Japanese music as a whole. Its sound, the product of the musical influences of its members, is a mix of traditional ska, jazz, and rock. In the vein of many other more traditional ska acts, many of Skapara's songs are purely instrumental.

The first time I heard and heard about ska was in the early 1980s when all this great music was flowing in from the United Kingdom which included this particular genre and its proponents such as The Specials and Madness. For that latter band, "Our House" was a huge hit in Canada, although perhaps the song was more of a mix of ska, pop and New Wave. Little did I know that Japan would be another birthplace of one ska-happy group of guys.

Anyways, here is the list for Disc 1 of "BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007":

01． DOWN BEAT STOMP

02． Hi no Tama Jive (火の玉ジャイヴ)

03． Mekureta Orange (めくれたオレンジ)

04． CALL FROM RIO

05． Natty Parade “Shaken Mix"

06． Hoshi Furu Yoru ni (星降る夜に)

07． SKA ME CRAZY

08． Ocean To Ocean

09． Ai ga aru kai? (愛があるかい?)

10． STROKE OF FATE

11． Ginga to Meiro (銀河と迷路)

12． WALK BETWEEN RAINDROPS

13． Ame no Kiseki (雨の軌跡)

Well, let's get the party started with the first track "DOWN BEAT STOMP" which was originally from TSPO's May 2002 album "Stompin' On DOWN BEAT ALLEY". The album hit No. 1 on Oricon and "DOWN BEAT STOMP" pretty much has everybody getting onto the dance floor with an increased number of TSPO members getting behind the mike. The video certainly reflects the atmosphere of fun of booze and dancing. TSPO bassist Tsuyoshi Kawakami（川上つよし）was the composer while baritone saxophonist Atsushi Yanaka（谷中敦）took care of the lyrics.

Also from "Stompin' On DOWN BEAT ALLEY" is "Mekureta Orange" (Peeled Orange). As well, this was actually TSPO's 20th single from August 2001 that peaked at No. 35 on the charts. Over the years, I've been enjoying the band's work with other cool artists. For example, there is their collaboration with happily zany Hiroto Komoto（甲本ヒロト）of The Blue Hearts for "Hoshi Furu Yoru ni"（星降る夜に）that is also included on Disc 1. And then there is "Mekureta Orange" which has special guest Takao Tajima（田島貴男）, aka Original Love（オリジナル・ラヴ）, helping out on this mix of ska and swing jazz. It was also Kawakami and Yanaka behind words and music here. I tried looking at the lyrics and I think the story sounds as if a couple of guys were greeting the sunrise with a mix of bleary-eyed exhaustion and possibly some scars. Would you like a brawl with your boilermaker, sir? Not sure where the orange peel comes in...except as a garnish in a cocktail glass.

The instrumental "Hi no Tama Jive" translates into "Fireball Jive" which is a great title for this song which was the band's 17th single from May 1999. TSPO multi-instrumentalist (bass, saxophone) Tatsuyuki Hiyamuta（冷牟田竜之）was responsible for this true fireball which not reminds me of the swing/jazz revival sometime in the 1990s but also of the orchestra that was providing the great music in Jim Carrey's "The Mask". Despite all of the action and flame, there is also some poignancy to "Hi no Tama Jive" since this was drummer Tatsuyuki Aoki's（青木達之）final single with TSPO before his untimely death. He passed away only 10 days before its release.

Hiyamuta and TSPO trumpeter NARGO were on words and music respectively for "SKA ME CRAZY" which has been described in J-Wiki as having a skinhead reggae arrangement in its recorded form. Sounds a bit scary there so I've put up their live version which is apparently a little different. It's another jump-and-dance-and-headbang number, and judging from the above video, you will believe a pianica can rock. "SKA ME CRAZY" was also the coupling song for the band's 22nd single from February 2002, "Utsukushiku Moeru Mori"（美しく燃える森）, another duet this time with Tamio Okuda（奥田民生）from the rock band Unicorn.

"Ginga to Meiro" (Galaxy and Labyrinth), TSPO's 23rd single from February 2003, is a familiar song to me and that's probably because I heard it on the various music shows. It was used as the theme tune for the Fuji-TV drama "Bijo ka Yajuu"（美女か野獣...Beauty or Beast） so I gather that its commercials were also playing the song as well. Still a lot of fun ska to be experienced here, too, but it's also noticeably mellower than some of TSPO's other party favourites, maybe along the lines of the aforementioned "Mekureta Orange". Yanaka and NARGO were behind words and music respectively with drummer Kin'ichi Motegi（茂木欣一）on vocals as the single broke into the Top 10 at No. 9.

One more track that I will throw in is an instrumental cover of Donald Fagen's "Walk Between Raindrops" from his 1982 classic album "The Nightfly" for which I've already covered "I.G.Y." in a ROY article. Listening to this version, I can understand why TSPO decided to tackle it because that original shuffle beat works so well with these guys. Heck, I swear that the band even borrowed the same organ from Fagen that starts the song off.

I'll have to cover Disc 2 sometime in the near future but as it is, there's lots to enjoy in Disc 1. "BEST OF TOKYO SKA 1998-2007" peaked at No. 2 on the charts.

Donald Fagen -- I.G.Y. (What A Beautiful World)

 

Approximately two weeks ago, I contributed a ROY article for Steely Dan's wonderful "Peg" from the band's 1977 "Aja" album. Without going into the whole hullabaloo about how I got into the works of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker again, allow me to say that it was the beginning of my exposure to this demanding and resultingly amazing duo.

Some years later, I then started hearing "I.G.Y." by Donald Fagen on AM radio and that time, I thought that it was one of the weirdest pop songs that I had ever heard. A horn section shuffling to a reggae beat? The singer trying to reach those falsetto heights? And why would a song ever be called "International Geophysical Year", for heaven's sakes?

It would be years before I finally saw the light about "I.G.Y." and its album by Fagen, "The Nightfly". Before that point, I hadn't known that Fagen was part of Steely Dan, and although I did remember seeing that iconic cover for "The Nightfly" with the old-style radio DJ in the booth, I had no idea that it was Fagen as the disc jockey. In fact, I didn't even know that Steely Dan breaking up for a while partially led to the birth of this classic album.

My thanks will strangely go to IBM. As I mentioned in the "Peg" article, there was an IBM commercial played in Japan with a popular model/actress being featured alongside the ThinkPad and "I.G.Y." was the song in the background. My engrams were firing once more with a bit more affection for the Fagen single. At the time, I was teaching at my second school in Tokyo, and a fellow teacher who had been doing his own DJ'ing and recording recommended "The Nightfly" to me as one of the albums everyone had to own.

Indeed, I did buy it and it has become a heavy-rotation album. As was the case with that subtitle for "I.G.Y.", what a beautiful world! All of the tracks are splendid and I gradually got to know the story behind the concept of "The Nightfly" and Fagen's personal connection to it. Of course, you can take a look at the Wikipedia article for the album for starters.

The part of the story where Fagen related how much he relied on those 1960s late-night radio shows as a kid in what he called his bland neighbourhood did hit me somewhat. I had my decade of listening to various stations across the dial and especially during my university years, I relied on those radio DJs to keep me amused, entertained and awake as I pulled off those all-nighters to get the essays done and exams studied for. Certainly, I was interested enough to track down this video of a 1964 broadcast of a radio show from Boston.

As for "I.G.Y.", I now consider it to be one of the most appealingly quirky pop songs that my ears have had the privilege of being exposed to. Once again, it was all about those horns, keyboards, Fagen's vocals and that melody now paired with lyrics that sardonically talked about the wonders of futuristic living. And yet, I still get one of those rare moments of optimism in my head (my persona really usually wavers between cynicism and pessimism) whenever I play "I.G.Y." on the stereo, hoping for those gleaming trains, hypersonic planes and driverless automobiles going to and from those smart homes. Not surprisingly, my mind goes to certain areas in Tokyo such as Odaiba and even further afield in nations such as Dubai.

"I.G.Y." was released in September 1982 with "The Nightfly" coming out a month later, so I figure that I can provide what were in the Top 3 of Oricon in October 1982.

1. Aming -- Matsu wa  (待つわ）

2. Ippu-Do -- Sumire September Love (すみれ September Love)

3. Masahiko Kondo -- Horeta ze! Kanpai（ホレたぜ!乾杯）

Steely Dan -- Peg

 

I remember when an old friend of mine at university went out with a bunch of other buddies for a drink at a nearby bar, and he was still finding his sea legs when it came to drinking stuff. So, he browsed through the drink menu in the cocktail section since up to then, he apparently had only gone with beer and wine. Then, close to heading home time, he hit something called Long Island Iced Tea and wanted to give that a shot (no pun intended). I didn't know anything about it since I was pretty much connected at the liver to my Brown Cow.

My friend drank it down and he drank it down quickly. He proclaimed it was so very tasty and smooth and if it hadn't been for the fact that it came in an unusually tall highball glass, he would have gone for a second. Well, not too long after that, when we were on the subway, he was doing everything except standing or sitting down. It was fortunate that we had our section of the subway to ourselves because he was as high as a kite and acting like one; luckily, the ceiling kept him from achieving orbit. Even luckier was that one of our other friends was willing to drive him home since he didn't live too far away. I don't know what happened after that but I assume that he got to know his toilet even more intimately the next morning. But we both found out how deceptively potent a Long Island Iced Tea was and still is.😉

Now, let's think about one of Steely Dan's famous songs, "Peg". I think it is the equivalent of a Long Island Iced Tea. Indeed for all of their fans, it is truly tasty and smooth, but according to the history of the making of this prize tune, if I were to further analogize with the best version of the famous cocktail, it would call for not only the best of each ingredient: vodka, tequila, light rum, triple sec, gin, and a splash of cola according to Wikipedia, but also the ones that would work with each other in harmony. So, maybe Belvedere is the best luxury vodka available but for mixing into a Long Island Iced Tea, perhaps Tito's is the one to have, and so on. Try juggling all those ingredients to make the ultimate version.

And apparently that's how hard it was for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker and some of the best studio musicians to come up with "Peg" which was released as a Steely Dan single back in November 1977. Yet, it sounds so groovy and effortlessly catchy (I was grooving again with my shoulders when I heard it a few minutes ago). But through various sources such as YouTube and Wikipedia, I realized that there was the whole thing about the right guitar solo (ultimately achieved by Jay Graydon), how many other musicians were put in and out the revolving door to get the correct combination to play "Peg" to the band's satisfaction, and the certain special chords involved. For the nearly four minutes of pure SD pleasure, everyone probably had to go through some even more major wringers for days or weeks. Such were the famous demands of Fagen and Becker.

I heard "Peg" on the radio of course all the time but the first time I encountered it was, strangely enough, through a TV commercial for some vocational school in Buffalo, New York when I was a teen. I couldn't remember any of the other music that had been playing in the first part of the ad, but then there came the push for dance classes, and suddenly the opening seconds of "Peg" came on. And suddenly, the ad had my full undivided attention as the leotard-wearing kids started to dance to the song.

Ironically though, it wouldn't be until my years in Japan that I finally started purchasing Steely Dan's back catalogue of albums, and it all started from watching a Japanese IBM commercial featuring the ThinkPad and Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y." from his 1982 solo album "The Nightfly". And once I got that one, I just had to start collecting SD CDs. Ultimately, I did get "Aja", the September 1977 album that has "Peg". In Canada, the single peaked at No. 7 on the RPM charts while in the United States, it hit No. 11 on Billboard. 

Of course, taking that full dive into City Pop in the last few years of my stint in Tokyo, I and many other City Pop fans have discovered how much Steely Dan has influenced the singers and bands of the genre in terms of their output. Therefore, instead of putting up the usual Oricon leaders or music prize winners of that time, for this ROY article, I will list merely a few of the many songs that contain the Steely Dan DNA.

1. Makoto Matsushita -- Lazy Night (1981)

2. Akira Inoue -- Bartok no Kage（バルトークの影）(1982)

3. Mariya Takeuchi -- Plastic Love (1984)

4. Blue Peppers -- Searchlight（サーチライト）(2017)

Oh, and before I forget...

Yasuko Agawa -- Canadian Star

Welcome to July 1st and Canada Day! Our nation is celebrating its 153rd birthday today and though there will be no fireworks displays or parades this year, hopefully everyone in Canada is having a safe and happy day today.

As has been the case each year in tribute to the Maple Leaf, I've been trying to find a kayo or J-Pop song that would actually at least have Canada in the title. This has been a tradition of sorts since I first put up that old karaoke-friendly chestnut "Canada kara no Tegami"（カナダからの手紙）all the way back in KKP's inaugural year of 2012.

Furthermore, I've heard of jazz singer Yasuko Agawa（阿川泰子）for years and was aware that she had even contributed songs in the City Pop/AOR genre early in her career, but it was always one thing or another that I never got around to putting any of her tunes onto the blog. Well, I'm killing two (snow)birds with one stone (from the Canadian Shield) on this Canada Day and putting up the first Agawa article with "Canadian Star".

"Canadian Star" is a track on her 1983 album "Night Line" and it's a nice way for me to start the Agawa file because I find it a soothing City Pop/AOR lullaby of sorts. The lady in the lyrics (provided by Ralph McCarthy) seems to be in some hotel in the Great White North writing a letter (not quite sure if there were some inspiration from "Canada kara no Tegami"...ha, ha) to that mystery man of love who swept her off her feet and then swept on out. I wouldn't be surprised if she were penning the letter in the middle of the night as her light is the only one on in the entire hotel.

I found out that Agawa's "Canadian Star" was a cover of an original instrumental track recorded by fusion group Dr. Strut for their 1979 self-titled album. Apparently, the band was once called The Legendary Groovadelics but when they joined up with Motown Records, Berry Gordy insisted that they change the name; perhaps not a bad idea.

Anyways, the big surprise actually happened earlier in my check on this song. Last night, when I wanted to find out who had been responsible for words and music, I did my usual due diligence at the JASRAC database and saw a name: BECKER WALTER CARL. Hm...OK, looks like an application for car insurance, I thought, but the name did ring with some familiarity. Then I looked further and saw the name: FAGEN DONALD JAY.

Wait a metric minute here! Steely Dan composed this tune?! The answer is an absolute yes. The band that provided plenty of inspiration and chords to City Pop artists in the late 70s and early 80s was indeed behind the composition of "Canadian Star" for Dr. Strut. And the interesting thing is that it doesn't really sound like the prototypical Steely Dan song to me, although even more devoted fans can probably indicate a tune of theirs that might illustrate a similar arrangement. In fact, when I heard Agawa's cover for the first time, I thought that there was something more Eagles' "Desperado" to it.

As for Agawa, her real name is Yasuko Sato（佐藤康子）and she hails from Kamakura City in Kanagawa Prefecture. According to a June 1981 issue of the journal "Shukan Asahi"（週刊朝日）via J-Wiki, she's also been given nicknames such as Sugar Voice, The Idol for the Necktie Crowd and The Idol for the Old Guys (not quite sure if that last one is particularly complimentary). She made her start in show business in the early 1970s and was also an actress at one point, appearing in movies and TV shows such as "Ultraman Leo"（ウルトラマンレオ）as an alien and the famous cop show "Taiyo ni Hoero!"（太陽にほえろ！）. The singing part of her career began in 1973 when she was introduced to jazz clarinetist Shoji Suzuki（鈴木章治）and then became part of his band Shoji Suzuki & The Rhythm Aces（鈴木章治とリズム・エース）. However, as I said up above, she did have her dabble in City Pop, and I would like to have a listen to her "L.A. Night".

To finally put a bow tie on this article, it's interesting to note that there is a famous train tour in the northern part of my province Ontario, and the region is actually called Agawa Canyon.