Van Halen -- Jump

 

The 1980s were the blooming decade for music videos. MTV and Much Music and all that, and I think my brother and I were fortunate that we were growing up during that time with all of the music and the visuals that now accompanied it. One of the shows, therefore, that we always tried to catch here in Toronto was the "City TV CHUM 30 Countdown" based on our local channel City-TV and the popular radio station CHUM-AM at 1050 on the dial. Roger Ashby would show at least some of the Top 30 songs with videos during that one hour on the weekend.

One song whose video had tonnage-level heavy rotation on the CHUM 30 was "Jump" by the band Van Halen. It was a weekly thing to see the leonine David Lee Roth jumping and singing about while legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen gave off that supremely beaming smile while working magic with his fingers on the guitar, as he also did on Michael Jackson's "Beat It" among other songs. I didn't realize it until much later since I was still figuring out my genres, but "Jump" was a song by a hard rock band that fully featured a synthesizer in the main melody...the Oberheim OB-Xa, to be exact.

Strangely enough, I first found out on NHK's morning news show a few hours ago that Eddie Van Halen had passed away from throat cancer. I saw the news topics and there was the name in katakana and when I read it and saw the kanji characters for "dead", I just went "Wow!" since I couldn't quite believe it. I never thought that he was that old...and he wasn't. He was just 65.

Ironically, last night I was talking with my anime buddy on the phone (as we now do since our biweekly Sunday anime-and-food routine has been derailed for the past seven months) and because he's also a hardcore guitar buff, some of those names including Van Halen's were bandied about. Less than 24 hours later, to find out that he has left this mortal coil is sobering, to say the least.

It wasn't surprising to know that "Jump", which Eddie had a hand in creating, was a regular video to catch on the CHUM 30 since it did hit No. 1 in Canada after its release in December 1983, and it also did the same on Billboard in the United States. To quote Lenny Kravitz's statement on Twitter on the news, "Heaven will be electric tonight".

For this special ROY article tonight, since "Jump" came out so close to the end of the year, I will go with three of the award winners at the Japan Record Awards for 1983 since they're given out around that time.

1. Grand Prize: Takashi Hosokawa -- Yagiri no Watashi (矢切の渡し)

2. Best Performance: Masako Mori -- Ettou Tsubame （越冬つばめ）

3. Best New Artist: THE GOOD-BYE -- Kimagure One-Way Boy（気まぐれOne Way Boy）

THE GOOD-BYE -- Kimagure One-Way Boy（気まぐれOne Way Boy）

Ah, the Tanokin Trio（たのきんトリオ）, my first instance of seeing a Johnny's Entertainment conglomeration in action on the screen. Everyone knows about Matchy and Toshi-chan but there was the third member who I always thought was the quietest and frankly reminded me of WHAM!'s Andrew Ridgely in terms of profile. That would be Yoshio Nomura（野村義男）...the "no" of the Tanokin Trio who could handle the guitar, and it was the way that I always saw the fellow over the decades. He has always had that disarming Jackie Chan smile but never heard all that much from him, relatively speaking.

I was browsing through one of my ancient "Young Song" booklets, which was the inserted songbook in every issue of the pop music magazine "Myojo"（明星）, when I came across the page for THE GOOD-BYE. This was the rock band with Yotchan (Nomura's nickname) that was formed in 1983. And I figured that if Matchy and Toshi-chan can get their day in the sun on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", well, then Yotchan has to have his due here as well.

At first glance, I was a bit surprised that the J-Wiki article on THE GOOD-BYE didn't categorize it as a Johnny's band but then I found out that Yotchan wasn't the leader but a fellow by the name of Yasuhisa "Yacchin" Soga（曽我泰久）who became the other guitarist and co-vocalist. The other two members were Hachiro "Hachi" Kaga（加賀八郎）and Koichi "Ko-chan" Eto（衛藤浩一）. That same article mentioned that the band was supposed to have been just the backup for Yotchan's debut with the official name being Yotchan Band and then Yotchan & The Good-Bye before settling into its final form. Not sure how Yotchan must have felt with this lessening of his responsibilities.

Their first single came out in September 1983. Called "Kimagure One-Way Boy" (Moody One-Way Boy), I think one YouTube commenter hit it on the head when he remarked that the urgent intro sounded exactly like Frank Stallone's "Far From Over" from that "Saturday Night Fever" sequel. Ah, there was a fair bit of melody lifting at the time. However, the rest of the song by Kantaro Yamamoto（山本寛太郎）has that typical Japanese rock-n-roll beat from the early 80s trying to emulate the feel of the 1950s. Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）took care of the lyrics about a James Dean type perhaps making his way into an early grave through all of his carousing. There's even a lyrical homage to the Beatles via "twist and shout" and those "Happy Days" tropes of the backseat and double dates. It's a wonder that the Fonz wasn't given a shoutout. Although the band would gradually have both Yotchan and Yacchin singing together, since this particular song was the debut, I think it's just Yotchan here, and to be honest, he doesn't sound too bad when compared to his old trio mates.

THE GOOD-BYE would release a total of 15 singles and 9 albums until they called it a day in 1990. However, the band did get back together in 2003 and has been touring around since then although no new material has come out.