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 Tommy february6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tommy february6. Show all posts
Ah, for that faithful reminder of what my music was like back when I was a teenager, I can always go to Tommy february6, aka singer-songwriter Tomoko Kawase（川瀬智子）of the indie rock group the brilliant green. Good ol' Tommy february6 was one of Kawase's personae representing the 80s synthpop period.
Tommy was releasing singles and albums between 2001 and 2005 when she took a bit of a break. However, she released a BEST compilation in February 2009 titled "Strawberry Cream Soda Pop “Daydream”" which included all of those fizzy and frothy singles and album tracks from the past. And then as the final track, she included what would be the title track for the album, "◯Strawberry●Cream◯Soda●Pop◯".
It was just like she never left the stage since the song sounded like what I would have expected from Tommy February6, cute-as-all-get-out vocals, twee 80s analog synths and crisp syn-drums smacking away. Heck, even the video has some Boy George emulators frolicking in there. Now, wouldn't that be a thing to have some of the Culture Club visit Tommy's tea party?
As for the album, it peaked at No. 5 on Oricon. I vaguely remember having cream soda as a kid decades ago, but for the life of me, I can't even remember what it tastes like! 🙀
The above is the double act of The Hard Rock Café and Tony Roma's at the end of a side street in Roppongi. I know that the Outback Steakhouse (of which there were once at least a few in Tokyo) had that famous Blooming Onion, but I think that even either Hard Rock or Tony (or maybe even both) possessed their own versions. Ah, yes...I remember now! Tony Roma's had the deep-fried onion loaf.
Yeah, that Blooming Onion was the thing for us back then. We used to order it as the main appetizer at the Outback before our steaks arrived and we would still nibble on it after dinner and before dessert. Cholesterol be damned! Incidentally, one of the other YouTube channels that I've subscribed to is Cowboy Kent Rollins with his down-home recipes, and he's proud to boast his own Blooming Onion which is supposed to be better than anything from the Outback.
My gastronomic preamble ramble (and also rumble since my stomach is starting to make cooing sounds due to my mention of the Blooming Onion) is all for introducing Tommy february6's January 2002 single"Bloomin'!". It's been a while since I've brought up a song by one of the brilliant green'sTomoko Kawase's（川瀬智子）alter egos; the last one was "je t'aime★je t'aime", and even for that article, I mentioned that it had been a while for a Tommy february6 tune.
Her 3rd single, "Bloomin'!" is all about the sweet purrs of love toward the beloved thanks to Tommy's lyrics. It's refreshing and nostalgic listening to the synthpop that has me going back to my high school years, European pop and even some music I remember coming out of Quebec. But this isn't melodic poutine that I'm writing about but musical maple syrup candy. I have to give my compliments to composer MALIBU CONVERTIBLE whoever that may be. As for that "Alice in Wonderland" reminiscent music video, I can't help but think of the videos by Men Without Hats who come right from Montreal.
"Bloomin!" peaked at No. 10 on Oricon and was a track on her self-titled album which was released in February 2002. It hit No. 1 for a couple of weeks and ended up as the 17th-ranked album of the year. The song was also used in a Shiseido commercial.
Ahhh...memories of Halloween. Two of the three Jack O'Lanterns that you see above were created by me years ago when I was teaching the masses how to carve pumpkins. The other one was actually quite delicious.
Indeed, tomorrow will be Halloween although unfortunately things are not going to be quite as festive due to the horrors of COVID-19. The medical experts here have stated that trick-or-treat is going to be a no-no and that families ought to search for more virtual/internal activities to celebrate the bewitching night. I checked the YouTube channel with the live cameras over Shibuya, Tokyo. Usually if Halloween falls on a weekend there, it was guaranteed that the preceding Friday and the two nights afterwards would probably have thousands of folks squeezing into the neighbourhood like old-fashioned college students trying to stuff themselves into a taxi or a telephone booth. Thankfully if sadly, I didn't see any of that on the cameras today.
As for me, my Halloween education was left back in Japan years ago and our family no longer gives out the treats since that was made into a collective neighbourhood activity years ago as well. And cosplay was never my thing to begin with.
Odd bodkins! I was searching a couple of days ago for something that would fit the theme of Halloween when the perfect video was discovered on YouTube. If anyone ever fantasized how Tim Burton's"The Nightmare Before Christmas" would like with a Japanese cast and a Danny Elfman-esque song to match, this is for you.
Plus, if you are a visual kei band fan and wondered about an "Ocean's Eleven" collaboration, "HALLOWEEN PARTY" is most definitely for you. Created by L'Arc-en-Ciel's vocalist and songwriter Hyde, he along with Oblivion Dust's guitarist K.A.Z. got together to form the rock unit VAMPS in the late 2000s. Then a few years later, the pair got together a whole bunch of rockers for the event known as "HALLOWEEN PARTY 2012" under the band name of Halloween Junky Orchestra where the single "HALLOWEEN PARTY" was introduced and then released on October 17th that year.
So along with VAMPS, Halloween Junky Orchestra included actress/singer Anna Tsuchiya（土屋アンナ）, Ryuji Aoki（青木隆治）, Aki（明希）of the rock band Sid, Acid Black Cherry,kyo from the band D'ERLANGER, singer/tarento Daigo, Tatsuro（逹瑯）of MUCC, Tomoko Kawase（川瀬智子） in both of her incarnations Tommy february6 and Tommy heavenly6, guitarist Hitsugi（柩）of NIGHTMARE, musician RINA of the band SCANDAL and singer/cellist Kanon Wakeshima（分島花音）.
I have to say that the video is glorious and director Ken Nikai（二階健）, who had also taken care of the music videos for Hyde and those two bands of his, ought to get a firm and hearty handshake from Burton. It seems right out of the FAO Schwarz idea for Halloween. Plus Hyde apparently must have listened to the soundtracks for "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice" (and perhaps even the music for the past several years of "Doctor Who") for inspiration for "HALLOWEEN PARTY". It's truly a grand march for the boys and ghouls.
The single peaked at No. 3 on Oricon and despite the lateness of the release, "HALLOWEEN PARTY" ended up as the 80th-ranked single of 2012, going Gold.
It's been a little over a couple of years since I put up an article about the persona affected by singer-songwriter Tomoko Kawase（川瀬智子）of the brilliant green called Tommy february6. That first article was for her debut single"Everyday at the bus stop" from 2001.
However, I also remember this other single by Tommy that also did well on the charts. In fact, "je t'aime★je t'aime" was the highest-ranking song by the singer as it hit No. 5 on the Oricon weeklies after its release in February 2003. It ended up as the 65th-ranked single of the year and was a track on her 2004 album"Tommy airline" that peaked at No. 2.
Man, those intro synths! Watching the video and hearing the song again made me think that "je t'aime★je t'aime" was a hybrid of a story of the trial and tribulations of Harajuku romance brought to song by The Pet Shop Boys in the early 1980s. But to give credit where credit is due, it was MALIBU CONVERTIBLE behind the music and arrangements while Tommy february6 took care of the words. There is something appealingly weird about the video so that I could have envisaged it being shown on an episode of "City Limits", that after-hours video program that I used to watch on MuchMusic.
I see that John Arteaga who has commented on some of the early articles on the blog was responsible for the Spanish subtitles, so kudos to him.
The coupling song on the single was "I'm in the mood for dancing", the cover of the original hit disco tune by The Nolans. It's quite a cute synth update on the ol' chestnut that became a huge hit in Japan.
I'm including that original by the Irish pop vocal group of sisters since "I'm in the mood for dancing" is one of those songs that illustrates the phrase "Big in Japan". I mean that the song that came out in November 1979 has attained such legendary pop status in Japan that I used to hear the tune being used on a few commercials over the years such as ones for Softbank.
The song got its release in Japan in July 1980 where it was titled in Japanese as "Dancing Sisters"（ダンシング・シスター）. The disco beat is so imbued into it that I can't remember whether I had first heard it as a youth in Toronto or whether it hit me during my years in my adopted nation. But in Japan, it was one of the few non-Japanese songs to hit No. 1 on Oricon, selling around 700,000 records. On the Oricon Western singles chart,"I'm in the mood for dancing" ended up becoming the No. 1 song of the year. Ben Findon, Mike Myers and Bob Puzey were the songwriters. As for that middle contributor, I think I can safely say that it isn't the serial killer from "Halloween" or the local comedian who hit it big on "Saturday Night Live".
I've got to say that Tomoko Kawase（川瀬智子）is probably one of the most imaginative artists that I had ever seen. She and her band the brilliant green made inroads as this indie-poppish group at the end of the 20th century with hits such as "There Will Be Love There", and I felt that BuriGuri had tapped into a musical niche that I hadn't heard in Japan up to that point...a mellow shoegazing type of music.
But then a few years later, Kawase decided to take a break from the brilliant green and came up with a new chic geek persona, dubbing herself asTommy february6. The name was derived from her nickname and her birthday, and the persona decided to sing 80s synthpop complete with those twee synthesizers.
Tommy february6's debut single was "Everyday at the bus stop" released in July 2001. I couldn't find the official music video unfortunately but from what I remember, I saw Tommy walk on down onto a stage in a cute dress and glasses carrying a big mike as she sang this song that reminded me a lot of some British pop stuff when I was a high school kid. It was about as far from a BuriGuri tune as I could imagine. And I have yet to talk about another persona of hers, Tommy heavenly6.
As I said, I couldn't find the official video but here is the making-of video for that video. Tommy took care of the lyrics while Malibu Convertible took care of the music and overall arrangement. "Everyday at the bus stop" got as high as No. 12 on Oricon.
