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 Yuuichi Ikuzawa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yuuichi Ikuzawa. Show all posts
I gotta admit that Yuuichi Ikuzawa's（生沢佑一）"Racer" which belongs to his first solo album"Mysterious" from 1983 is one of the more intriguing City Pop songs that I've encountered. Starting off like a romantic tune belonging to a soundtrack on a 1950s Douglas Sirk melodrama, "Racer" then hits the familiar City Pop road with plenty of brass and chorus to fuel the singer's vocals.
The arrangement, however, also sounds similar to a very languid West Coast take on "Xanadu" as if the characters from the Olivia Newton-John movie decided to take five and hang ten along the California shore. That's quite a bit of style stuffed into a track that's a fair bit less than three minutes. Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）, who helped out on Akira Terao's（寺尾聡）"Reflections", wrote the lyrics while Keiichi Katagiri（片桐圭一）took care of the music.
It's been over eighteen months since I had Yuuichi Ikuzawa（生沢佑一）up on the byline with his cover of the "Ghostbusters"-connected "Hot Night", so let's redeem that with one of his tracks from his 1984 album"Hana Wakare"（花わかれ...Parting of the Flowers）.
"Fushigi na Hodo I Love You" (I Love You So Much It's Weird) is an intriguing title for a pretty groovy and straight-up City Pop song. But hey, as long as it sounds cool and good, I'm fine. Written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed/arranged by Toshiyuki Kimori（木森敏之）, it does sound like an accompaniment to a good stroll down any of the main streets of Tokyo to get that fresh air (or as fresh as it ever gets in one of the world's largest cities) into the lungs.
When I first wrote about singer, guitarist and songwriter Yuuichi Ikuzawa（生沢佑一）back in 2021, it was for a pleasantly mellow AOR number called "Everyday" that was released in 1983. In the same article, I also noted that he had started his career as a rock n' rollin' teenager under the stage name of Tomoya Dan（弾ともや）.
That first single by the 16-year-old Dan was "Doyoubi no Gogo no Rock n' Roll"（Saturday Afternoon Rock n' Roll） released in July 1974. And yep, it surely is good old-fashioned rock n' roll which seems to have come straight out of the 1950s or early 1960s. So, I gather that his get-up on the cover of the single was quite appropriate. In fact, that look and the way he sounded back then reminded me of young teen heartthrob Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）who was only a few years older than Dan. Maybe the future Ikuzawa and his manager were trying to grab onto the Saijo Bullet Train at the time.
As for who was responsible for the crafting of "Doyoubi no Gogo no Rock n' Roll", it was the legendary Yu Aku（阿久悠）on lyrics and Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, the future Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）, who once belonged to the Group Sounds band Jackey Yoshikawa & His Blue Comets（ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ）, behind the rock n' roll melody. In a way, Dan presaged the whole Harajuku 50s thing by Yoyogi Park by several years. Anyways, I was able to get this article up right on Saturday afternoon.✌
I did see that recent trailer for "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire" the other day and I've gotten some interest for the latest in the franchise. To be honest, I wasn't enthused enough about the previous movie "Afterlife" to see that one, but now that the Ghostbusters are heading back to New York City, the original crew and the new crew are joining forces, and even Slimer is making an appearance, well, perhaps I can be enticed back to the big screen although I will miss Harold Ramis as Egon.
As a bit of show and tell, I did eventually pick up the soundtrack for the original 1984 movie from which a few of the tracks did get their exposure in the movie such as the main theme by Ray Parker Jr., of course and "Savin' the Day" by the Alessi Brothers. However, I don't recall hearing "Hot Night" by Laura Branigan (I miss her, too) which is too bad because I think it would been a good accompaniment to some of the action scenes in the movie.
The song penned by Diane Warren and Steve Angelica did get its cover version in Japan via Yuuichi Ikuzawa's（生沢佑一）take which was released as a single in November 1984, about half a year after "Ghostbusters" had been released in theatres. Thanks to a successful search of the original record via Yahoo Images, I was able to glean that Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）was responsible for the Japanese lyrics. With a similar vroom vroom adrenaline charge in the arrangement, Ikuzawa does such a good job with his version that I'd thought that "Hot Night" was naturally his and his alone.
Just to clarify things regarding Jodie Foster and Coppertone sunscreen, Foster wasn't the original model for Little Miss Coppertone since the logo lass had first appeared in 1953 and Foster wasn't born until 1962. However, the future Oscar-winning actress' first foray into show business involved her appearing in a Coppertone commercial in 1965.
Reading through all those old "Myojo"（明星）magazines, it was evident that the young Japanese back in the 1980s had a thing for getting bronzed under the summer sun, and so it was no surprise that Coppertone had a market in Japan, too. The commercials were definitely on!
Speaking of which, for the 1985 edition of Coppertone ads in Japan, singer Yuuichi Ikuzawa（生沢佑一）was brought on board to bring his jingle "Miracle Beach". There was some pretty big muscle behind the song, too, with lyricist Chinfa Kan（康珍化）, composer Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）and arranger Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）massaging the tune into something that sounded like a proto-Being pop-rocker of the 1990s. The song was released as a single in May of that year.
For something a bit more City Pop from Ikuzawa, you can try his earlier "Everyday" from 1983.
This is the first time that I've brought singer, guitarist and songwriter Yuuichi Ikuzawa（生沢佑一）into the KKP fold. Born in 1958 in Osaka as Kazuya Miura（三浦知也）, he made his debut under the stage name of Tomoya Dan（弾ともや）in 1974 with "Doyoubi no Gogo no Rock n' Roll"（土曜の午後のロックン・ロール...Saturday Afternoon Rock n' Roll）, and throughout his career since, he's been getting involved with a number of bands such as the 1970s Rosemarie, Twinzer and even a mid-1990s collaboration with Takahiro Matsumoto（松本孝弘）of B'z fame called Rock'n Roll Standard Club.
But taking on the new moniker of Yuuichi Ikuzawa, he released his first solo album"Mysterious", in 1983 and I gather that he was also into the City Pop of the times. Case in point, his "Everyday" which sounds like a morning type of the urban contemporary with the trumpet and the jingling keyboards. Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）was behind the lyrics while Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）took care of the mellow melody.
I do like "Everyday" and one reason is that the arrangement is quite similar to the one for the theme song of the ABC sitcom "Too Close For Comfort" which ran between 1980 and 1983. I really liked that theme as well and the opening credits which showed a very soothing and inviting scene of San Francisco life. Johnny Mandel was the one behind the theme and he was also the composer for the theme from the movie and then the CBS show "MASH" as well as the standard "The Shadow of Your Smile".
Returning to Ikuzawa, as a musician he was also involved with a number of 90s hits that I've already written about: "Hateshinai Yume wo"（果てしない夢を）by the group collaboration of ZYYG, REV, ZARD & WANDS, Maki Ohguro's（大黒摩季）"La, La, La"（ら・ら・ら）and ZARD's "Makenaide" (負けないで）.
