rumania montevideo -- Still for your love

 

As someone has commented for this video, the characters on the 90s version of the long-running anime "Meitantei Conan"（名探偵コナン）sure looked different back then. Yup, after the Holiday hiatus, "Case Closed" is back in its regular Thursday night slot on TV Japan. 

Ahh...this is more like it. Well, I'm continuing with the long line of Conan opening and ending themes, and I realized that rock band rumania montevideo's debut single was used as the ender for the series back. Released in April 1999, "Still for your love" is more in the alternative rock vein when compared to the other song by the band that I'd featured back in April 2020, "Koi Suru Betty"（恋するベティー）which had elements of Beatles and Tommy James and the Shondells.

With lyrics by rm drummer/vocalist Mami Miyoshi（三好真美）and music by brother and band guitarist Makoto Miyoshi（三好誠）, I was able to track down the translation of the lyrics at the Conan Wiki, and they sound like hope trying to seep into a situation where a beloved one now has to be alone for some reason which can describe at least some of the characters in "Meitantei Conan" including the one and only Conan himself.

"Still for your love" broke into the Top 10, hitting No. 9. It is also included in rumania montevideo's debut album "rumaniamania" from June 1999 and coincidentally, it also hit No. 9.

rumania montevideo -- Koi Suru Betty（恋するベティー）

That intro sounds a lot like the one for "Mony Mony" which was a favourite at the discos when I was a university student. In any case, the band rumania montevideo was one that I'd always been interested in trying out and it isn't just because of the name which originated as a melding of the Latin spelling of Romania and the capital of Uruguay, according to its Wikipedia article. Years ago, I had written about the dream pop "Overjoyed", a song that I came upon purely by accident on one of the Japanese music channels and was performed by Ramjet Pulley, a smaller offshoot of rumania montevideo with rm keyboardist Akiko Matsuda（松田明子）handling the vocals there. So I had wondered what the mother group sounded like.

Well, according to "Koi Suru Betty" (Betty In Love), the band's 4th single from January 2000, it's definitely not like Ramjet Pulley. Written and composed by vocalist and drummer Mami Miyoshi（三好真美）, along with the "Mony Mony" drum intro, "Koi Suru Betty" has that 1960s yeah-yeah-yeah early Beatles rock vibe that can get the teens in their go-go boots and Oxfords to do their swimming and shimmying.

The song got as high as No. 83 on Oricon. "Koi Suru Betty" was also placed onto rumania montevideo's 2nd album "Girl, girl, boy, girl, boy" released in June 2000 which peaked at No. 24. the band had its initial run between 1998 and 2002 with the band members going off onto other activities. However, early last year in 2019, there was an announcement of rumania montevideo getting back together with a concert planned for last month until the pandemic forced its cancellation. Three albums and seven singles along with other releases were produced.