Hitomi Tohyama -- Heartbreak Calendar

 

The above is an old photo from over a decade ago. I rather miss the view of West Shinjuku from the final school that I worked at in the late 2000s going into the early 2010s, and it's a thumbnail that I've used from time to time whenever I present a City Pop song on the blog.

And tonight I have for you Hitomi Penny Tohyama's（当山ひとみ）"Heartbreak Calendar" from her March 1988 album "Imagination". Masami Tozawa（戸沢暢美）provided the lyrics while Yuzo Hayashi（林有三）came up with the melody combining some soaring rock guitar and sharp horns within an environment that seems to combine the early 80s funky side of City Pop and the late 80s sophisticated pop plus sunny-side pop. Meanwhile, Penny is the constant with her tender vocals.

"Heartbreak Calendar" is the penultimate track on "Imagination", so I can imagine that the final song is probably a ballad. Therefore, the former is a nice way to finish off the party side of the album.

Yuzo Hayashi -- Swing Heart Street

 

Happy Monday! It looks like another gorgeous summer day out there in the GTA. Hope things are going similarly well for you wherever you are.

Well, considering the weather right now, I thought this first track from keyboardist/composer Yuzo Hayashi's（林有三）first solo EP "Love Knot" (1991) would make for a wonderful beginning song to this week's round of KKP articles. "Swing Heart Street" is some really bopping fusion by Hayashi with some added New Jack Swing and also just good ol' swing. Y'know, it really does have that flavour of the early 1990s thanks to the arrangement in the choice of keyboards and what sounds like some of the quick vocal utterances in there. Not sure if Hayashi had wanted to go for a bit of light dance club, but I think that it's probably more of some happy brunch music.

Hayashi doesn't have a J-Wiki file, but he does have a profile at his representing music production company, Lins BEACH, which also represents artists such as Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）and Masaki Iwamoto（岩本正樹）. Born in 1954 in Tokyo, Hayashi started out on the classical guitar when he was around 12 years old, started up a band five years later and then went into piano from 21. And then from 1982 to 1991, he was a part of Toshiki Kadomatsu's（角松敏生）band but at the same time, he was also helping out in arrangements for singers including Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）, Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）and Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）.