Chie Kobayashi -- Hotel Osaka（ホテルOSAKA）

Wikimedia Commons
by Zairon

 

The above is a shot of the Hotel Monterey Osaka. I've never heard of it let alone been there but it's quite close to JR Osaka Station. The website certainly depicts it as one of the more luxurious accommodations in Osaka.

It was just last week when I posted my Author's Pick on hotel-titled kayo, and perhaps if I had remembered that this song was in the backlog, I would have included it in the list. But as it is, this is Chie Kobayashi's（小林千絵）7th single "Hotel Osaka" from May 1985. Last week's list showed that a number of genres can be used to reflect those hotel tunes but this time, "Hotel Osaka" has more of a bouncy folksy nature in its pop...not really Mood Kayo or City Pop at all. Written by Toshihiro Ito（伊藤敏博）, composed by Yukio Sasaki（佐々木幸男）and arranged by Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）, the hotel in question (and this isn't to say that the Monterey was the site of trysting here) is in all likelihood the final stop in a relationship that has to come to its end much to the lady's chagrin.

With the common first name of Chie and common family name of Kobayashi in there, I'd assumed that Chie Kobayashi was a regular part of KKP. However as it turns out, this is the first time for this singer, actress and TV personality to appear on the blog. Many welcomes to her then! Hailing from Osaka itself, the celebrity's path to an entertainment career apparently began when she won a championship on a TV show specializing in celebrity impressions; her winning stint was one of doing a Junko Sakurada（桜田淳子）song. According to her J-Wiki profile, the singing part of her geinokai career was the one that got things started for her professionally when she debuted in 1983 with the single "Itsumo Kataomoi"（いつも片想い...Always One-Sided Love）.

Bill Champlin -- Tonight, Tonight/Ray Kennedy -- My Everlasting Love

 

Welcome to another Reminiscings of Youth session. Last Friday, I put up an article on a 1984 duet between one of the best voices in Japanese music Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）and AOR singer-songwriter Bill Champlin titled "Both of Us". Noticing that it sounded somewhat like Earth Wind & Fire's "After the Love Has Gone" (and I wasn't the only one, judging from the YouTube comments), I was reminded of yet another love ballad that had similarities with that EWF classic.

Back in my days as a callow youth of the 1980s, I was taping the heck out of songs off the the various radio stations, and those included the ones that would be considered AOR and Quiet Storm, genre names that I hadn't heard of yet, but I guess that I just had a predilection for the light and mellow. Anyways, one song that I taped but didn't bother with recording the DJ's iteration of the singer's name and the title is the one that you can see above you. Well, thanks to my lack of foresight, I would then take on a multi-year odyssey searching for this mystery tune (along with others, Japanese and non-Japanese).

First off, though, let me say how happy I was when I was finally able to track down the fact that it was Champlin who sang this classy and smooth Perrier-friendly ballad "Tonight, Tonight" and it was from his December 1981 album, "Runaway". When I hear those soft keyboards and the buttery horns and strings, despite the earliness of the release, I get images of hedonistic lifestyles of that decade portrayed through television and movies (there's always dinner on crisp linen and fine china in that penthouse). I wasn't at all surprised that it had been created by the singer, David Foster and Raymond Louis Kennedy.

The search took me around thirty years since I noted in a very early KKP article from 2012 that I had just found Champlin's cover via YouTube. And yes, I have just said cover version because "Tonight, Tonight" is a redux of the original by the aforementioned Ray Kennedy who recorded it for his 1980 "Ray Kennedy" under the title of "My Everlasting Love". Strangely enough, I had heard Kennedy's "My Everlasting Love" through one of those American AOR compilations that I bought in Japan but wasn't sure at the time which was the original and the cover. According to the article for the 1981 "Runaway", Champlin had sung background vocals for Kennedy's original. I liked Kennedy's take but it wasn't quite the Champlin cover that I really wanted.

As it has been for a number of lost songs that I finally found, I had to go through a lot of cheap Canadian Tire tapes, radio listenings, university, and two stints in Japan over three decades to finally know the truth about "Tonight, Tonight". I ended up buying "Runaway" because I had wanted to get my own copy of the ballad. It didn't score too highly on the charts (well, pretty low at No. 178) and one critic disdained the tracks as being a pale version of the band Chicago according to the Wikipedia article. To be honest, I've only given the album just that one listen myself but especially after reading the mediocre reviews, I'm willing to give it another go. I have a thing for underdogs.

Now, what was in the Top 10 of Oricon for December 1981? Well, I have Nos. 7, 8 and 9.

7. Toshihiro Ito -- Sayonara Moyo（サヨナラ模様）

8. Yoshie Kashiwabara -- Hello, Goodbye

9. Iyo Matsumoto -- Sentimental Journey (センチメンタル・ジャーニー）

Toshihiro Ito -- Sayonara Moyo（サヨナラ模様）

 

Well, if there was any doubt before, it has been utterly extinguished now. Winter's a-coming! ⛄ Just before noon today, we got those sprinkles of the white stuff coming down and collecting on the lawn. Those in the Xmas mood are probably humming happily while others who had been hoping for some vestiges of summer to stay are in existential (or literal) fetal positions.

Last night when I was doing some prep work for this week's coming Reminiscings of Youth article via the Oricon Top 10 list for November 1981, I noticed a song at No. 10 that I hadn't seen before. Titled "Sayonara Moyo" (A Pattern of Goodbyes), I didn't even know the singer involved, Toshihiro Ito（伊藤敏博）. The above video's uploader has pegged it as a winter song, and what better choice considering our current weather conditions?

Written and composed by Ito with arrangement by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）, it was released as the singer's 2nd single in August 1981. Despite the release date, the song is about the end of romance with the references to crackling brown leaves and the coming of snow. It's been categorized as a New Music tune, and I think that there's enough of a lushness and exoticism in Omura's arrangement that I could even consider it a Fashion Music number. The first half of "Sayonara Moyo" is very languid until Ito suddenly launches into a jaunty beat which continues to the end.

"Sayonara Moyo" peaked at No. 5 and ended up as the 55th-ranked single for 1981, selling nearly 480,000 records. Even before its official release in August, it had earned Ito the Grand Prize at the Yamaha Popular Song Contest for that year in May. 

There's some interesting background as well for Ito himself. Somewhat similar to the story of soon-retiring Kei Ogura（小椋佳）who had been a bank employee for some years while also singing and songwriting, Ito was working for Japan National Railways as a conductor in his native Niigata Prefecture when "Sayonara Moyo" became a hit. He became known as the Singing Conductor and often when he appeared on those music ranking programs to perform the song, he would usually be placed in a trainyard or on a train platform or even on a train somewhere. His JNR career did come to an end in the late 1980s and he's been working ever since in the fisheries industry while continuing to sing. He had been releasing singles up to the early 2010s.