TOSHITARO -- Senaka Goshi no Close Game: Behind（背中ごしのクロスゲーム Behind）

 

Yes, Virginia...there used to be commercials for those ancient artifacts known as audiotapes. I used to buy Normal, CrO2 and even Metal, if I felt like grinding the tape heads on my old cassette recorder. And indeed, those television ads were tied up with a lot of pop singers' material back in the day.

One of those songs for the THAT'S brand of cassette tape was "Senaka Goshi no Close Game: Behind" (The Close Game Behind My Back). Considering that the word 「クロス」can be read as either "close" or "cross", I had to take an educated guess as to which word was the one for the title. 

But in any case, I first have to relay Phil Collins and Philip Bailey's message to the singer and composer TOSHITARO: "They want their hit song's intro back!". Yup, I got a lot of "Easy Lover" in the first number of seconds of "Senaka Goshi no Close Game" but thankfully, that was all of the heavy borrowing of the melody which switched into something more crystalline City Pop and rock. You can thank Kenji Omura（大村憲司）for the arrangement and Hiromi Kanda（神田広美）for the lyrics. The song was TOSHITARO's November 1985 single.

TOSHITARO -- Am9 ni J - Eikaku Boy de Ite kure yo（Am9にジェイ - 鋭角ボーイでいてくれよ -）

 

I haven't featured a TOSHITARO song since "Romantic Noise" in the past couple of years so I thought it was time to bring back this City Pop singer from the 1980s. I've read on sites where this particular song of his has only been known to the most knowledgeable of listeners (read [in Japanese]: maniac), but it was used in a commercial for a brand of tape cassette. 

But that title threw me for a loop! "Am9 ni J - Eikaku Boy de Ite kure yo" from his May 1985 album "Paradise", had me scratching my head while I was listening to this strutting City Pop boogie twice. Who was J and what was so important that it had to happen at 9 am? Well, the mystery was such that I had to look it up online and fortunately, I was able to get most of my questions answered. Musician Taro Mejiro's（めじろたろう）November 2020 blog entry helped explain that "Am9" doesn't refer to a time but to the A Minor 9th chord, and after consulting with a YouTube video on that specific chord, it sounds like the song actually wraps itself around this very chord (TOSHITARO even shouts it out in the lyrics). Perhaps City Pop YouTuber Sora Satoh has even mentioned this in one of his videos.

Thanks, mahalodotcom!

As for the "Eikaku Boy" part, I've got no idea since eikaku translates into "acute angle". I tried to see via the search engine whether eikaku boy is a form of musical jargon but I couldn't get anything. So, basically speaking, the title in English is "J at A Minor 9th - Stay an Acute Angle Boy, Will Ya?". OK, whatever you say.😵

Keiko Aso（麻生圭子）was behind the lyrics for TOSHITARO's melody and from what I could glean, the protagonist is a fellow who's in love with a female radio DJ known only by her first initial J (so, Janice, Joyce, Junko?). As the singer shouts out, that A Minor 9th is the zinger to his heart for some reason and maybe J sang or spoke something at that chord. But the chorus throws back at the lad that she's already married so don't bother although the fellow is undeterred. In any case, I like the boogie in this one and the wailing guitar solo.

Yeah, the commercial for this tape cassette fairly screams "Typically Bizarre Japanese CM!".

TOSHITARO -- Romantic Noise

 

Ahh...good ol' Tower Records in Shibuya. Hope the store is still there when I come visiting next time. I will get my basket of CDs and then have a latte or lunch in that 2nd-floor café. Speaking of which, along with the steadily decreasing infection rates here in Toronto, the other good news is that restaurant patios and non-essential stores opened up for the first time in months. Consequently, there are many happy Torontonians today and tonight and I'm hoping that things will continue on the right course so that the economy will finally fully open up.

Perhaps I can then throw in some happy-happy-joy-joy City Pop to continue the night shift of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for this Friday in June. This is by TOSHITARO and it's the title track from his June 1987 album "Romantic Noise" and it's a pretty cheerful strut in the concrete jungle of Tokyo with plenty of jingle-jangle keyboards, wailing electric guitar and the singer himself leading the vocal charge.

Written by Suzanne K. Kim and composed by TOSHITARO, if there had been a music video for "Romantic Noise", it probably would have had the guy actually in that black suit strutting down Chuo Dori with a bunch of dancers in tow. Memories of MTV! Speaking of "Romantic Noise", the last article that I did for TOSHITARO was for another track from the album, "Lazy Tune", which is also a supremely cheerful number.

TOSHITARO -- Lazy Tune

 

Earlier in the year, I introduced singer-songwriter Toshitaro Hiejima（稗島寿太郎）, aka TOSHITARO, through his cool and nocturnal "Tight Night" from 1986. As I mentioned in that article, it's been difficult gaining any information about the fellow, but I was able to dig up from Takechas Records that he made his debut through a band in 1979 called Toshitaro & Riverside（とし太郎＆リバーサイド）which broke up sometime before or in 1984.

The following year, TOSHITARO released his June 1987 album "Romantic Noise", and I have to say that the cover of him looking like a Reservoir Dog or veteran comedian Teruyoshi Uchimura（内村光良）in one of his skits is quite kakkoii as well. Anyways, one of the tracks is "Lazy Tune" which is anything but. Written by Keiko Aso（麻生圭子）and composed/arranged by the singer, it's got bits and pieces of Motown, piano jazz and late-80s City Pop. 

I'm not sure whether it's a real marimba or a synthesizer in there, but the sound adds whimsy although I would have preferred some real horns over the synth-horns in one of the instrumental passages. Still, "Lazy Tune" is a fun song with some nice vocals by TOSHITARO and the backup singers.

TOSHITARO -- Tight Night

 

Welcome to Friday! The photo above is of the Toki no Kane (The Bell of Time), one of the landmarks in the city of Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture. My friend and I visited the area when I visited Japan in November 2017.

Now, the reason for the photo is because the fairly obscure singer featured here just happens to hail from Kawagoe. His name is Toshitaro Hiejima（稗島寿太郎）but at the time, he released this particular album "Chic" in 1986, he was going for that cool mononym of TOSHITARO (nothing like caps to get your message across while screaming in script).

I couldn't find much information at all about TOSHITARO except from what I could glean at the Japanese-language "Music Avenue". "Chic" was his 3rd album, and from it, I have "Tight Night" which was composed by him and written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）. It's quite the cool and smoky mid-tempo nighttime City Pop number, and I have to agree with "Music Avenue" author kaz-shin that it's the type of song that would belong on a car stereo tape while bombing down the highways in Tokyo. The late Kenji Omura（大村憲司）, who arranged everything, is handling the guitar solo.