Motoharu Sano -- Someday

Because of the high from my first listening to "Sugar Time" and the long reputation behind Motoharu Sano's（佐野元春）"Someday", I plunked down the cash and got my copy of "Someday" the album. There was also inspiration from reading nikala's article on his 1984 album, "Visitors" and listening to the songs there.

Now, I know that I've already written an article on the song, but I just felt like putting up a video of "Sugar Time" again since it's just pure pop pleasure a plenty (although Sano sounds somewhat tortured up in the video)! It is probably the poppiest track on the entire album and I get a small kick from hearing the line "Suteki sa baby"（素敵さBaby...'s wonderful, baby!) since I hear it as "Steak's a baby!" Yep, that's what I think whenever I cook up a juicy sirloin.

"Someday" was released back in May 1982 as Sano's 3rd album. One reason that I got it was reading that "Visitors" article in which nikala remarked that the singer-songwriter was more in the rock and blues vein a la The Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, unlike in "Visitors" where he took that leap into New Wave and R&B. After listening to the whole of "Someday" the first time, I definitely got that Springsteen vibe (and boy, am I a fan of "Hungry Heart"). But at the same time, I also got that impression of Billy Joel for some reason, notably through The Piano Man's seminal 1977 album, "The Stranger".

"Downtown Boy" (not to be confused with the Yuming song) had me thinking of Springsteen in terms of the melody if not in the vocals (I realize that Sano doesn't sound anything like The Boss). The track was also his 5th single from October 1981, and when I heard it for the first time, my mind went to George Lucas' 1973 classic "American Graffiti" and the character of John Milner (Paul LeMat), the tough guy cruising down the main strip of Modesto, California back in 1962. He's the lone wolf and he's perfectly happy with that.

Then we have the title track of "Someday", arguably the song that Sano is most famous for. It was his 4th single from June 1981 and I was a bit surprised to hear that it never became all that much of a hit for him in its first release (not even entering the Top 100), but then it got as high as No. 27 on Oricon in its re-release in 1990. In my neck of the woods, though, it was something that I heard from time to time being sung at our old karaoke haunt of Kuri, my first exposure to Sano. As with "Downtown Boy", there is something proudly romantic and American about "Someday" which makes me wonder if the singer had been born a couple of decades too late and in the wrong nation. Methinks he would have been just at home on that Modesto strip in a T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes and a pompadour hairstyle. The lyrics are also plenty poignant as Sano declares to his lady love that despite all the trials and tribulations he will make things right for her someday.

Speaking of "Hungry Heart", that intro had me reminiscing about that song.

"Futari no Birthday"（二人のバースディ...Birthday for Two）is Sano's flight into some mellow air as boyfriend and girlfriend celebrate that important day. That sparkly keyboard by Akira Nishimoto（西本明）which pops up a couple of times pretty much landed the song into City Pop territory.  I can imagine young Jack and Diane heading off to their very first fancy-schmancy restaurant and sipping their very first glasses of champagne with all of the adorkable spillage that most likely occurs. Ah, youth...

(cover version)

What can I say about "Mayonaka ni Kiyomete"（真夜中に清めて...Purify at Midnight）? It's another lush romantic ballad that not only had me thinking of Billy Joel but also a lot of The Beatles, especially John Lennon. And there is even one word in the lyrics that pretty much helps my theory. I love the strings in there which have that soaring quality that I remember from not only some of those 60s ballads but some of Joel's songs especially when he would make his own tribute to that particular decade in "An Innocent Man" which came out a year after "Someday".

The song, though, that had me thinking of both Springsteen and Joel is "Rock N' Roll Night". The Springsteen side of the equation is taken care of by the music, but the Joel part of things came from my remembrance of that one epic track on "The Stranger", "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" which was about the up-and-down lives of a couple over the decades. Like "Scenes", Sano's "Rock N' Roll Night" is a long magnum opus...even lengthier than Joel's song by about a minute, but although it isn't the time-spanning epic of "Scenes", Sano co-relates the story of old friends who have parted on different paths as he represents the final person to cast off that chapter of their old lives and move on to a new life somewhere else. The other narrator is the music itself. It doesn't go into the dramatic shifts in tone and arrangement like "Scenes" but as I said, "Rock N' Roll Night" is about those several hours of darkness instead of several decades, and a lot of the melody has that feeling of a proud tribute to an era about to end, some nervous reluctance and regrets before realizing one more "It'll be OK" blast and then quietly going off into the dark in the last minute or so of the song. "Someday" might be Sano's big hit but I'm pretty sure that "Rock N' Roll Night" is probably the one song that everyone wants to listen to at the end of his concert.

"Someday" got as high as No. 4 on the weekly album charts and finished the year as the No. 38 album.

Miwako Fujitani & Yoshiaki Ohuchi -- Ai ga Umareta Hi （愛が生まれた日）

Another one of those "Long time, no see" discs. I dug up "Ai ga Umareta Hi" (The Day that Love was Born) from among the few piles of those ancient tiny CD singles. It was released back in February 1994, several months before I left for my second stint in Japan, so I must have seen the song performed on those rental videos of "Music Station" or "Best 10" shows.

Miwako Fujitani's（藤谷美和子）main trade was acting but I used to see her more often as a guest on various variety shows to the extent that I think she probably should have been categorized as a tarento as well. I remember she had quite the bubbly personality to be a TV personality, but I think in those days her star was either rising or at its peak since she just seemed to be popping up everywhere on the videos I was renting and on the first several TV programs I caught after getting into Japan later that November.

Well, I guess either she and/or her staff must have realized that after becoming an actress and a tarento (perhaps), it was time to go for the Triple Crown of Japanese stardom...and wear that chanteuse's cap. So she recorded the insert song, "Ai ga Umareta Hi", for an NTV drama that she was also starring in, "Sono Uchi Kekkon Suru Kimi e"（そのうち結婚する君へ...To You Who Will Get Married Sooner or Later） as her debut single.

As I said, I saw the song being performed a number of times on the music shows but although I knew Fujitani, I had no idea who the fellow behind her was and frankly didn't have much of an interest in finding out. Well, it would be many, many years before I discovered that the name behind the guitar-strumming guy was Yoshiaki Ohuchi（大内義昭）. Now, if you are a Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）fan like I am, you will know right off the bat who he is since he had been collaborating with Kohhy on so many of her songs like "Hold On Me" and "Dreamer". In fact, if you checked out his name in the Labels section, you would be getting all of her songs with him listed as the composer...at least until this article.

However, Ohuchi has been in the music business since 1980 as a singer-songwriter and as a musician helping out on other projects. I just didn't realize that he was in front of the mike for this one. And "Ai ga Umareta Hi" wasn't even composed by him this time. It was actually created by prolific composer Hitoshi Haba（羽場仁志）and written by the even more prolific Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）as a song with contemporary arrangements but has that sound of a Mood Kayo that could have been easily performed by folks from that genre on an episode of "Enka no Hanamichi". The fact that it is a duet ballad strengthens that feeling along with the theme of love and the somewhat pensive melody.

I guess, therefore, "Ai ga Umareta Hi" appealed across generational and genre lines. It became a million-seller and broke the Top 10, peaking at No. 5 on Oricon and eventually becoming the 13th-ranked song of the year. It also won a number of prizes including one from The Japan Record Awards, and Fujitani and Ohuchi were able to get onto the Kohaku Utagassen. I'm pretty sure that neither of them imagined that they would ever appear on that special at the time.

The song also appeared on Fujitani's debut album "Singer" which came out in May 1994. Her singing career was brief...it lasted as far as 2001 with 6 singles and 4 albums. And the actress herself stopped her activities in 2005.

Ichiro Toba -- Kita no Kamome Uta (北の鴎唄)

Well, "Kita no Kamome Uta" is as manly and as cool as a sea/fisherman-related song gets. You got rhythmic beat of the drums that gets you all pumped up, and the powerful sting and revving of the electric guitar brought to you by composer Masato Sugimoto (杉本真人), then comes Ichiro Toba's (鳥羽一郎) snarly vocal delivery to make the song more menacing. I can just imagine a middle-aged, hardened sailor in his rubber boots and overalls - let's call him Mr. Briney - raring to go out on his trusty vessel to earn a living on the ocean's dark, choppy waters. And of course, there'll also be a massive flock of gulls up above squalling away, competing with Mr. Briney for the fish. The lyrics were written by Ryuichi Satomura (里村龍一), they seem to be talking about the life of a fisherman, but I'm not entirely sure.

Released in 1989, Toba had sung this gritty song on his 3rd Kohaku appearance on the same year. The first video of "Kita no Kamome Uta" I had watched was with a youthful-looking Toba smiling smugly and dancing and headbanging to the music. Unfortunately this amusing performance got deleted. I really hope the person re-uploads it though since I hardly get to see him do that. He usually just stands there looking quite sullen with his thick, furrowed eyebrows, it's either that or I have to pay attention to him more often.

(I'm afraid the one that Noelle was mentioning has been taken down but this is another karaoke version.)

Here's the karaoke version of the full song with the man himself in it. Considering some of these karaoke videos I've seen with the original singers staring in them, this one ain't bad... there are others that are really cringe-worthy or downright hilarious.

amazon.co.jp

Rumiko Koyanagi -- Hoshi no Suna （星の砂）

A couple of days ago, we "Star Wars" geeks heard the announcement that we had been waiting for: the 2nd trailer to "The Force Awakens" was online. As an early teen, I saw the original movie at a Toronto movie theatre in 1979 that had been showing "A New Hope" everyday for two years since it had opened...and it still had lines snaking around corners!

Feeling a bit creative today, I then thought about which kayo kyoku would have debuted at around the time that the very first movie in the franchise premiered in May 1977. I did some looking on J-Wiki and discovered that there was one tune that had been released about a month before George Lucas' magnum opus hit the screens. And coincidentally enough, it had the title of "Hoshi no Suna" (Star Sand...or my choice of Stardust, although the sand has me thinking of the dusty planet of Tatooine). 

The thing is that I have heard the song before since I've got it on the 1977 discs from my "Seishun Uta Nenkan"（青春歌年鑑）series. As soon as I heard singer Rumiko Koyanagi（小柳ルミ子）launch straight into the lyrics of lost love in that really high-pitched voice, I just went "Oh, yeah...I've heard this one before!" Speaking of the lyrics, I was caught a bit off-guard when I saw the lyricist himself show up on the above video of "Yoru no Hit Studio" (unfortunately, that video has been taken down). It turned out to be Hiroshi Sekiguchi（関口宏）...a newscaster (although he's listed on J-Wiki as also being an actor, emcee and all-round tarento) that I used to see back on TV over there, and in much grayer form.

The music for Koyanagi's 22nd single was composed by the late Hide Demon（出門英）who was one-half of the singing duo Hide & Rosanna. Listening to the song, it has all the romanticism of a wind-swept melodrama. Not quite sure whether it would have been able to replace John Williams' mournful version of the Jedi Theme when young Luke Skywalker was looking away at the twin suns setting in "A New Hope", though (yes, I'm being snarky).

(karaoke version)

I'm not sure when the cover was performed, but Hide & Rosanna did their own version of "Hoshi no Suna". As for the Koyanagi original, it went all the way up to No. 2 on Oricon and became the 13th-ranked song of 1977. It also won Sekiguchi an award in songwriting and got the singer another ticket to the Kohaku Utagassen in the same year which was her 7th appearance on the New Year's Eve special.

As for that movie, I heard it won a few accolades itself.

"Luke...I AM your kayo kyoku!"

Ego-Wrappin' -- Go Action/Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Like a little anarchic fun with your Friday night brandy, sir?

Been a while, Ego-Wrappin'. Good to see you back on the blog. I think not attending...nah, that sounds too polite...not jumping into the mosh pit of an Ego-Wrappin' concert was another missed opportunity for me. As I've mentioned before for the duo of Yoshie Nakano and Masaki Mori（中納良恵・森雅樹）, these guys might be from Osaka but they could just be perfectly at home at some underground live house in some alley in Shibuya, Tokyo. Their uptempo stuff is just the thing to bop to while forgetting the week's work.

"Go Action" is another song I remember back in the 2000s. It is Ego-Wrappin's 3rd single from July 2008, and as is always the case with their songs, Nakano and Mori took care of music while the former handled the lyrics. I cannot really place where the song would go in the wide spectrum of popular music; there is a lot of ska but I can also hear hints of jazz and rock but Nakano seems to deliver her words like a flyweight boxer with a combination of punches and jabs or a post-punk rockabilly with the cheerful attitude of k.d. lang...now wouldn't that be a cover version? And the singer was just having too much fun in the official music video pulling out some hip-hop hand movies....and doing The Robot?!

Judging from what I've seen in the performance video above, yep, I should have gone to one of their concerts. I think even a stiff like me would have been encouraged to do some slam dancing...although there would've been blood for sure (but that's OK, I'm a Type O, the universal donor). "Go Action" managed to get as high as No. 19 on Oricon, and it was even used in a commercial for Axe Body Spray (would love to see the actual ad), but I just see the song as a great theme for that romp through Shibuya.

When I took a look at the J-Wiki page for "Go Action", I noticed that the coupling tune was "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". And I just thought whether it could actually be the one by Cyndi Lauper. Sure enough, it was. Nakano apparently just wanted to have fun with this one as well and she and Mori provide their own Ego-Wrappin' spin on the 80s classic.

Just had to put up the original Lauper video up there for comparison's and nostalgia's sake. It was one of my favourite videos back in the heyday of music video television, and looking at the eclectic fashion sense of both Lauper and Nakano, I rather wonder if the two are soul sisters of a sort.

Hiromi Go -- Irie Nite (入江にて)

Posting this in the morning with twilight on my mind. What a nice song to unwind to after a long day. When I was sampling Hiromi Go's (郷ひろみ) output during his Casanova days while going through some compilation albums a while back, I always had this sense that he'd be compatible with the urban contemporary side of music. Just a hunch. He certainly has had the right looks and outfits for it.  So I looked up his name next to "City Pop", and voila, this Music Avenue page popped up. The song is "Irie Nite" (入江にて...By the Bay), which appears on his 1979 studio album "Super Drive", Written by Machiko Ryu (竜真知子), composed by the Tetsuji Hayashi (林哲司), and arranged by Mitsuo Hagita (萩田光雄), it has that lovely atmosphere of a rendezvous stroll by the sea just when the buildings behind the couple are lighting up for the night. I have learned a bit about Hayashi from J-Canuck's posts (check out this comprehensive Creator entry) and noticed that he has a knack for these atmospheric urban tunes. I can feel his magic in "Irie Nite" as well. And Go, well, he isn't exactly a soothing crooner, but his delivery is nicely enthusiastic to make the song work.

(karaoke version)

I ended up purchasing "Super Drive" a couple of years ago based on this tune and a couple of others and it turned out a pleasant listen. Although it was recorded in Japan, many of the songs have a New York City vibe thanks to the contribution of the 24th Street Band (24丁目バンド), a jazz fusion band based in the city. They've had some success in Japan releasing studio albums as a group, while individual members have operated as session musicians on the other side of the Pacific. You can skim through their contributions on English Wiki: Hiram Bullock, Will Lee, Steve Jordan, and Clifford Carter.

Due to some label complications, "Super Drive" has yet to get a CD release, so I ended up getting it on vinyl. "Irie Nite" itself, however, has appeared on a number of compilation released, including the "Best Of" collection of Go's songs from '86 to '91 and Light Mellow Twilight.

Kin'ya Aikawa & Midori Utsumi -- Man Man March （マン・マン・マーチ）

Within the last few hours, I've heard about the passing of one of the big faces of Japanese variety television. But to say that Kin'ya (Kinkin) Aikawa （愛川欽也）was just someone on the prime-time variety show circuit would be giving him short shrift. He's been an actor, a voice actor, a radio DJ, a news commentator and a commercial pitchman, and perhaps my list is still not complete. In any case, he was one ubiquitous figure, and considering how often tarento show up on the tube, that is truly saying something.

He also did some singing as well...something that I hadn't been aware of. And since this is a music blog, I wanted to pay some tribute to him through this medium with his 1978 novelty song, "Man Man March". A parody of the typical tokusatsu hero tune, Aikawa sang this with his new second wife, fellow tarento Midori (Keronpa) Utsumi（うつみ宮土理）. There is some Beethoven (and perhaps some Bond as well) in this dedication to a hero who is supposedly faster than a Bullet Train but cuter than a doll. The lyrics also provide an entire Justice League's worth of heroes featuring everyday objects.

Written by Kogo Hotomi（保富康午）and composed by Asei Kobayashi（小林亜星）, after having listened to the first few bars which provide a variation of the famed Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, I realized that very part has been used in tons of variety programs over the years.

In my time of watching Japanese variety shows over the decades, there have been a few tentpole TV hosts...premier emcees who have become members of the entire viewing public family. Osaka comedian Sanma Akashiya（明石家さんま）strikes me as being that essentially good but obnoxious neighbour who cannot shut up. The dark sunglassed Tamori（タモリ）is that corporate department chief with the sly sense of humour. And Beat Takeshi（ビートたけし）is that amiable but slightly oddball fellow who always hangs out in your favourite nomiya. Kin'ya Aikawa was the truly avuncular kacho (section chief) who could talk up a storm and be the life of the party...and probably was more than happy to organize a few of them, but nothing fancy. It would be him and his section staff enjoying a few rounds in the local izakaya.

Aikawa had been on TV since the early 1970s, but I think one of the big feathers in his cap was as host of the Fuji-TV variety show, "Naruhodo! The World" (1981-1996), the hybrid travel/quiz program dealing with some of the more interesting places around the planet. Before travel truly became open to the masses in Japan, this show fed the audience with plenty of inspiration.

Personally, though, the Aikawa show that meant the most to me was TV Tokyo's "Shubbotsu! Admatic Tengoku"（出没!アド街ック天国...Pop! Admatic Heaven） (1995-present). Not being a party person at all, I stayed at home most Saturday nights, a pattern that was started early in my Ichikawa life since Saturdays were just a regular work day for me. At 9 p.m., "Admatic" came on and featured a certain neighbourhood in Tokyo revealing some of the atmosphere and notable places in a countdown format such as that really nice ramen shop or that odd antique store. Kinkin was our congenial host as he and his panel of tarento and commentators talked about some of their recommendations and stories about the area. Watching the show every week felt like that virtual stroll, and a few times, I actually got to take the literal stroll through places like Nakano which was at the other end of my subway line, the Tozai Line, all because of that show. I ended up taping a number of episodes and sending the tapes back to Toronto for the parentals to watch.

I'm glad that the show is still going on although I'm sure it's not quite the same after Aikawa left in early March. He passed away on April 16th 2015 at the age of 80.

Good ol' Nakano Broadway
one of my old haunts in Tokyo!