I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
A sweet soul tune penned by Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, "Touch Me Lightly" is sung by the gentle high tenor of Masato Uchida（内田正人）which seems to melt into the night sky. Having once composed "DOWNTOWN" for The Kingtones (but to no avail), there was still a connection between the songwriter and the group, and perhaps this was their common denominator of the roots of Black music, most notably doo-wop. But "Touch Me Lightly" comes across as 70s and approaches a sweet and mellow sound.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised"(2020).
J-Canuck here. I'll just jump in briefly to say that sometime last night, the number of views for this blog reached and exceeded the 7 million point. Allow me to give everyone reading "Kayo Kyoku Plus" a hearty thank you for their support over the past dozen years. I would toot my horn even more but considering that the famous YouTube video of Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Plastic Love" reached that point in three months...well, meh.😏
Also, we have reached the halfway point in the "Japanese City Pop Masterpieces 100" translations. Another year to go then!
I've heard my fair share of music from the Caribbean, Mexico and Brazil and have enjoyed it all. That also includes Perez Prado's"Mambo No. 5", even if I had never heard of the title until quite recently. As soon as I hear the song, I immediately think of swivel hips and feet trying to trace a complicated series of steps on the dance floor.
Thanks to that multi-record collection "50 Years Of Hits In Stereo" by RCA our family had, I was able to get my education in Prado's music early in life but "Mambo No. 5" wasn't one of the lessons. Still, this particular song is one of the most well-known instrumentals from Cuba that I know. Man, just watching those folks above has got me winded. OK, I'm going back to the buffet table.
Of course, something this catchy will always have cover versions. One from Japan was handled by musician Masayoshi Takanaka（高中正義）as his 2nd single. His even more peppery take on "Mambo No. 5" was released in February 1977 and was also a part of his 2nd album"TAKANAKA" which came out a month later. With the subtitle of "Disco Dango" (ahh...um, no), Takanaka's "Mambo No. 5" indeed has that disco sheen (and his signature guitar riffing) in his arrangement and Chris Mosdell even added some lyrics.
Takanaka must have enjoyed "Mambo No. 5" so much that a few years later, he even created his own "Mambo No. 6" for his 6th original album"T-WAVE" for release in June 1980. Created solely by the musician, this doesn't have the disco anymore but it does have more of a fusion approach.
It's only been since I started on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that I got to know Reiko Kato's（かとうれいこ）role as a singer in show business. Before that, I had seen her on television as a tarento and then I found out that she was also a model. However, Marcos and I have been able to unravel some of the musical side of her career.
Kato has been an aidoru but according to the J-Wiki article on her November 1995 7th album"itch", she was going for a more mature approach to the songs here. The first track lays that out plainly as "Walkin' Down The Love" struts out the high-heel shoes on the pavement of the big city. Written by Kenzo Saeki（サエキけんぞう）and composed/arranged by Tomofumi Suzuki（鈴木智文）, the synth-brass and the groove bring out some sophisticated pop this side of Swingout Sister while straddling the line between 1990s City Pop and Shibuya-kei via some Motown rhythm. This might be the ideal song after getting the monthly pay packet and someone deciding that it's Miller Time!🍻
Back on Urban Contemporary Fridays on KKP, we have another gem from actress and singer Keiko Toda（戸田恵子）. My last article regarding her was when she was still an early 1970saidoru with the stage name of Akemi Ayu（あゆ朱美）but this time, we're back to the future in the 1980s.
Specifically, we're within her 1985 album"Tenderly" (although J-Wiki states 1984, I found an image of the actual record which says otherwise). I've already written about one track there, a cover of the jazz standard "Pay Some Attention to Me", but this time around, we have the preceding song, "Ano Hi no Mama no Hohoemi de" (That Smile from the Other Day). Written by Keiji Mizutani（水谷啓二）and composed by Masahiro Taniguchi（谷口雅洋）, it's got the City Pop rhythm intact but I think there is also something in the song that also hits me as old-style kayo kyoku for some reason. Maybe it's the background chorus, but regardless, it does feel like a breezy day trip tripping the light fantastic in Tokyo.
Over the past several months, I've been hearing and reporting about the rise of new developments within Tokyo such as Toranomon Hills. Well, this time, I've just heard about another place that's gonna get its long goodbye. This morning on NHK, it's been reported that Shinjuku ALTA（新宿アルタ）, a Shinjuku landmark that has been located across from JR Shinjuku Station since its completion on March 26th 1980, will be closing down for good at the end of February 2025 due to financial issues. It first got its fame for having Japan's first huge screen monitor and then a couple of years later, one of the facilities inside the building, Studio ALTA, housed the long-running Fuji-TV noon variety show "Waratte Ii Tomo"（笑っていいとも）starring comedian Tamori（タモリ）. One thing that I hadn't known until this morning was that the name of ALTA was derived from the word "alternative".
But for a lot of people including myself, ALTA was a famous meeting spot in Shinjuku. As much as the statue of Hachiko the faithful dog was the place to meet friends in Shibuya, ALTA was a similar spot in Shinjuku. I've done my share of waiting and meeting in front of the facility when I was in the Tokyo area and it'll be too bad to see the ol' building go. However, at least we get eleven months to say our farewells.
To commemorate, I'm putting up the Top 10 Singles list for March 24th 1980, just a couple of days before ALTA was completed.
I've got to admit that this quite a find and my thanks to YouTuber lovely record for posting this song onto the platform, and hopefully the channel won't mind too much about me going ahead and talking about it so soon following its posting a week ago.
Both Akira Terao（寺尾聰）and Yasuo Tanabe（田辺靖雄）are known to me. Of course, Terao started out in the Group Sounds craze in the 1960s but then in the early 1980s, he became an unexpected music superstar in the middle of his acting career when he hit pay dirt with City Pop fare such as "Shadow City". On the other hand, though Tanabe also began singing in the 1960s, he was more in the Mood Kayo realm with songs such as "Lullaby Tokyo"（ララバイ東京）.
Little did I realize or expect, however, that both Terao and Tanabe would get together in the mid-1970s to do a doo-wop duet called "Juu-roku no Natsu"(Summer at 16). It seems to have been a collaboration out of the blue although I admit that I don't know how close their relationship; maybe they have been good buddies all this time. In any event, August 1977 (the release date of the single) isn't exactly a time period where I would think about all that American 1950s leather jacket-and-bobbysoxer culture in Tokyo. Perhaps it was still a couple of years away. However, Terao and Tanabe were behind words, music and mikes with this nostalgic tune that could have had folks like Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）and Fonzie nodding in inspiration. And the bonus is that folk band Off-Course（オフコース）was also part of the plan as backup chorus. In fact, Off-Course guitarist Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）and Godiego's（ゴダイゴ）Mickie Yoshino（ミッキー吉野）were behind the arrangement. I can taste the tall strawberry malted milkshake right now.
It's always nice when contemporary pop culture brings back a tune or an entire genre from the past to the revelation and delight of a new generation. That was true for jump jive and swing back in the 1990s and of course, we had that "Plastic Love" thing in 2018. And then, several years ago, an episode of "Family Guy" introducing a new character, Lieutenant Commander Dan Quagmire, brought back an old classic to accompany the naval officer's fabulous moves down the stairs.
The thing is that for Japanese music show viewers, this same song had been used as the theme for TBS' often raucous (after all, it had the notorious Takaaki Ishibashi as a co-host) "Utaban"（うたばん）.
For this week's Reminiscings of Youth, I give you Nancy Sinatra's"These Boots Are Made For Walkin'". Mind you, I was only a couple of months old when this song about kissing off a potentially former boyfriend was released in December 1965 so I very much doubt that I would have remembered hearing this when it came out. However, over the years, it did pop up on a number of variety shows and music programs on the major American networks since Sinatra's voice and that melody have instantly activated my memory engrams whenever I hear them. According to the Wikipedia entry for "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'", songwriter Lee Hazlewood came up with the title after hearing a line ("They tell me them boots ain't built for walkin'.") by The Chairman of the Board himself in the comedy-western "4 For Texas" back in 1963. Yes, I'm talking about Hollywood legend Frank Sinatra, Nancy's father.
For a threatening kiss-off song, "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" is pretty darn sultry and sexy as if Nancy were showing both the carrot and the stick at the same time. Wrong me, I'll mash you into paste, do me right, I'll give you all my lovin'.
The song was a hit worldwide, reaching No. 1 in a number of nations including America, Denmark, Ireland and Argentina. In Canada, it hit No. 2. But even before all of the covers and its usage in "Family Guy" and "Utaban", I knew "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" was also notable for the fact that it had a promotional video which could be acknowledged as one of the first examples of a music video, and this news I got from "The All-Night Show", that local overnight show on the Toronto multicultural channel which was basically the video version of Japan's "Village Vanguard" curio shop.
For this ROY, let's go with what won some of the hardware at the 7th Japan Record Awards for 1965.
