The Tubes -- Sushi Girl

 

The Tubes is a rock band from San Francisco that has been around since 1972, and they already have some representation here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" due to their participation on the "Xanadu" soundtrack. In addition, vocalist Fee Waybill was also one of the backup singers on Kahoru Kohiruimaki's（小比類巻かほる）"Dreamer" hit in 1989.

This week's Reminiscings of Youth then will take us to my very first encounter with Waybill and the rest of the Tubes, and it happened to be on "SCTV", the beloved Canadian sketch comedy series from the 1970s and 1980s. When "SCTV" was hitting its peak, one of its segments was "The Fishin' Musician" which was a parody of another beloved Canadian TV program "The Red Fisher Show" that featured ol' Red fishing the lakes and rivers with friends. The parody had the late John Candy portraying Gil Fisher as he brought some of the more intriguing musical acts of the time for a round of fishing. And indeed, the Tubes came aboard for some mighty bass fishing while still dressed in their concert gear of suits with skinny ties (oh so 80s)

Of course, along with the good humour, the band brought their own song to perform at Scuttlebutt Lodge which is where I heard "Sushi Girl" and saw Waybill eat some rice out of a fish carcass. I just hope that the fish was properly washed.

"Sushi Girl" is a track on the band's April 1981 album "The Completion Backward Principle" and it's got a lot of the tropes that would have been known through Japanese pop culture. I thought that the performance on "The Fishin' Musician" was plenty bizarre but the song itself was good ol' New Wave with a rock beat that I could get into since it was around that time that I was starting to get into music big time. However, I did not know that there had been a music video for "Sushi Girl" until literally a few minutes ago and it's about as tongue-in-cheek as the song itself.

Let's go a little whimsical here and see what was in the Oricon Top 10 of April 1981 in the middle of the lineup. We will check out Nos. 6, 7 and 8.

6. Akira Terao -- SHADOW CITY

7. Tetsuya Ryu -- Oku-Hida Bojou （奥飛騨慕情）

8. Akiko Yano -- Harusaki Kobeni （春咲小紅）

Go-Touchi Songs（ご当地ソング）: The Chubu region

 

From J-Wiki

Welcome to the third in the weekly series of "Go-Touchi Songs", those tunes that reflect a certain region or prefecture or city in Japan. Last week, I devoted the sophomore effort to the Kanto region, which includes Chiba and Gunma Prefectures where I lived at different times in my young life, and now we move further westward and southward to cover the Chubu region. Incidentally, this area covers Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Ishikawa, Nagano, Niigata, Shizuoka, Toyama, and Yamanashi Prefectures, a whopping nine provinces. However, although I couldn't get go-touchi songs from KKP to represent all of the areas, there are some pretty famous kayo among the ones that I could find. Next week, I'll take care of the Kinki region.

1. Kenichi Mikawa -- Niigata Blues （新潟ブルース）for Niigata City in Niigata (1967)

2. Sayuri Ishikawa -- Noto Hanto （能登半島）for the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa (1977)

3. Sayuri Ishikawa -- Amagi Goe （天城越え）for Mt. Amagi in Shizuoka (1986)

4. Shigeru Amachi -- Nagoya Blues（名古屋ブルース）for Nagoya in Aichi (1981)

5. Tetsuya Ryu -- Oku-Hida Bojou （奥飛騨慕情）for the Hida area in Gifu (1980)

6. Kiyoshi Hikawa -- Oi Okkake Otojiro (大井追っかけ音次郎) for the Oi River in Shizuoka (2001)

As usual, why don't we end this session with some regional delicacies? This time, we have sasa dango（笹団子）from Niigata Prefecture and then miso katsu（味噌カツ）from Nagoya.

Hibari Misora -- Uramachi Sakaba（裏町酒場）

Friday nights seem to be the time for the company section to hit the izakaya en masse but perhaps then Monday nights might be the first opportunity of the week for the lone corporate cog or a couple of them anyways to drop by the favourite watering hole somewhere nearby...maybe it's on the main drag or perhaps it's hidden in one of the back streets, away and unknown from the higher-ups of the firm.

I discovered this perhaps not-as-well-known Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）single from 1982 titled "Uramachi Sakaba" (Back Alley Bar). Still, Misora had so many hits and had so much respect that even the lesser lights of her discography have probably provided much joy to kayo listeners.

Written by Daizo Saito（さいとう大三）and composed by Tetsuya Ryu（竜鉄也）, who had a huge hit the year before with "Oku-Hida Bojou"（奥飛騨慕情）, "Uramachi Sakaba" is as comforting an enka song as the arrival of the tokkuri and ochoko of sake being placed quietly on the bar counter. It is just the lone drinker coming to the watering hole, though, as he drowns his sorrow in drink with the bartender lending a sympathetic ear. For my ears, that bartender is represented by accordion and the mandolin-sounding instrument. I don't drink all that much so those instruments have provided my aural enjoyment of imbibing. But of course, even with the somewhat melancholy lyrics, The Queen of Kayo's delivery is ever cheerful and encouraging added by a goodly dollop of gusto. She could be the one behind the counter providing verbal and liquid solace for all we know.

"Uramachi Sakaba" peaked at No. 28 on Oricon and it stayed on the charts for over 6 months, selling a little over 150,000 copies. There was also a Misora album with the same title that came out in July 1982.

Misora numbers will have their cover versions and it was no different with "Uramachi Sakaba". Ayako Fuji（藤あや子）provides her own version here.

Then, there is the splendid Aya Shimazu（島津亜矢）.

And to wrap up, here is Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）.

Tetsuya Ryu -- Oku-Hida Bojou （奥飛騨慕情）

There are a number of folks in Japan currently drinking some of that sake in celebration. And perhaps I can join in on the celebration as well. It's always great to hear when both the land of my birth and the land of my ancestry can jointly rejoice in something, and that was the case earlier this morning when Japanese physicist Takaaki Kajita of Tokyo University and Canadian physicist Arthur B. McDonald of Queens University just up Highway 401 in Kingston, Ontario jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on neutrinos. Apparently one of the things they revealed was that neutrinos actually had mass...which means that I will need to shed about 3 billion neutrinos before my next physical. Physics humour, folks!

Anyways, while NHK was getting annoyingly gushy with everyone who had anything to do with Dr. Kajita this morning on the news, I noticed that there was a lot of reference to the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory in the city of Hida, Gifu Prefecture. Hida has also come up a lot recently in my professional life as well since I've had to translate a few articles on the area for their hot springs.

Plus, there is the fact that Hida reminds me of a high-ranking enka song from the early 1980s, "Oku-Hida Bojou" (Longing for Oku-Hida). The title didn't ring a bell but as soon as I heard the very enka melody, I knew it was a popular song that often gets its due on the various kayo shows.

The late Tetsuya Ryu（竜鉄也）wrote, composed and sang his debut from June 1980, although he had been singing professionally for some time. According to what I read on the song on J-Wiki, he based "Oku-Hida Bojou" on his two weeks performing in a Hida district onsen town back in 1972. He produced and released his song by himself with just 2000 records pressed. However, over the years, the song got noticed as it got played on the old yusen (wire) networks. Some 6 months after its release in 1980, it broke into the Oricon Top 10, eventually reaching No. 2. And that is where it ended up by the end of 1981, No. 2, just behind Akira Terao's（寺尾聡）City Pop classic "Ruby no Yubiwa"（ルビーの指輪）. He also won the Long-Seller Prize at the Japan Record Awards. Because of all of that success, Ryu was able to make his only appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen in 1981. According to Oricon, the single managed to sell about 1.5 million records.

Including "Oku-Hida Bojou", Ryu released a total of 9 singles but no albums between 1980 and 1999. Sadly, he passed away in late 2010 at the age of 74.

Here is a cover of the song by Aya Shimazu（島津亜矢）.