Zariba -- Kowareta Tokei no You ni（こわれた時計のように）

 

Happy Monday! As I was saying to Marcos V. earlier today, I'm getting the impression that summer in Toronto is starting to wind down a bit. It's still plenty warm out there but the temperatures have been gradually decreasing over the past number of days, and I'm expecting that the evenings may even demand a light jacket. Ah, as for the Ginza clock in the photo above, I'm not insinuating that it's not working (according to what the title of this song means); I'm sure that the timepiece is still doing well, but I couldn't track down another photo of a clock fast enough.

But I digress. Getting to that title, it's "Kowareta Tokei no You ni" (Like A Broken Clock) which was the B-side to short-lived band Zariba's（ザリバ）lone single from 1974, "Aru Hi"（或る日）. I wrote about that one back in 2018, and it was a revelatory tune since the lead vocalist was teenager Akiko Suzuki（鈴木顕子）who would later become much more famous as singer-songwriter Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）.

Additionally, back then, the vocal style of Yano was quite different. In fact, I compared her heart-on-a-sleeve delivery to that of a young Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and Akiko Kosaka（小坂明子）. With this B-side, "Kowareta Tokei no You ni", the New Music melody by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）takes on that contemplative late 60s-early 70s feeling thanks to that electric piano as this time, Akiko Suzuki's voice here reminds me of Mariko Takahashi's（高橋真梨子）vocals when she was with Pedro & Capricious（ペドロ&カプリシャス）at about the same time. As with "Aru Hi", the lyrics were written by Yoshiyuki Ishizu（石津善之）and the arrangement was handled by Makoto Yano（矢野誠）who ended up marrying Suzuki in 1974 although they would get divorced in 1979.

Zariba -- Aru Hi（或る日）

Earlier today, I wrote about "Swan no Namida"（スワンの涙）which had originally been performed by the Group Sounds band Ox and was one of Kyohei Tsutsumi's（筒美京平）earliest works Well, I listened to that song and the other 21 songs by him on his "Tsutsumi Kyohei: Jisen Sakuhinshuu"（筒美京平自選作品集...Kyohei Tsutsumi's Personal Selection） CD last night, and I enjoyed it as much for the intriguing surprises that I discovered as I did for the songs themselves. A few of those surprises involved finding out that certain bands which were known for writing their own songs had gotten some help from Tsutsumi earlier in their careers. One example was Off-Course（オフコース）and "Wasure Yuki"（忘れ雪...Snow For Forgetting）.

The big surprise came when I heard Track 14 which was the very short-lived band Zariba's（ザリバ）"Aru Hi" (One Day) from 1974. It's a lovely elegiac song of sorts that was composed by Tsutsumi of course and written by Yoshiyuki Ishizu（石津善之）. Lyrically and thematically, it sounded quite similar to Akiko Kosaka's（小坂明子）hit song "Anata"（あなた）which had its premiere in 1973. At first, I had assumed that "Aru Hi" would be a ballad about a woman enjoying her day from sunrise to sunset, but then from Ishizu's lyrics, I discovered that the woman may have actually been spiritually letting know a loved one who has since passed that she's getting better and will go on.

However, that wasn't the big surprise. When I tried to look up Zariba up in J-Wiki as I was listening to "Aru Hi", it automatically sent me to the article for Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）. Initially, I had thought that there was some sort of glitch in the transfer since the band's vocalist didn't sound anything like Yano. But I scrolled down the page and realized to my surprise that the singer was indeed an 18-year-old Yano!...or Akiko Suzuki (鈴木顕子...her birth name) as she was known back then.

Having been a fan of Yano for some years now, I was understandably shocked to hear this very non-Kate Bush-like voice from her when she was just starting out as a session musician and singer. I think she actually sounded more like Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）...and for that matter, the aforementioned Akiko Kosaka. Of course, I still love Yano's voice from "Japanese Girl" onwards, but this early voice is quite the revelation, too.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find out very much at all about Zariba. "Aru Hi" was the only single produced by the band, and according to the J-Wiki article on Yano, the record company ended up only being interested in the singer and not the other band members so Zariba quickly dissolved. I also had to search quite a bit for any information on those other people, only to find out on one page that they were connected with Caramel Mama（キャラメル・ママ）, according to Yano herself.