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.
It's nice to hear from 80s aidoru Iyo Matsumoto（松本伊代）after a while. I found her 6th single from March 1983 titled "Chinese Kiss". Starting with some pre-recording banter that probably had the fans hitting their knees in bliss (and the producer slapping his forehead in frustration), it's a typically adorable Iyo tune.
Written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）, composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）and arranged by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）, it's a plucky aidoru song with a hint of Chinese flavor, a soupcon of City Pop, and plenty of whimsy. I'm not sure whether this date is taking place in Hong Kong or Yokohama but wherever the couple is, they are having one happy day interspersed with the titular sign of affection. I especially like the guitar when they make the transition from verse to chorus. "Chinese Kiss" hit No. 12 on Oricon and by the end of 1983, it was the 92nd-ranked single.
Chanteuse Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）has been in the music industry so long that she's had a lot of different images since her debut as a teen in 1975. However, the one image that will always stick with me is the one when I had first known about her in the early 1980s as you can see above: elegant, svelte and hair that went all the way down to her waist.
Yugure kara...Hitori
Today, I want to explore her 11th studio album from July 1982, "Yugure kara...Hitori"（From Twilight--Alone）. I've already written about some of the tracks on this No. 4-ranking LP: the surprisingly downtown warp-speed "Koi wa Senso"（恋は戦争）, the 1970s kayo kyoku-reminiscent 27th single"Lemon"（檸檬）which begins the album, and the follow-up single "Madonna Tachi no Lullaby"(聖母たちのララバイ）that has become one of her trademark songs. Even with those three covered, there are seven more tracks on the original LP alone so I'll be splitting up my impressions into two parts with Part 2 coming in next week.
Let's see if we can go for three songs here beginning with the second track. Following the innocent and sweet "Lemon", there is "Tobashite, TAXI"(Step On It, Taxi), a keyboard-funky urban tune of giddiness about a woman hopping into a taxi to confront a lover at his hotel on whether the rumours surrounding him are true; apparently, she's still in the denial stage. Written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）, composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）from the band NASA and arranged by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）, the lyrical content may be rather tense but the arrangement speaks of one exciting time in the big city. This particular song isn't to be confused with the similarly-titled "Tobashite Taxi Man"（とばしてTaxi Man） by Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）from her 1983 album"Relief 72 Hours". May I just complete this paragraph by noting how amazing her voice is when she yells "TAXI!". The multi-cab crash that could result if she yelled it in that way.
Following Track 3"Koi wa Senso", Iwasaki turns from the disco-lined streets of Roppongi to an area that's much more discreet...say a boutique hotel off the main drag or an exclusive restaurant. "Yoake no nai Asa" (夜明けのない朝...Morning Without a Dawn) sounds like it should have been recruited to become a theme song for those weekly murder-mystery dramas on Japanese television as was the case with "Madonna Tachi no Lullaby" and a few other contributions by her. However, it remained just a track on "Yugure kara...Hitori" but it stands out for that wonderful intro and throughout the song it has that one foot in classy Fashion Music territory although the chorus rhythm with the punchy percussion keep things in the metropolis. Kaoru Ito（伊藤薫）was responsible for words and music with Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）handling the arrangement here.
If I'm not mistaken, "Single Man" was the final track on Side A of the original LP. Taking on a gentle 1950s pop ballad form, Iwasaki sings about the realization that a summertime romance is about to head to its end as the autumn comes. Good times...but hey, that's the way it goes. Akira Ohtsu（大津あきら）was the lyricist here while Kisaburo Suzuki（鈴木キサブロー）and Kenji Omura（大村憲司） were the composer and arranger respectively.
Just before tackling the album here on KKP, I had been wondering whether I would be getting a mix of her City Pop from the late 1970s and that murder-mystery balladry that was her thing in the early 1980s. So far, I think I've been getting even more variety with "Yugure kara...Hitori". Looking forward to the second half which will basically look at all of Side B.
As I've probably mentioned in the past, when I first really got into music at the turn of the decade going from the 1970s into the 1980s, my vocabulary for describing music wasn't all that bountiful. "Funky enka" was the best I had to describe City Pop at the time. I can now also add that my appreciation for a lot of music by Japanese singers that I had only just discovered back then hadn't been all that evolved either. It's kinda like when I was little and at the time, I couldn't stand pickles in my McDonalds hamburgers. Why would anyone put something so sour between meat and bun? Well, now I do appreciate pickles as something that provides another taste angle and cuts through the heavier meatiness of the burger.
For me, as I was learning to navigate through what I enjoyed in Japanese and Western pop music as a high school student, I was more drawn to the "sweet" and "meaty" stuff: the hit songs and/or those tunes that just had that irresistible hook. If I were to focus my analysis on the works of one particular singer, I can do so with singer-songwriter Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）. I first fell for the former vocalist of Pedro & Capricious（ペドロ&カプリシャス）when I heard her on "Sounds of Japan" in the early 1980s, and it was the sophisticated pop balladry of songs like "My City Lights" and "...for you" and that amazing voice from my favourite album of "dear" that grabbed me hook line and sinker.
However, there were other songs of hers that didn't quite grab me at the time just because the 80s instruments seemed so pedestrian (as I used to hear them ad nauseum on television shows of the decade) and the arrangements were a little too out of touch. One such song was "Shinkirou" (Mirage) which first appeared on her September 1985 album"Mellow Lips" but also got its own single release in January 1986.
Of course, now that the 80s are decades back and with my musical anatomy getting further seasoned over the years, those synthesizers and arrangements don't sound as pedestrian or as weird as they once did, so I now have gotten a second wind as it were with something like "Shinkirou". At one point, I was ready to give this one the technopop label but I realized that the song wasn't about the novelty bloops and bleeps; it was more about getting this song out as a pretty dramatic pop or City Pop number that could have adorned any Japanese cop show. And in fact, "Shinkirou" was used as the theme song for Fuji-TV's "Natsuki Shizuko Suspense"（夏樹静子サスペンス...The Shizuko Natsuki Mysteries）.
Written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）, composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫） and arranged by Keiichi Oku（奥慶一）, "Shinkirou" the single managed to reach No. 31 on Oricon. As crazy as it sounds, the song got an even deeper 80s revamping (including orchestral hits) when it was presented as one of the tracks on Takahashi's BEST compilation "Voice ~ Special Best" from March 1994.
By the way, it looks like I'm going to end up reviewing "Mellow Lips" piecemeal rather than in one article so you can also take a look at some of the other tracks: "Jun"(ジュン）, "New York, New York", and "Mayoi Bato no You ni" （迷い鳩のように）.
One of the smaller and weirder things that I've found about J-Xmas songs that the songwriters often merge the Holidays with summery weather although Japan is nowhere near the Southern Hemisphere. Apparently, since both Xmas and the summer vacation season have their share of romantic interludes, I gather that the writers thought "Heck, why not?".
Although I had initially made the same conclusion of Yu Hayami's（早見優）"Summer Holy Night" because of those three words, it turns out that it's really just about a young lady falling for that hot hunk on the beach in the summer. The only holy thing is the lass jumping the gun emotionally and already thinking about those wedding bells in the church.
"Summer Holy Night" wasn't a single but a track on Hayami's 3rd album "Lanai" from May 1983. It was written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）, composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井敏夫）and arranged by Kunio Muramatsu（村松邦男）.
Y'know, this is one of Yoko Minamino's（南野陽子）singles that I hadn't ever heard before. Always nice to make a new discovery this late in life.
"Pandora no Koibito" (Pandora's Lover) was Nanno's 8th single from July 1987 and it was her 3rd consecutive single to hit No. 1 on Oricon, following "Rakuen no Door"（楽園のDoor）and "Hanashi Kaketakatta"（話しかけたかった）. It was the beginning of a long run of No. 1s for the aidoru which lasted for over two years from January 1987 to February 1989 when her 14th single "only" got up to No. 2.
It was quite pleasant listening to "Pandora no Koibito" because of its plucky melody and arrangement by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）, who's been mostly known as a composer but has also been the violinist and vocalist for NASA, and Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）. The synths and strings working together almost take Nanno into the realm of Fashion Music. Meanwhile, Shun Taguchi's（田口俊）lyrics speak of a young lady with a major crush on a boy who she would love to open up to, but gosh darn it simply can't. Strangely enough, I watched a "Chibi Maruko-chan" episode tonight with a very similar plot line.
The song became the 28th-ranked single for 1987 and it's also a track on her first BEST compilation "NANNO Singles" which was released in March 1988 and went all the way up to the top of the album charts.
Love is a karaage bento. My family doctor will strenuously disagree but only if I engorge in this on a daily basis. However, I never went quite that crazy on the fried chicken and rice, and I certainly don't get a chance to partake in it these days. But despite the years away from my go-to meal, I have yet to curl up into a fetal position in one corner of my home (not that I could physically do that anyways). I'm OK, you're OK.
For me, I guess that the karaage bento is quite the hedonistic pleasure, and perhaps that's what "Edenist of Eternity" is all about. This is a track from MAYUMI's, aka Mayumi Horikawa（堀川まゆみ）, January 1986 album"Maym", and it's quite the banger. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the lyrics for "Edenist of Eternity" by Ko Suzuki（鈴木孝）but the music by MAYUMI herself with Masaki Matsubara's（松原正樹）arrangement certainly describes one heck of a good time during a Tokyo night. The song kinda straddles the funk of early 80s City Pop and some of that sophist-pop keyboard bounciness of the late 80s version. Before tracking down the songwriters, the sound of it had me initially thinking Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）but of course I was mistaken there.
As for MAYUMI's singing partner in the happy duet, it's none other than Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）who helped out in the songwriting but not in the singing of one of the other tracks on the album "CA-SI-NO"（カ・ジ・ノ）. Enjoy your Friday night!
I have to say that though the lyrics of eternally being connected to one's love and the title of "Dakishimetai" (Want to Hold Onto You) have probably become so common as to approach cliché, the music for this particular song is pretty gosh-darn delicious.
"Dakishimetai" is 80s aidoru Iyo Matsumoto's（松本伊代）5th single and there's barely anything about this song in J-Wiki aside from the songwriters and the fact that it did exist. Just to get that out of the way, it was released in November 1982 with Chinfa Kan（康珍化）on lyrics, Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）on music and Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）handling the arrangement. It did well on Oricon by breaking into the Top 10 at No. 9.
However as I mentioned off the top, Kamei's music with Sagisu's arrangement make "Dakishimetai" a cut above the average aidoru tune...at least to me, anyways. I wouldn't categorize it as a technopop tune despite the Asian-flavoured synthesizer and the light gong at the beginning although it did make me wonder when I first heard it whether either Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）or Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）were helping out here as they have so many others during that time. But it isn't just the intro...it's also that mixture of that exotic kayofrom the late 1970s and light Baroque Pop/Fashion Music and specifically, even that guitar which unleashes a sonic launch of sorts whenever Iyo-chan goes into the refrain. It's quite the cute little buffet, musically speaking.
Actress Hitomi Kuroki（黒木瞳）has been a familiar face on the big and small screens for decades, and I first got to know her through the movie "Shitsurakuen"（失楽園...A Lost Paradise） based on the original novel by Junichi Watanabe (渡辺淳一) which became all the rage during its year of release in 1997.
Although her height is 163 cm, she has always stood tall and elegant on screen with a very appealing vocal delivery which is most likely because of her training in the Takarazuka Troupe. Perhaps she might be known to Western audiences because she was in a J-Horror film when that particular genre was being remade into Hollywood movies. Kuroki starred in the 2002 "Honogurai Mizu no Soko kara"（仄暗い水の底から...From the Depths of Dark Water） which was adapted into "Dark Water" with Jennifer Connelly in 2005.
Her film debut though came with "Keshin"（化身...Incarnation） in 1986 as she portrayed a Ginza nightclub hostess in her mid-20s in an affair with a literary critic acted by Tatsuya Fujii（藤竜也）. As with the aforementioned "Shitsurakuen", the movie was also based on a Junichi Watanabe novel of the same title.
The reason that I have gone into cinematic adaptations of novels of trials and tribulations of passion is that I've become quite enamored with the theme song for "Keshin". It can be quite hard to find a YouTube video of an original Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）song so I was quite happy to encounter this theme titled "Tasogare Bito" (People of Dusk).
First off, I have to tip off my hat to the uploader or whoever concocted this slick video (Sorry but that video has been taken down.) which melds scenes of Ginza and the actual movie. Obviously, I also give my compliments to Takahashi and all of the folks behind the creation of "Tasogare Bito": lyricist Goro Matsui（松井五郎）, composer Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）and arranger Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）. Although I'm not sure if I would categorize it as a City Pop tune, it's properly urban, elegant and smoky at the same time as if it's the melodic equivalent of that seen-it-all done-it-all hostess wrapping suitors around her well-manicured finger. Plus, there is an overall aura of almost James Bondian mystery surrounding the proceedings here and I think "Tasogare Bito" could have become one of the many ending themes for the weekly TV mystery drama. Finally, Takahashi's voice is simultaneously haunting and enticing...just the perfect singer for this number which ended up as a track on her 12th album from September 1986, "Forest".
A couple of hours ago, I wrote up a Shoko Nakagawa（中川翔子）article so I decided that it was time to also write about her father, the late Katsuhiko Nakagawa（中川勝彦）who was also a singer and a TV personality along with being an actor, a musician and a seiyuu.
I don't know as much about Katsuhiko Nakagawa as I do his daughter but he was born in 1962 in Tokyo's Bunkyo Ward and made his debut in 1980 halfway during time as a Keio University student. His J-Wiki biography indicates that he may have been one of the first visual-kei rock pioneers, and I consider Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）to have had some influence on that genre as well.
For Nakagawa's first article on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I found "Ryusenjou de" (On the Streamline) which is a track on his February 1984 debut album"Shitemitai"（してみたい...Wanna Give it a Try）. Written by poet, essayist and lyricist Natsuo Giniro（銀色夏生）and composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）, "Ryusenjou de" seems to be about a song of longing for that lost love but when I hear that melody which includes an oboe, I can easily imagine Nakagawa sporting a very New Wave-y foppish outfit and attitude. There just seems to be an air of British pop from that period of time in the arrangement.
I have to admit that listening to Nakagawa's vocals took some getting used to. It is a very affected way of singing that I realize rather fits that somewhat foppish manner, and as such, has me thinking of Sawada during that same time. Dropping into analogy, I would compare it with entering a pretty hot onsen and having to gingerly enter the steaming waters before finally soaking and feeling at ease. Also with the arrangement and again with Nakagawa's singing, I also get some Ippu-Do vibes but without the synthesizers.
As his Wikipedia article states, Nakagawa released 10 singles and 9 albums including a posthumously released album in October 1995. He had passed away at the age of 32 on September 17, 1994 due to leukemia.
Pretty busy day and night today, so before I end the festivities for another broadcast day, let's try one more City Pop outing.
Let's give Mayumi Horikawa's（堀川まゆみ）"CA-SI-NO" a spin on the roulette wheel. A track from her January 1986 album"Maym", and yep, despite the dark background for that video above, it still works. A song from the jazzier side of City Pop, it still provides some walking fun...or maybe some strutting fun...on any of the main avenues of Tokyo on a Friday or Saturday night. Fine funky beat, tight horns and that sax solo...just the instruments you need for some cool urban contemporary stuff in Japan in the 1980s.
Through the Daemonskald method, I could find out that Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）was behind the words, while it was a joint effort between Mayumi and Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）for the boppy music. "Maym" also has the track "FM Radio Band".
Admittedly, I don't know as much about Kumiko Yamashita（山下久美子）as I know about some of the other singers such as Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）, but my impression of Yamashita has been that of a firebrand singer along the same lines as Ann Lewis（アン・ルイス）(feel free to correct me, if I'm wrong). To be honest, the only song that I know well by her is "Sekido Komachi Doki"（赤道小町ドキッ）, her big hit from 1982.
Therefore, as I've done before, I've always tried to go back to veteran singers' origins in terms of what they debuted with. And so it goes with Yamashita. Her first single was "Bathroom kara Ai wo Komete" (From Bathroom With My Love), released in June 1980.
Once again, just from the few times that I've seen her interviewed on TV, I've also had the impression that Yamashita has a fun and somewhat saucy personality, so when I first saw this title "Bathroom kara Ai wo Komete", my eyebrows got rather saucy in response. However, as it turns out, there isn't really anything lascivious about her debut single at all. In fact, Masataka Matsutoya's（松任谷正隆）arrangement of Toshio Kamei's（亀井登志夫）melody is cute 1950s innocence (helped in part by Time Five's backup chorus), the type of song that I would have expected Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）to have tackled early in her career. For that matter, Chinfa Kan's（康珍化）lyrics actually relate a woman fleeing to a bathroom in misery and fury on finding out her beau has been cheating on her.
With "Sekido Komachi Doki", Yamashita has that high-pitched chirpy delivery, but with "Bathroom", it's a fair bit lower and perhaps closer to that of the aforementioned Lewis. "Bathroom" was also the title track for her debut LP released on the same day as the single.
I wasn't intending on writing about her entire album tonight. Actually, I was just going to write about Yuki Saito's（斉藤由貴）"Finale no Kaze" since that was in my backlog, but then I realized that I hadn't even written about one of her trademark songs, "Shiroi Honoo"（白い炎）at all. Therefore, I gather that I will be giving myself the second Gibbs slap for today. It turns out that both songs come from her debut album"AXIA" which contains the title tune and another hit for her, "Sotsugyo"（卒業）.
Well, let's cover at least some of "AXIA" which was released in June 1985.
So, why don't we begin with "Shiroi Honoo"(White Flame), her 2nd single from May of that year, and compared to her innocent debut single, the aforementioned "Sotsugyo", "Shiroi Honoo" has more dramatic heft as the young lady in Yukinojo Mori's（森雪之丞）lyrics goes into despair mode about seeing the man that she's in love with dating another woman. Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）of Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）composed the music which begins perhaps a bit off-tune for that sinister effect. Plus the other aspect that I think made "Shiroi Honoo" a standout was the refrain where Saito echoes the lady's self-flagellating questions about whether she's being a fool for wringing her hands for a guy.
The song was also the theme tune for the famous school action drama "Sukeban Deka"（スケバン刑事）when Saito had a starring role as Saki Asamiya. Some years ago, my good friend JTM wrote an extensive article on the show, so give that a look when you can. "Shiroi Honoo" reached No. 5 on Oricon.
Also on the B-side of "Shiroi Honoo" and on "AXIA" is "Shabon Iro no Natsu"（石鹼色の夏..Soap Bubble Summer）. It's also the flip side in terms of tone as creamy-voiced Saito wishes that she were a bubble so that she can get closer to her love target without him noticing since she's the shy type. I'd say that it's a pretty huggable number. Mori also provided the lyrics here but the composer for this one was Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）from the City Pop band NASA.
The one other song that I wanted to cover from "AXIA" and as mentioned above, the song that I was supposed to have covered on its lonesome is the track "Finale no Kaze"（フィナーレの風...Finale Wind）, another ballad about romantic tribulations. This one isn't quite as dramatic as "Shiroi Honoo" but it's got quite the jaunty beat and a nice bluesy sax to give it that urban contemporary feeling. Fuyuko Moroboshi（諸星冬子）and Shigeru Amano（天野滋）were responsible for words and music here.
"AXIA" the album was a hit with listeners as it peaked at No. 3 on the charts, and it ended up as the 29th-ranked release for 1985.
Mayumi Shinozuka（篠塚満由美）...a name that I've read through the past few years doing this blog but only as a lyricist, apparently for a lot of aidoru according to her J-Wiki profile. She's been represented here, too, in creating songs for Iyo Matsumoto（松本伊代）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）.
However, she did start out as a singer herself when she made the most of her chances on the NTV show "Star wa Tanjo!"（スター誕生!...A Star is Born!）in 1974. Starting her career with her name written in hiragana（しのづかまゆみ）, after her first few singles, she took a year to belong to a band Mommy & Oldies Family Band（マミー&オールディーズファミリーバンド）in 1977 before going back to the hiragana name for one single, and then finally reverting to her kanji name for the last few singles going into the 1980s.
That final single released in July 1981 was "Taiyo no Kakera" (Shards of the Sun). Written by Shinozuka and composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）of the band NASA, that certain guitar riff at the beginning and end of the song had me first thinking whether this would be a City Pop (or an ELO) tune, but the rest of "Taiyo no Kakera" basically had me feeling that this had more of that 50s rock n' roll sound that had been popular at the time through acts such as The Checkers（チェッカーズ）and The Venus. The arrangement was handled by Akira Inoue（井上鑑）, and the song actually comes across as something that would have been ideal for the early Akina-chan.
Speaking of the past, Shinozuka's vocals reminded me to a certain degree of The Peanuts（ザ・ピーナッツ）, and in fact, although the singer never got any hits, she has become famous as an impressionist of other singers such as Kye Eunsook（桂銀淑）and one of The Peanuts.
In the last several days, I've been hearing about this humanoid robot becoming part of the crew on the International Space Station. Apparently, its name is Skybot and although it's not quite as verbose as C-3PO, it is there to assist in some of the more difficult tasks alongside its human shipmates.
The preamble above is for one of my weird segues into something that is not really astronomically related but it does involve the word NASA. And here, I'm talking about the Japanese urban contemporary band NASA for which I was actually fortunate to find about, thanks to their song "Sexy Spicy Baby" which got included on a "Light Mellow" compilation disc.
I hadn't expected to find another song by NASA on YouTube because of the band's relative obscurity, but I did indeed discover "Yuuwaku Zone 4425 (FILL ME)" (Temptation Zone 4425) which was not only a September 1980 EP but also a track on their 1980 album"Sen'ya, Ichiya"（千夜一夜 THOUSAND NIGHTS, ONLY NIGHT）which also contains "Sexy Spicy Baby". The title reads like an erotic sci-fi thriller only available on a pay-TV channel but the music by NASA keyboardist Kazufumi Ohama（大浜和史）sure is intriguing. It's got the potpourri of Doobie Brothers, Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）and even some country vibe thanks to vocalist Toshio Kamei's（亀井登志夫）violin. And speaking of that violin, it goes rather well with Jun Sumida's（角田順）guitar. Imagine getting woken up to this one on the ISS!
To introduce the rest of the band, there are Kazuyoshi Watanabe（渡辺和義）on the bass and Koji Miura（三浦晃嗣）on the drums. Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）provided the lyrics for "Yuuwaku Zone 4425".
Well, after spending a few hours working on that Author's Picksarticle on City Pop albums, I've gone off and done another article on the genre. This one comes from the freshly-acquired "Light Mellow ~ Beams" CD, and as I stated in that article, the song is getting its presence known for the first time on compact disc.
I've never heard of this band NASA and I have no idea why the group of musicians went with this name (perhaps one of them was a fan of space travel). I was also surprised that the National Aeronautics & Space Administration hadn't made any intense inquiries to Japan about copyright at the time (or maybe they discreetly did). However, I have heard of the lead vocalist Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）who I've seen as a songwriter for a number of other artists over the years. But I didn't know that he was also a violinist.
Even in the liner notes in "Beams", there isn't a whole lot written about NASA aside from the lineup for the band, but in 1980, they released the album "Sen'ya, Ichiya"（千夜一夜...THOUSAND NIGHTS, ONLY NIGHT）, and the track "Sexy Spicy Baby" sounds pretty cool. As the writer for the notes, Toshikazu Kanazawa, puts it, this one is a case of City Funk, although I think it can also traipse into really bouncy pop.
It's a fun four-minutes-and-change with Kamei's melody as he sings Yukari Nukumizu's*（温水ゆかり）lyrics about a guy simply fawning over his girlfriend as she picks through foodstuffs such as coffee beans, sweet basil and orange pekoe tea. Well, I'm glad that he's as committed to her as she is to her herbs and stuff. I love those old-fashioned pop keyboards but there is also that pleasant little musical "battle" at the end of "Sexy Spicy Baby". At first listen, I had assumed that it was guitar vs. keyboard, but actually the latter instrument is probably Kamei's sonic violin. Kinda makes me wonder if NASA had started out as a progressive rock band.
*Not sure if that last name is correctly rendered since there are a number of readings for the kanji. As usual, if you know the correct way to say the lyricist's name, please let me know.
At the time I taped this song along with the rest of that "Sounds of Japan" episode from CHIN-FM in 1982, I'd only known Hiromi Iwasaki （岩崎宏美）for her 2 gentle ballads of "Sumire Iro no Namida"（すみれ色の涙）and "Madonna Tachi no Lullaby"（マドンナたちのララバイ）. Therefore, hearing the singer fly through "Koi wa Senso"(Love Is War) was a surprise.
Unfortunately, I used a particularly well-worn audiotape that made my cheapo Canadian Tire tapes seem like the finest Chromium Dioxide tapes by SONY for the show and the reception of the radio station was not at its best that night. So, it was basically listening to the song with one ear jammed next to one speaker and one hand restlessly jiggling the tuning knob. The result was a static-filled taping with the song weaving in and out of aural range. Radio wa senso!
But because of that poor reception and what would still turn out to be a fairly atypical arrangement for Iwasaki to tackle, I was fairly obsessed with "Koi wa Senso" for many years. I would gradually hear the singer's earlier disco-tinged kayo from the late 70s and so would learn that she also had performed very upbeat material, but I don't think I ever heard Iwasaki try a similar song to this 1982 entry with the slappy synth-drums and the keyboards bristling away at Mach 1. Still, she handled the tune with aplomb. Her remarkable vocals (love the intro) flitted over the busy melody by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志夫）like a very experienced skylark. And the lyrics by Chinfa Kan （康珍化）illustrate a woman who will do anything to get the man she wants. I could see a fight on the dance floor between two disco queens.
It took me years and years but I was finally able to get my pristine copy of the song when remastered CDs of Iwasaki's early discography came out in the stores. "Koi wa Senso" is a track on her 11th album, "Yugure kara....Hitori"（夕暮れから。。。ひとり/From Twilight...Alone）which came out in July 1982. The original LP got as high as No. 4 on Oricon.
Emi Wakui（和久井映見） was a familiar face as an actress on a lot of 90s J-Dramas such as "Imoto yo"（妹よ...My Little Sister）,"Pure" and "Virgin Road". But the very first time I actually saw her was not via a weekly hour-long program but on a 3-minute-and-change music video. And yep, I actually did see her on that Japan MTV late-night broadcast. "My Lonely Goodbye Club" was her New Year's Day 1990 debut tune, the first of 13 singles she would release up to mid-1997.
She didn't exactly have the strongest vocals, but "My Lonely Goodbye Club", written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）and composed by Toshio Kamei（亀井登志男）, had a pleasant enough champagne-and-caviar urban contemporary vibe, and the music video (which unfortunately has been taken down) has the very attractive Wakui decked out to the nines for a night on the town.
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