Asuka Suita -- Vacation（バ・ケー・ショ・ン）

 

Despite the storm that steamrollered us yesterday afternoon as I mentioned on the first Saturday article, I hope that my fellow Canadians are enjoying their first unofficial summer long weekend vacation. I'm expecting that Toronto and other cities across the Great White North have slightly fewer people as many have fled to cottage country.

Please allow me then to put up another holiday-appropriate kayo up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". I have here Asuka Suita's（吹田明日香）debut single of June 1983, "Vacation". Written and composed by the sibling songwriting tandem of Etsuko and Takao Kisugi（来生えつこ・来生たかお）with Ken Sato's（佐藤健）arrangement, the song is that sweet and innocent tune of emerging young romance with a bit of a 1950s puppy love feeling. The single didn't break into the Oricon Top 100, though, only getting as high as No. 114.

Suita was born in Kyoto but raised in Osaka and graduated from Doshisha University with a degree in English literature. It was during her university years that she appeared in the audition show "Star Tanjo!"（スター誕生！...A Star is Born!）and became Grand Champion in 1982. However, her time as a singer was brief, only releasing four singles (including a cover of Madonna's "Like A Virgin") and one album up to December 1984. Tragically, her mother was one of the 520 victims (including singer Kyu Sakamoto) who lost their lives aboard JAL Flight No. 123 when it crashed in Gunma Prefecture on August 12th 1985.

Due to the tragedy, Suita took some time off but was able to then get her degree in 1986 and later return to show business as a television personality and a broadcaster in the 1990s at NHK and NTV.

Mariko Tone -- Koi no Bigaku ni wa Sakararenai（恋の美学にはさからえない）

 

I kinda felt that I didn't have quite enough City Pop songs up last night considering Fridays are usually KKP's night for that, so allow me to compensate.

This is a pretty smooth City Pop number accompanying some bitter and harsh lyrics. "Koi no Bigaku ni wa Sakararenai" (Can't Stand the Aesthetics of Love) is a track from Mariko Tone's（刀根麻理子）June 1988 6th album "Purely". TOM TOM 99 was responsible for the arrangement reminiscent of some early David Foster (love the horns, by the way) while Masako Arikawa（有川正沙子）took care of the lyrics where Tone sings about how she's washing her hands of the pain of love and her soon-to-be ex-paramour.

Kazu Matsui（松居和）was the producer for "Purely" and his wife, jazz pianist Keiko Matsui（松居慶子）, contributed the melodies to two of the tracks, including "Koi no Bigaku ni wa Sakararenai". Not only am I hearing some of that David Foster in the song, but the coda reminds me of the ending of Bobby Caldwell's famous "What You Won't Do for Love".

Litz Co. -- Aoi Natsu ni Mi wo Makase（青い夏に身をまかせ）

 

Well, let's see...the unofficial start to summer is here represented by our Victoria Day weekend. It's pretty hot and humid which is perfect weather for storms to form. Guess what? We just got walloped by a major line of boomers that earned us a one-hour power outage. But everything is hunky-dory for now.

On that note then, maybe something appropriately summery can begin today's broadcasting day on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Ritsuko Tanaka（田中律子）already has a previous article on KKP through her 8th single "Fried Frustration"（フライドフラストレーション）from November 1990. Today, we have her 11th and final single to date from August 1993 under the name Litz Co., "Aoi Natsu ni Mi wo Makase" (Surrender to the Blue Summer). 

With lyrics by Tanaka herself, the melody was woven by UNI, who is really Michiya Haruhata（春畑道哉）, one of the members from that really summery band TUBE. Indeed, there is something quite TUBE-like with this samba song which was arranged by Takeshi Hayama（葉山たけし）, a fellow who has had plenty of experience with another summery singer Maki Ohguro（大黒摩季）along with a plethora of Being artists including ZARD, WANDS and REV. Come to think of it, "Aoi Natsu ni Mi wo Makase" also sounds somewhat like an Ohguro tune, too. Actually, a number of those artists helped out in the recording with Hayama on guitar, synthesizer and whistle, and Seiichiro Kuribayashi（栗林誠一郎）and Fusanosuke Kondo（近藤房之助）on chorus.

The song was also the ending theme for a TV Asahi drama "Shonan Joshi Ryou Monogatari"（湘南女子寮物語...The Story of Shonan Girls' Dormitory） which had Tanaka in the cast along with the star Yutaka Mizutani（水谷豊）, years from his most recognized role as the wise and urbane detective on the long-running "Aibou"（相棒...Partners）. Ironically, Tanaka's final single was her first single to chart within the Top 100 at No. 93.

I also have the opening theme: "Shonan Memory"（湘南メモリー）by LEON.

Passepied -- Kinyoubi no Tenshi（金曜日の天使）

 

This is unusually my sixth article for today but I just had to squeeze this in because it is Friday after all, and that's what this song is: "Kinyoubi no Tenshi" (Friday Angels). Also, this is a cover of a 1981 New Wave tune by the band Haruo Chikada & Vibratones（近田春夫&ビブラトーンズ）that I covered back in January 2020.

Discovering Chikada through the blog, I've learned that he has come up with some eclectic and fascinating material, so on hearing that a contemporary group, Passepied（パスピエ）, covered "Kinyoubi no Tenshi", which was written by Chikada and composed by Yutaka Fukuoka（福岡ユタカ）, I had to also give this new version a try. Passepied's "Kinyoubi no Tenshi" was a track on their 6th single "Yoakemae"（ヨアケマエ...Before the Sun Rises） released in April 2016. I'd never heard of this group before and according to their J-Wiki file, the founder of the band, Tokyo University graduate keyboardist Haneda Narita（成田ハネダ）, got Passepied started in 2009 as a pop/rock unit that melded New Wave and technopop and also brought in some of his background in Impressionism, musically speaking.

"Kinyoubi no Tenshi" has got that New Wave thing going here too, but it differs somewhat from Vibratones' original in that I also hear some guitar work reminiscent of The Police. Plus the arrangement seems airier in a more dream pop way, thanks to Natsuki Ohgoda's（大胡田なつき）vocals, although the electric guitar solo takes things into a conventional rock riff followed by some keyboard spaciness.

Although Passepied has released eight CD singles up to 2016, they have put out seventeen digital download singles up to April of this year, and seven albums have also been released. The band lineup has changed over the years but when "Yoakemae" was out, along with Narita and Ohgoda, there were guitarist Masahiro Misawa（三澤勝洸）, bassist Yoshikuni Tsuyuzaki（露崎義邦）and drummer Takuya Yao（やおたくや）.

Kyoko Omiya & Orange -- Mirage（ミラージュ）

 

In a rather grim way, remembering my first article for the folk/New Music group Kyoko Omiya & Orange（大宮京子＆オレンジ）which covered their songs "Melody" and "Season" is nostalgic since the first thing that I put down was that my province of Ontario was heading into the second wave of the pandemic in the fall of 2020. However, as I type this third article for the group, things seem to be going in the right direction as we leave our sixth wave. I am hoping that things will settle down for the rest of the summer at least, although there is that possible monkeypox outbreak to deal with now.

Anyways, on top of "Melody" and "Season", there is also the second article "Toki wo Modoshite"（時を戻して）that you can peruse about Omiya & Orange. Although some sites such as Hip Tank Records have considered the group as a City Pop band, I've seen them thus far as more New Music and AOR, more along the lines of Off-Course（オフコース）when they were transitioning from folk over to a more pop style in the late 1970s. Of course (no immediate pun intended), this isn't a slag against Orange since this 1980 single of theirs, "Mirage", is a spirited tune that would have had folks back then hop into their cars for a nice Sunday drive along the seashore. 

Unlike the other Orange tunes that I've profiled, "Mirage" wasn't created by any of the band members. Instead, it was lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer/arranger Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）who created this soaring number which I am also enjoying for its "Xanadu"-like sound and the background chorus. Going into this unofficial start to summer here in Ontario via the Victoria Day long weekend, "Mirage" does sound like quite the tonic.

Yuko Sugita -- Senritsu（旋律）

 

When KKP contributor nikala first introduced singer-songwriter Yuko Sugita（杉田優子）all the way back in October 2014 through her article on "Shuu Densha" (終電車), she made it abundantly clear that there wasn't a whole lot of information about her. That hasn't really changed but I was able to find out from "Idol.ne.jp" that Sugita did release a total of three singles and two albums between 1978 and 1979.

Since nikala's first article, I've added some more to the Sugita file with a couple of more songs: "Maryoku"（魔力）and "Surfing Musume"（サーフィン娘）because, as my fellow contributor has mentioned, she's pretty darn interesting. And that holds true for this entry "Senritsu" (Melody) which was actually the second of Sugita's three singles. It was released in July 1978, and I was able to find out through Discogs that the singer had some good help in the recording of the song for which she provided words and music.

First off, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）arranged "Senritsu" which begins with this distinctive combination of regular strings and synth-strings with the latter provided by Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）. My first thought was that "Senritsu" was a certain type of New Music tune whose setting was somewhere out in Paris but listening to it a few more times, I realized that there was also some bossa nova mixed in there just like with Keiko Maruyama's（丸山圭子）classic "Douzo Kono Mama" (どうぞこのまま）, and then I picked up on the underlying rhythm which felt like typical 1970s City Pop. Indeed, it is quite the fascinating senritsu, and overall, I found it cool and cooling.

In addition to Suzuki, who was on electric guitar, and Matsutoya, Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）was on bass, Tatsuo Hayashi（林立夫）was on drums, Hidetoshi Yamada（山田秀俊）was on electric piano and synthesizer, and the rest of the percussion was provided by Nobu Saito（斉藤ノブ）. "Senritsu" was also a track on Sugita's first album "Monsoon", just like "Shuu Densha".

Skirt & Punpee -- ODDTAXI

 

Some days ago, a commenter gave me a shout under the article for Dacho Club's（ダチョウ俱楽部）"Vegetarian Rumba"（ベジタリアン・ルンバ）where they recommended me an anime called "ODDTAXI". I'd never heard of it and I'd assumed that it was something being shown during this current season.

Actually, though, "ODDTAXI" had its run about a year ago through TV stations including TV Tokyo. The series has its characters of anthromorphized animals going about their daily and nocturnal lives in Tokyo, and that is nothing new in the world of anime. However, as one YouTube commenter put it, "ODDTAXI" has this atmosphere of a Quentin Tarentino flick, and even in the first episode as shown above, the world surrounding the main character of Odokawa the seen-it-all heard-it-all stoic and sarcastic walrus taxi driver has that sensation of camaraderie and humour overlaying a not-quite-comfortable tension that could explode at any time. Even before I saw the QT comment, I'd gotten the impression that there was some serious film noir happening.

I've only seen Episode 1 thus far but I've enjoyed it and the whole thing about the animals takes a back seat to the mysterious story whose disparate elements, I suspect, will all be connected as the series progresses. Another thing is that the morose Odokawa is played by seiyuu Natsuki Hanae（花江夏樹）, the same fellow behind the heroic Tanjiro in "Kimetsu no Yaiba"（鬼滅の刃）. It's quite the voice change. 

This being a music blog, I have to say that I have also fallen for the opening theme "ODDTAXI". Created and performed by the duet of musician Skirt (スカート...aka Wataru Sawabe/澤部渡) and hip-hop MC/trackmaker Punpee, there is some beautiful music being made as I get hints of Kirinji（キリンジ）and maybe a pinch of 80s City Pop among the rap and the nighttime pop. The music video goes weaves in and out between the anime and real-life Tokyo with appearances by the seiyuu (although I'm not sure whether Hanae pops up) in the show. It's a modern urban contemporary example of musical mellowness that would be ideal for a midnight taxi ride in the big city. If I'd known about the song earlier, I would have included it in my "Taxi Songs" list a month ago.

In any case, I'll have to take a look at the rest of the series since even "The New Yorker" mentioned that "ODDTAXI" was a worthy honourable mention in its "Best TV of 2021". Better late than never.