I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
This is kinda like following the running KKP narrative of me finding out that a beloved 80s hit wasn't an original but a cover of a less well-known original version. Mind you, I did find out some years ago that Yellow Magic Orchestra's"Firecracker", the first YMO song for me to hear, had originally been made by Martin Denny, a man who loved his exotica music back in the 1950s.
And it was then that I realized that the early years of YMO were about Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）among others in the band's collective filtering some of the old genres through the filter of synthesizers and other electronic equipment for fresh new takes. Well, some more revelatory stuff has come.
Case in point: it wasn't even the first time for Hosono to tackle "Firecracker". Last month, Hosono released an album "Yours Sincerely" where he supposedly ties up some melodic loose strings. But some months earlier in June, another album associated with him got out in public. Titled "Harry Hosono & Tin Pan Alley In Chinatown", this is a live performance album which was recorded all the way back in 1976 when they did a gig at the famous Tung Fat restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown. One of the tracks is indeed "Firecracker" which is much closer to the 1959 Denny classic in terms of arrangement, and I have to give my compliments to Hosono's firecracking performance on the marimba. The album includes the covers but there are also some Hosono originals.
As has been the case in previous issues of "Japanese City Pop", this book has defined Japanese City Pop as "urban music for city dwellers", and there probably has been no debating the opinion that the band Happy End was the starting point.
The music world of Happy End that expressed the dreamscape of Tokyoites as a "windy city" goes hand in hand with a refined Western style of sound and it has become the source for the great stream that has connected to today's J-Pop. No matter how big the river, going back to its beginnings will lead to a tiny stream up in the mountains, and in the same way, Happy End's music made only a tiny ripple back in the day, but it's now been appraised as the headwaters for this mighty river of music.
Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）and Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, the four members of Happy End, have each gone onto their own careers after the band's breakup and contributed greatly to the maturation of Japan's pop music. It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to point out that the four of them became the core of the history of Japanese City Pop, considering that it would be rather difficult to seek out any albums within the more-than-500 examples in this book that hasn't been touched by them.
Caramel Mama (later to be known as Tin Pan Alley), which was created by Hosono, Suzuki, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）and Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）, made masterful use of their transcendent performing prowess, and from a sound point of view, they revolutionized Japanese pop. Over here as well, just like Happy End, though it made a little headway back in those days, when comparing and listening to the folk and kayo kyoku that had come before Tin Pan Alley and then listening to music after their arrival, the difference couldn't be clearer. Simply put, what made the Japanese sound cooler came following Tin Pan Alley.
If possible, I'd like the young people of today to realize how cool and sophisticated music was more than forty years ago in our country.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised"(2020).
A few days ago, I mentioned the passing of veteran actress and singer Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）. She was definitely one representative of the kayo kyoku era, but I was later surprised by the fact that even she had her dalliance with the emerging wave of City Pop in the late 1970s. Through leafing through my first issue of Yutaka Kimura's "Japanese City Pop", I discovered that she was involved in a collaborative project with the band Tin Pan Alley which resulted in the April 1977 album"Our Connection"（アワー・コネクション）.
It was back in 2018 on KKP when I wrote on the first track of that album which was also her first single under the name Ayumi Ishida & Tin Pan Alley Family, "Watashi Jishin"（私自身）. For some reason, "Watashi Jishin" doesn't show up anywhere on Ishida's discography in her J-Wiki profile but from the thumbnail above, the B-side is also the second track on "Our Connection", "Hitori Tabi"(Traveling Solo).
As with "Watashi Jishin", "Hitori Tabi" was made by lyricist Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）and composer Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）, and just from the title itself, I could make out that this was a post-breakup tune as the protagonist heads out alone to the more rural areas by train in late winter or early spring to forget about a now-dead romance. The uncanny thing about "Hitori Tabi" is how the intro at least sounds a lot like the one for Steely Dan's "Black Cow" although their legendary album "Aja" didn't actually get released until September 1977. Things that make me go Hmmmm. But in any case, despite Hashimoto's lyrics, Ishida's delivery sounds footloose and fancy-free, and Hosono's melody is filled with slow funky licks and still-romantic strings shimmering in the wind. It would seem that the lady on the train isn't lamenting a broken silk rope but is celebrating fallen shackles.
"Sobakasu no Aru Shojo" (The Girl with the Freckles) is a signature masterpiece that really brings out Suzuki's（鈴木茂）melodious side, and I'm absolutely in love with this duet with Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）. The ARP Odyssey that Suzuki himself uses to good effect adds an effective accent. In the world of Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）which has songs including "Saraba Siberia Tetsudo"（さらばシベリア鉄道）and "Fjord no Shojo"（フィヨルドの少女...Fjord Girl）, the impression has been that the woman's escape destination is "the northern towns", so it's reminiscent of a fleeting image of a young girl.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
"Shirakechimauze" is a Tokyo City Soul classic which has been covered by artists including Masahiro Kuwana（桑名正博）and Kenji Ozawa（小沢健二）. Right from its intro, Tin Pan Alley's（ティン・パン・アレー） performance and good humour really brings out the Philly soul, and even though the unbeatable chorus of Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）is a highlight to hear, ultimately what gets me right here is Takashi Matsumoto's（松本隆）flair revealed in that throwaway line of shirakechimauze (I'm so apathetic) spoken by a guy who's just been dumped.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
Just around 8 years ago, I wrote up about "Mune no Furiko"（胸の振り子）a 1947 kayo that was given a cool contemporary spin through a collaboration between veteran singer Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）and musicians such as Masataka Matsutoya and Haruomi Hosono（松任谷正隆・細野晴臣）among others to create the 1974 "Super Generation"（スーパー・ジェネレイション）consisting of covers of the old kayo.
Last weekend, I had a nice chat with Rocket Brown of Come Along Radio and one of the topics was on how much he has enjoyed "Super Generation", especially one other track there, a cover of another 1947 hit, "Tokyo Boogie Woogie" which was originally recorded by Shizuko Kasagi（笠置シヅ子）. Since then of course, the standard has been covered countless times.
This time, though, "Tokyo Boogie Woogie" has Yukimura together with Caramel Mama (the future Tin Pan Alley) putting out a version that sounds as if it was absolutely meant to be performed and enjoyed in some actual roadside honky-tonk. Yukimura has got a mighty brassy voice while the piano is going full ragtime and the rock guitar goes wa-wa-wa. It was quite the match between 1940s kayo and 1970s New Music.
Rocket has put up his own review of "Super Generation" so have a look at it in his own blog.
For the first time in a couple of years, I was able to accomplish a couple of things: 1) meet up with an old friend and KKP contributor Larry Chan here in Toronto and 2) slurp down a bowl of ramen that I didn't make out of a store-bought package. It was good to see Larry again during these dark times and share some good conversation and ramen/gyoza at the midtown branch of Touhenboku Ramen. Initially, I'd been a little worried since the two other ramen franchises in the area, Kinton and Santouka were both closed for some "emergency maintenance", but when I saw the lit OPEN sign at Touhenboku, my spirit and hunger were raised considerably.
Getting to tonight's batch of songs on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", we're starting off with singer-musician Shigeru Suzuki's（鈴木茂）"Hyakku Watt no Koibito" (100-Watt Lover) off of his debut solo album "Band Wagon"(March 1975). Written by his old Happy End bandmate Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Suzuki himself, I thought it was a rather odd title since I didn't think that a 100-watt bulb was particularly all that radiant, although according to Matsumoto's lyrics, Suzuki sings the world of that girlfriend.
Mind you, though, he does mention that she can be very tardy and that she rattles off her words at the speed of a machine gun (not unlike my East Asian Studies professor in 1st Year), but perhaps Suzuki thinks of them as adorable idiosyncrasies rather than weaknesses. In any event, I really like "Hyakku Watt no Koibito" because of that downtown funkiness which for some reason reminds me a bit of "Black Magic Woman" by Santana. There's also some of that prog rock underlaid by some groovy 70s City Pop smeared with that synthesizer "haze". The titular lass should be very grateful for Suzuki's city serenade.
Tin Pan Alley's (which also had Suzuki within its ranks) cover of "Hyakku Watt no Koibito" can be found on the band's BEST compilation "Yellow Magic Carnival" from 1980. I don't think that there is much of a difference between Suzuki's original and this newer version.
However, there is that distinctive arrangement touch of Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）in his own cover of "Hyakku Watt no Koibito" in "MORE DESIRE 〜TOSHIKI KADOMATSU SPECIAL LIVE '89.8.26", an album released in December 1989. At over eight minutes long, this is basically an extended remix with Kadomatsu enjoying his jazzy flights of fancy (and indeed, he flies high) with the original. Most of the songs on the album are the musician/producer's covers of not only Suzuki's songs but also those of Chu Kosaka（小坂忠）and Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）. "MORE DESIRE" hit No. 23 on Oricon.
Last week, I translated the liner notes of Hiroshi Sato's（佐藤博）classic "Awakening" album from 1982 for Rocket Brown from "Come Along Radio" and he has put it up on his blog in the last few hours so if you're interested in giving that a gander, please do so. As I let Rocket know when I handed him the translation, my work is admittedly just 90% accurate by my reckoning, so if any of you think that there are errors in there, please let me or my friend know. The liner notes consist of an interesting interview with the late keyboardist and songwriter about what went into the making of this album.
I can't quite remember whether it was Rocket who led me to this video or if it was somebody else or I just stumbled upon it by accident. However, I am very grateful to the uploader, Masahiro Seto, since it shows a 1975 concert with the iconic rock and pops band Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）and singer-songwriters Chu Kosaka（小坂忠）&Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）. I think that I can say that it's pretty rare to discover early concert footage of either Tin Pan Alley and/or Yoshida, so to come across this video is indeed a precious find.
The song here is "Apple Knocker", a funky instrumental composed by the aforementioned Sato who was a later recruit to Tin Pan Alley, and it's a marvel and a delight to see this lineup of Japanese contemporary music (of the time) royalty up on the stage jamming away. And just before vocalists Kosaka and Yoshida toot (and strut) away, the former graciously introduces the members: Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）on the beefy bass, Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）on drums, Motoya Hamaguchi（浜口茂外也）on flute and percussion, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）on guitar, and John Yamazaki（ジョン山崎）and Sato on keyboards. Kosaka looks especially adorable looking like a preppie university student.
Listening away to "Apple Knocker" for the second or third time, I tried to search for whether this song, which sounds like the perfect accompaniment for a New York City-based comedy scene from that same decade, was actually an official song for a single or an album or just something that Sato whipped up for concert play. It took some minutes while I looked up Sato's and Tin Pan Alley's discography but as it turned out, the song is on Yoshida's live album"MINAKO II –Live at Sun Plaza Hall October 3,1975–" which was released in December 1975.
Strangely enough, according to what I see on the Discogs website, in addition to "Apple Knocker" written in katakana that is Track 8 on "MINAKO II", there is also the final track which is "Apple Knocker" written in romaji, but the music is supposedly by Jun Sato（佐藤準）. Not sure if that is a totally new song.
Well, it was pretty much as expected. Premier Ford announced today that everybody in Ontario except for the urban areas in the Golden Horseshoe including Toronto, that region hugging the western end of Lake Ontario, can start opening up the shops and restaurants as of this Friday. The GTA will have to wait at least another week to see if our infection rates decrease enough to warrant our turn at re-opening.
Going way back in the illustrious career of Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）to check out the first track in her debut album"Tobira no Fuyu"（扉の冬...The Door's Winter）released in September 1973. Despite the title and somewhat pensive expression on the 20-year-old Yoshida's face on the cover, "Soto wa Minna" (Everyone's Outside) has got oodles of summer warmth.
Yoshida wrote and composed all of the tracks and she's backed up by the band Caramel Mama（キャラメル・ママ）which would later get its name change to Tin Pan Alley. So, behind her in recording were former Happy End bandmates Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）on bass/acoustic guitar and electric guitar/percussion respectively with Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）on drums and Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）on organ. Meanwhile, Yoshida herself would handle piano and percussion. However, I would love to know who was taking care of the splendid brass section...that is one reason that the warmth was in there.
With "Soto wa Minna", Yoshida's lyrics seem to talk about getting out there and seizing the day, a sentiment that I figure a lot of people would love to do at this time. There is mention about forests and trees in the song, but "Soto wa Minna" has an arrangement that makes me feel there is some New York City soul, presaging the musical direction that she would take as the decade went by. It's a short and sweet number but it makes for a fine introduction to "Tobira no Fuyu", and as I finish this, I'm already a number of tracks into the album. If at all possible, I will have to add this to the Yoshida collection.
And we're onto Friday so definitely throwing in some City Pop/J-AOR today.
Perhaps it was about a year ago when the virtual hangout club for Japanese urban contemporary music enthusiasts known as Van Paugam's City Pop Radio was taken down much to our grief. I think probably since then a lot of genre compilations have popped up like baby rabbits, and it's possible that fans learned a lesson from the City Pop guru and started listening to the music while viewing some soothing car-traveling videos on YouTube and the like.
A few days ago, I discovered the YouTube channel J Utah which specializes in showing videos of driving through some of the great cities in the world, and that includes my old stomping grounds of Tokyo. Included in that list is the above glorious sunrise video of driving near Tokyo Bay with a crossing of the Rainbow Bridge. I threw in one of my "Light Mellow" discs and being a long-play CD, it took about three of those videos to get through the disc and to recreate that City Pop Radio feeling, but it was great!👍
One of the song's on the "Wing" playlist was Masataka Matsutoya's（松任谷正隆）"Kizuita Toki wa Osoi Mono"(Always The Last To Notice), a track originally from his sole contract-mandated album "Yoru no Tabibito"（夜の旅人...Endless Flight）from November 1977. Just the perfect song for a Van Paugam drive, it is indeed Yuming's（ユーミン）husband behind words, music and mike as he describes how much of a goofball he is for not noticing the love of a young lady close to him. Not quite sure if the song was an autobiographical thing.😏Speaking of the album, there is also "Hong Kong Night Sight" to listen to, and that was also covered by his wife.
It's short but definitely sweet and has all of the musical ambience of a romantic stroll through the park on a sunny Sunday. Plus, it brings that feeling of what a 70s City Pop/AOR tune, thanks to the rhythm section represented by none other than Tin Pan Alley including bassist Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and guitarist Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）.
So if any of you City Pop fans are still pining for that Van Paugam radio feeling, you can try out one of J Utah'sTokyo videos as the visual while throwing in your favourite compilation as the aural.
Still much to explore when it comes to Haruomi Hosono's（細野晴臣）pre-Yellow Magic Orchestra days in the 1970s when he was with Happy End and Tin Pan Alley, pioneering bands in New Music and perhaps even City Pop. Therefore, I'm back to the latter band's inaugural album"Caramel Mama"（キャラメル・ママ）from November 1975.
This time, it's the 2nd track "Choppers' Boogie" which was written, composed and arranged by Tin Pan Alley drummer Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）. However, although Hayashi's percussion does have a meaty role, I think "Choppers' Boogie" is the platform for the guitarist and bassist to shine. But I think I'm being a little polite with that last statement...the guitarist and bassist are just having a blast shredding things to pieces here. Not sure whether the chopper in the title is actually referring to a guitar since I've usually seen the term used for: a) a helicopter, b) a motorcycle and c) a machine gun. But since I have seen machine guns being hidden in guitar cases, it wouldn't be too much of a leap of faith to assume that the boogie is indeed all about the guitars involved.
Whatever it is, it's a mesmerizing four minutes and change of hot music compared to the mellower beachside sounds from its trackmate "Sobakasu no Aru Shojo"（ソバカスのある少女）. Plus, "Caramel Mama" is now on my target list, especially on hearing that superstars such as Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）, Yumi Arai（荒井由実）, Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）and Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）also helped out in the recording of the album.
Well, welcome to February! Amazing how fast January went but that's simply the case for us older folks.
I found out about this one from Van Paugam's City Pop radio several days ago, and it turns out to be another track from the album "Our Connection"（アワー・コネクション）, the collaboration between Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）and Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）released in April 1977. Almost a year ago, I wrote my last article on Ishida because of the first track from this distinctive LP, "Watashi Jishin"（私自身）, a cool and funky City Pop number of its time.
Now, I've fallen for Track 3 which is "Roppongi Lullaby". For those kayo fans in the know, no, it's not the classic one first sung by Yasuko Naito（内藤やす子）in the early 1980s. It's a totally different animal created by Jun Hashimoto and Kyohei Tsutsumi（橋本淳・筒美京平）, and has this Latin and old-style kayocombined together in a then-contemporary manner. In fact, Ishida's velvety vocals remind me of her time behind the mike for her most famous song "Blue Light Yokohama"（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ）back in 1968. Not surprisingly, it was both Hashimoto and Tsutsumi who were behind that 60s hit as well.
It's close to 11 pm as I type this but I wanted to put in just one more before calling it a day since a video that I saw was so fascinating.
The video was put up almost 10 years ago by a fellow named Nobuyoshi Maeda, and it features the band Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）playing a good ol' rock n' blues song titled "Bye Bye Baby" with singer-songwriter Chu Kosaka（小坂忠）pouring it on while Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）is backing him up. I don't get to see either performer actually singing on a YouTube video so it was an interesting exercise to see them back in the 1970s jammin' away. There's also a bit in the above video where Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and friend were actually trying something that might have looked like an embryonic form of the Moonwalk.
Considering how "Bye Bye Baby" sounds, I had initially thought that Tin Pan Alley was performing a cover of some tune from the United States. But as it turns out, it's a wholly Japanese original that had been composed by Hosono himself and written by Yoma Fujita（藤田洋麻）. And the original performers were Makoto Kubota & Yuyake Gakudan（久保田麻琴と夕焼け楽団）on their 1975 debut album"Hawaii Champloo"（ハワイ・チャンプルー）.
Fujita's lyrics talk about a traveling band going from town to town doing the gigs on a seemingly never-ending train ride through America. And the band just sounds like they've lived the life and have been enjoying it, or at the very least, treating it like a good enough living. One would almost think that some of the members would have picked up a drawl or a twang in their speaking.
I don't usually listen to this genre but both the original and the cover done by Tin Pan Alley are actually quite fun to the ears. "Hawaii Champloo" has been previously represented on the blog through another track which is much more Okinawan, "Haisai Ojisan"（ハイサイおじさん）.
Couldn't resist here. I just had to purchase another disc from the "Light Mellow" series of City Pop/AOR music. This time, the album has been dubbed "Wing".
(23:10)
One of the tracks just happens to be "Sobakasu no Aru Shojo" (The Girl with the Freckles) which goes well with a beach table and a couple of cocktails. The band is the legendary Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）with lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）concocting this dreamy paean to the titular girl in the same way that Charlie Brown dreamed of his Little Red-Haired Girl.
Still exploring the oeuvre of Tin Pan Alley but they were really pushing the envelope in a nation that was into the mainstream enka and Oricon-friendly aidoru in the 1970s. "Sobakasu no Aru Shojo" nicely sums up what New Music was all about in that decade: laying down Japanese lyrics on Western-style pop melodies created by Japanese musicians. The song was a track on the band's debut album, "Caramel Mama"（キャラメル・ママ）which was released in November 1975.
The book "Japanese City Pop" has provided a lot of revelations. One surprise was seeing Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）in those pages. The singer/actress who immortalized "Blue Light Yokohama"（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ）, a most beloved kayo from the late 1960s, is someone that I would never have imagined tackling anything like City Pop. And yet here we are.
I have to say that is one lovely and dramatic picture of her on the cover of her April 1977 album, "Our Connection"（アワー・コネクション）. However, she was not alone in this endeavour. The band Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）collaborated with her, and I realize that this is my second Tin Pan Alley article for tonight but on hearing the first track, I just had to write about it. The official collaboration is called Ayumi Ishida & Tin Pan Alley Family, by the way.
"Watashi Jishin" (Myself) is definitely an eye-opener for me. I've really only known Ishida for "Blue Light Yokohama" so to hear her soft voice adorning this funky 70s City Pop number is quite something. Actually, it is her soft and whispery delivery that makes things even cooler against Haruomi Hosono's（細野晴臣）music as she sings Jun Hashimoto's（橋本淳）lyrics about being a single woman in Tokyo nonchalantly enjoying the metropolitan lifestyle while still keeping emotions close to her chest and under her hat.
At the same time, although I know that this is an original song for the album, I couldn't help but imagine "Watashi Jishin" being a cover of one of those 1960s Mood Kayo tunes the way Ishida sings it. It sometimes sounds like Ishida herself singing it in the "original" way while overlaid with that modern 1970s urban melody. Furthermore, Ishida's delivery makes me think that Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）can even cover it now. She's also got that whispery voice and I know that she can do urban well.
Seeing Agnes Chan（アグネス・チャン）performing Takashi Matsumoto's（松本隆）debut song as a lyricist, "Pocket Ippai no Himitsu" (A Pocketful of Secrets) once more on Tuesday's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）and then hearing the original again on YouTube actually helped me to find out that Matsumoto's former bandmates in Happy End（はっぴいえんど）, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and guitarist Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）through their initial run in the mid-1970s as part of Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）came up with a cover version of Chan's 6th single. Incidentally, Yusuke Hoguchi（穂口雄右）took care of the music.
This is a good opportunity for me. nikala wrote the first and, up to now only, article on the unique Tin Pan Alley back in September 2014. When I first heard about Hosono, it was through Yellow Magic Orchestra as one of the three technopop masters, so I was quite surprised to know that he had been part of the rock/New Music/City Pop group Happy End in the early 1970s and then a member of Caramel Mama（キャラメル・ママ）which got renamed Tin Pan Alley. I had wondered what kind of music a band with those names would create. Well, from what I've heard in nikala's article and through YouTube, it seems as if Hosono, Suzuki, keyboardists Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）and the late Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）and drummer Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）enjoyed playing this blend of Martin Denny exotica and urban sounds. I can only speculate since I was in Japan for only several weeks in the 1970s as a kid, but perhaps Tin Pan Alley's freewheeling music was the type that would be played in the more intimate nightclubs and not on the NHK stage. It was quite the revelation to find out about the pre-YMO Hosono.
As I said, Tin Pan Alley came up with their own cover of "Pocket Ippai no Himitsu", a cute story of a girl swearing a boy to secrecy after she whispered sweet nothings into his ear only for the fellow to wake up and know what she had said. It came on the band's 1977 "Tin Pan Alley 2" and has that playfully funky beat (not so exotica) compared to Chan's countryside arrangement. Not 100% sure but I think that is indeed singer-songwriter MANNA as the vocalist here. She herself did a cover of a Tin Pan Alley tune, "Yellow Magic Carnival".
Looking at the names of supporting band members in albums' liner notes has been a curious hobby of mine for a while. There are certain names that keep appearing often enough to push me to dig out something on them. One of those names is Tin Pan Alley (ティン・パン・アレー), which I consider one of the most important forces of 70's Japanese scene, particularly New Music. Originally named Caramel Mama (キャラメル・ママ) between 1973 and 1974, it was Haruomi Hosono (細野晴臣)'s next brainchild after the dissolution of Happy End. Hosono invited that band's fellow guitarist Shigeru Suzuki (鈴木茂) to join the new one, along with Tatsuo Hayashi (林立夫) and Masataka Matsutoya (松任谷正隆). The late Hiroshi Sato (佐藤博) replaced Matsutoya for their 1977 album effort. There were other supporting musicians handling wind and percussion instruments who came and went. According to J-Wiki, Hosono chose the name 'Tin Pan Alley' because the vast majority of musicians that he respects come from the New York's Tin Pan Alley collective. They did release two of their own studio albums in 1975 and 1977, though they're mostly known as arrangers and backing players for early work of pretty much a huge chunk of the big names of New Music: Yuming, Akiko Yano, Minako Yoshida, Taeko Onuki, Yoshitaka Minami, Makoto Kubota... you name 'em. They didn't always credit themselves as band in the liner notes, but the members were there. It all started with Yuming's seminal album, "Hikouki Gumo", where it says on the back "arranged by YUMI ARAI and caramel mama". Plus, we all know which of the members she got married to.
So I felt like dedicating some space to one of Tin Pan Alley's own songs, peculiarly titled "Yellow Magic Carnival". That was still three years away from YMO's debut by the way. It was part of the group's first studio album from 1975, "Caramel Mama". Nice reference. I'm no musicologist, so I had to gather my info on this piece from other sources. Hosono's English Wiki notes that during that time he became interest in a genre called exotica, which I'd summarize as pseudo-tropical music that combined sounds of South Pacific and the Orient to create this fantastical world that your average North Americans and Europeans would love to escape to. I can just feel the sound of parasols being folded into a suitcase as I listen to this song. It's so relaxing. The temperatures out here in Toronto are heading to morose levels, a perfect time to truly savor the summer that is gone through music like this. I've remarked once that Hosono's vocals leave much be desired, but I actually don't mind them all here. I still don't know why it's called "Yellow Magic Carnival" though. Any guesses?
And last but not least, I leave you with a video of Tin Pan Alley in action performing Hosono's solo song "Peking Duck". They're very talented players.
In 2000, three of the original members (sans Matsutoya) reunited for a one-off release and a few concerts under the name Tin Pan.
Tonight on NHK's"Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）, singer Rimi Natsukawa （夏川 りみ）performed a wonderful jazzy rendition of an old kayo standard from decades back titled "Mune no Furiko"(Pendulum of My Heart). I liked the song so much that I decided to take a look for it on YouTube and found out that, true to its nature as a standard, it's been covered by a number of singers over the ages.
It was written by Hachiro Sato（サトウハチロー）and composed by Ryoichi Hattori （服部良一）in 1947 (Hattori would also create another fine kayo standard,"Tokyo Boogie-Woogie"), and it was first sung by popular singer Noboru Kirishima （霧島昇）who started his career in the 1930s. The lyrics and the music as it was sung back then by Kirishima reminded me of some of the love songs that the big bands played back in America. It was probably a fine song to listen to under the stars before bedtime.
The freeze image for the above video was one that I have seen leafing through the pages of "Japanese City Pop", since it was the cover for Izumi Yukimura's （雪村いづみ）album "Super Generation" from 1974. Now, I've seen Ms. Yukimura a number of times on TV programs such as "Kayo Concert" and had never thought that she would end up in this book. But apparently, singer-actress Yukimura, who had debuted in 1953 when she was around 16 and became one of Japan's big 3 female singers alongside Chiemi Eri （江利 チエミ）and Hibari Misora （美空ひばり）, collaborated with the hot New Musicians of the 1970s such as Masataka Matsutoya （松任谷正隆）and Haruomi Hosono （細野晴臣）to give an updated spin to the music of Ryoichi Hattori with the help of his son, composer Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久）.
I was glad that I could finally get an "in" to "Super Generation". Yukimura's version of "Mune no Furiko" doesn't really strike me as being City Pop but more of a New Music take. In a way, there's something pretty Akiko Yano-ish about it. The album also includes the aforementioned "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie", so I'd like to hear that as well.
Of course, when I found the video of The Big Man himself, Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）, performing "Mune no Furiko", I also had to include this one although I'm not sure whether this was an official entry in his discography. However, his version is the closest to the one I heard by Natsukawa earlier tonight since it has that late-night bluesy jazz sound to it. And what better way to finish an evening than with some great mind-blowing sax?
