Yoko Aso -- Weekend no Koen Douri（ウィークエンドの公園通り）

 

It's usually been the case when I read the more ravenous of City Pop fans' comments of how they wished they could have been in Tokyo back in the late 1970s or 1980s, I often counter that the fans themselves are lucky because they have access to all of this wonderful City Pop material in one go without having to wait for months or years on end for the variety of such songs. However, I have to admit that whenever I hear music such as this, it does make me wax nostalgic for the time of half a century ago in cities such as Tokyo and Osaka as to what urban life was like back then (although I know that during the early 1970s, Japan underwent some hardship due to the Nixon oil shocks).

Yup, there's nothing like bossa nova to act as world music's version of a creamy salve for whatever ails me, and there's plenty of that in Yoko Aso's（麻生よう子）"Weekend no Koen Douri" (Park Avenue on the Weekend). A song about falling in breezy love, I'm pretty sure that the title refers to Koen Douri in Shibuya, Tokyo rather than Park Avenue in New York City, although I think the song is perfect for both settings. By the way, the photo at the top is indeed that of Koen Douri back in 2009. I don't know what the avenue was like in the early 1970s but maybe from the song, perhaps it was already quite the stylish place to be and to be seen.

"Weekend no Koen Douri" was written by Haruo Hayashi（林春生）with music by Hiromasa Suzuki（鈴木宏昌）, and it was a track on Aso's 2nd album "Gozen Reiji no Kane/Touhikou"（午前零時の鐘 / 逃避行） from December 1974. The cheerful blend of bossa nova and sunshine pop reminds me a bit of what the band NOVO was doing at around the same time.

I've walked up and down Koen Douri a number of times when the department stores Parco and Marui were there. For trivia's sake, I discovered that the street got its name from the fact that the Shibuya Parco had opened there in 1972. Parco is the Italian word for "park". The store closed down temporarily for a few years beginning in 2016 due to the need for renovations, but it was back open as of November 2019.

Yoko Aso -- Gozen Reiji no Kane（午前零時の鐘）

 

It's been 5 1/2 years since I wrote about singer Yoko Aso's（麻生よう子）February 1974 debut single "Touhikou"（逃避行）, a wistful tune about a woman eloping with the man he loves, away from all she knew and had loved to spend life together in a different town. 

Man, I'm kinda wondering if her sophomore effort, "Gozen Reiji no Kane" (The Bells at Midnight), released six months later, is a direct sequel to the story of that young couple running away for love. If so, then the ending is very bittersweet. Created by the same duo of lyricist Kazuya Senke（千家和也）and composer Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）that did "Touhikou", the plot here is about possibly the same lass leaving a Dear John letter on the door to their home and deserting the relationship due to implications that perhaps the guy hasn't held his end of the bargain. Interestingly enough, the melodic tone sounds more hopeful in a way that intimates that the lady may have learned a hard lesson but can now move onto the right path which may mean going back to her hometown or another place.

Reading the rest of Aso's biography on J-Wiki, I've read that the singer some years later actually did a cover of Gloria Gaynor's disco classic "I Will Survive". I will have to write about that one sometime soon.

Yoko Aso -- Touhikou （逃避行）

Happy Monday! After all of the kerfuffle involving that nutty ending to the 2017 Oscars, the usual Trump hijinks, possibly losing the heart of the Toronto Raptors to injury for the rest of the season and the lead-up to the NHL's trading deadline day on Wednesday, I can certainly use some calming kayo to start the week. Bet that this is the only place online that you'll ever read something like that previous statement.

Well, I found one in Yoko Aso's（麻生よう子）"Touhikou" (Elopement). Actually I bookmarked this song several months ago but never got around to talk about it until tonight. Since I had only heard this once before, I had forgotten how the song sounded like but getting to listen to it again a couple of times, I can understand why I did select it for retrieval.

Created by a couple of kayo veterans, Kazuya Senke（千家和也）on lyrics and Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）on music, "Touhikou" is a bittersweet ballad about a young lady making the ultimate choice to join the man she loves and leave all that she loved behind as they begin new lives in a new town somewhere. Released in February 1974 as Aso's debut single, what got me about "Touhikou" is that mix of 70s Showa Era pop with the haunting strings and boppy drums and an arrangement that reminded me somewhat of some of the Carpenters' best hits. Also, there were Aso's vocals. If I were to assign a flavour to them, I could say that they were butterscotch...there was that warm colour and velvety texture. In a way, they were reminiscent of the wonderful voice of Naomi Chiaki (ちあきなおみ).

(cover version)

"Touhikou" had a long run on the Oricon charts, spending almost half a year in the Top 100 and peaking at No. 32. It ended up as the 88th-ranked single of 1974 and earned Aso a prize as The Best New Artist at the Japan Record Awards although the Kohaku Utagassen didn't come knocking. Selling close to 150,000 records, this was the singer's most successful release although she would come out with a total of 26 singles and 6 albums up to 1993. The song was also the title track on the Osaka native's debut album also from 1974.