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.
Showing posts with label Tokyo Q Channel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tokyo Q Channel. Show all posts
I love my various sandwiches but one of my favourites is Chicken Salad Sandwich. All I need is chunks of chicken and generous dollops of Kewpie Mayonnaise along with a few more ingredients and it's time to stuff it between two slices of bread. I will be a happy camper.😋And of course, that's what I had for lunch today.
Several years ago, I introduced a 1990s pop duo with the name of Tokyo Q Channel（東京Qチャンネル）and the song "Ni-juu-kyuu-sai"（29歳）from their 1995 debut album"Switch On!". It was quite the luscious classy song about a woman celebrating the end of her 20s.
Well, from their second and final album"SandWich" from September 1996, I give you the penultimate track "Genshoku no Kuni ~ Where Shall We Go?"(Land of Primary Colours) which is mostly a simple pop love song before it goes into power ballad mode near the end. It's not quite as epic as "Ni-juu-kyuu-sai" but it still fulfills its purpose as a contemplative cool-down song near the end of the album. It was written and composed by one-half of the duo, Yasuhiko Warita（割田康彦）, with Mayumi Sudo（須藤まゆみ）on vocals.
Of course, here in Canada, we've got Tim Horton's. It's not technically a Canadian company any more since it's majority-owned by Brazilian/American investment firm 3G Capital, but heck, we can still dream about the man the donut-and-coffee emporium was named after, the late Toronto Maple Leaf Tim Horton. Over in Japan, I think the leading donut place is still Mister Donut even with that craze over Krispy Kreme and other gourmet donut establishments almost a decade ago. There was even one branch by my old subway station, Minami-Gyotoku.
When I was visiting Tokyo in 2017, I decided to stop by for a morning snack at the Shimo-Kitazawa branch of Mister Donut. I ended up with a straight coffee and a double-chocolate donut. Compared to the yeast-raised donuts at Timmies, Mister Donut's donuts are more on the cakey side. It's all good!
Anyways, my donut-filled pre(-r)amble has nothing to do with the song here; I was just musing wistfully. But speaking of wistful, I would like to introduce this really pleasant ditty, "Ni-juu-kyuu-sai" (29 Years Old) by the musical duo Tokyo Q Channel (or TQC, for short). Enjoying a short run between 1994 and 1998, the band's name does sound somewhat like a home shopping network but it was indeed a singing act comprised of vocalist Mayumi Sudo（須藤まゆみ）and keyboardist-guitarist-composer Yasuhiko Warita（割田康彦）.
"Ni-juu-kyuu-sai" comes from TQC's first of two albums "Switch On!" which came out in June 1995. With Sudo and Warita creating the song on their own, it sounds more like a tune from a decade back, maybe more along the lines of something that Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）or Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久）in AOR mode would create in the 1980s. All those wonderful strings and twinkly keyboards surround a story of a young lady looking back as well as forward while she is in her final year of her twenties. Sudo has that lovely crystalline voice and my compliments also go out to Warita. "Ni-juu-kyuu-sai" doesn't seem to reflect any regrets and is very uptempo...perhaps just the song to adorn an Iwaki Credit Association commercial which it did.
Although there is a J-Wiki bio for Tokyo Q Channel, there isn't much outside of their discography. I found out that the duo had released eight singles along with their two albums. But Sudo and Warita have their own articles from which I did discover that Sudo is from Gunma Prefecture, has backed up a number of other singers such as Miki Imai（今井美樹）and Maaya Sakamoto（坂本真綾）, and has sung a lot of other commercial jingles. Meanwhile, Warita, who also hails from Gunma, was discovered by composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）in 1990 after which Warita made his own debut as a composer. He has created melodies for acts including SMAP, Ribbon and Hikaru Genji（光GENJI）.
I had the entire 2nd floor of Mister Donut to myself!
