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.
The above is a photo of a fan made up of fake 10,000-yen bills. I received it as a souvenir from a hostess club in Ginza that my friend took me to back in 2017. Although I was grateful for the experience of seeing with my own eyes what such a club looks like, I was also a little embarrassed for looking distinctly underdressed for the occasion (had no idea that he was planning to take me there); I was just in my T-shirt and jeans and from what I've seen on television, T-shirts and jeans aren't exactly usual fashion in hostess clubs. However, the staff were very professional and gracious to me and I got some of the best-tasting pear slices that I've ever had.
So, the above is a money fan. But the topic of this KKP article is "Money Tree" which is the first track on duo TINNA's August 1979 album"Doumu ~ DOME IS A CHILD'S DREAM"（童夢...Child's Dream）. It served as the soundtrack for the TBS movie "Eikou no LeMans 24-ji ~ Doumu Chousen no Kiroku"（栄光のルマン24時 - 童夢挑戦の記録 -...The Glorious 24 Hours of Le Mans ~ The Record of Going for a Child's Dream）. As a first track, "Money Tree" starts off pensively enough before Tomoko Soryo（惣領智子）and Mariko Takahashi（高橋真理子）get into some real downtown funk accompanied by a saxophone to further add onto the flavour. Bill Crutchfield took care of the lyrics while Yasunori Soryo（惣領泰則）took care of the driving music. For anyone who isn't too familiar with the famous race, you can take a look at the trailer for the 1971 Steve McQueen movie"LeMans" below.
A commenter sent a missive last night regarding the late singer-songwriter Yoichi Takizawa（滝沢洋一） (and I have to admit that I had forgotten to mention that he had passed away in 2006 from complications due to liver cancer at the age of 56). They informed me that there had been a mysterious 2nd album to add onto his once one-and-only album "Leonids no Kanata ni"（レオニズの彼方に） that was supposed to have been released in 1982. "Boy", for whatever reason, was put back onto the production shelf and didn't see the light of day until a few days ago.
Happily for fans and the spirit of Takizawa, "Boy" has broken through the bounds of red tape and is now out on CD and LP with a lot of new material. The commenter also noted that the cover is rather humourous which has Takizawa looking like a young yuppie Clark Kent getting a new view of Lois Lane (maybe the album should have been titled "Boys Will Be Boys"). Actually, the image also reminds me of scenes from "The Naked Gun" and that Thomas Dolby music video of "She Blinded Me With Science".
It looks like the tracks for "Boy" are up on YouTube. However, I'll begin with an appetizer in the form of "Endless Summer". A nice slice of tropical summer and a cocktail, I couldn't help but feel that there is a feeling of the band TOTO in this tune that can fit equally on the deck of a cruise ship as well as in a fashionable restaurant in Tokyo. Thanks to the commenter for providing this succulent piece of information for Takizawa fans.
It's been over eighteen months since I put up a Maiko Nakano（中野麻衣子）song on KKP, but I figure that today is the right time since it is Urban Contemporary Friday and with Japan also in Christmas mode, people are probably getting into the party spirit.
And yep, I was nicely reminded how snazzy her discography was back in the 1990s. The last song that I wrote about her back at the end of March 2023 was "Imitation Blue" from her 1991 album "Bay Side Story". Well just a couple of tracks down from that one is "Shuumatsu no Lovelorn Girl" (Weekend Lovelorn Girl). Written by Shun Taguchi（田口俊）and composed/arranged by Tatsuya Nishiwaki（西脇辰弥）from the band PAZZ, it seems to possess that feeling of caviar-and-champagne brand of City Pop brought over from Bubble Era Japan, just the thing to stride down that big boulevard at night while savoring some rich times.
Well, welcome to the final Friday before Christmas. Toronto got its icing sugar dusting of snow overnight so maybe there's a chance that we may get a White Christmas on Wednesday. Even the Kanto area including Tokyo may get some of the white stuff in the next few days.
The late singer-songwriter Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）has continued to make his presence known on the pages of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for his songwriting prowess for other clients...80s aidoru Mikako Hashimoto（橋本美加子）being the most recent one on the blog. But the last time that Oda himself was on the byline was way back in late 2019 for his 1984 "Spanish Girl".
However, I have one here today which was Oda's 1985 single"Let Me Know". It can also be found on his album from the same year, "ODA 3", and it's a pleasant and mellow AOR tune which sounds a fair bit like a Western ballad from the 80s that I used to know. Unfortunately at this time, I can't remember the title or the singer, but perhaps one of you readers might recognize it from listening to the song. In any case, Oda was in charge of the melody with Makoto Yano（矢野誠）behind that arrangement. Jim Steel was the lyricist here but I'm curious whether that is the name of a real lyricist or an Oda pseudonym. I couldn't find any presence of a Jim Steel as a singer or songwriter online. Let me know.😋
Well, for the fourth year in a row, "Kayo Kyoku Plus" has managed to reach 1000 articles in a year. I'm pretty sure that we won't be breaking the 1,103-article record that we achieved last year but that's OK. There's no need to push things anymore. Anyways, this year's 1000th article will be dedicated to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth and also we'll be covering Christmas again as we approach December 25th.
Let's take a look at a Yuletide classic that is literally centuries old. "Deck the Halls" goes all the way back to the 16th century to a Welsh melody when it was a winter carol known as "Nos Galan". The English lyrics were written by Thomas Oliphant back in 1862. My first time with "Deck the Halls" was back probably in kindergarten in the early 1970s when my teacher sang it and then taught it to us moppets.
Then, not too long after, my family got that Ronco album which was making the rounds on TV commercials, "A Christmas Gift", with one of the tracks being "Deck the Halls" as performed by Percy Faith and his orchestra. Faith already has representation on the blog for being the original provider of "Theme from a Summer Place" which was covered by AOR duo The Milky Way in 1979. However, Faith tackles his rendition of "Deck the Halls" with gusto as it sounds like something from a King Arthur movie soundtrack as he and his Knights of the Round Table go forth to celebrate Christmas. Apparently, this version first appeared in 1954.
Of course, there have been tons of renditions of "Deck the Halls" over the years, but one of the most unusual covers was by the jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in 1962. Now, I've heard of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross as the pioneers of vocalese which involves placing nimbly-delivered words and phrases within the usual improvised arrangement of jazz instruments, replacing those instruments. The Manhattan Transfer also picked up on the hip lingo, even coming up with their 1985 album"Vocalese".
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross' version was something that I found in a Xmas jazz compilation while I was living in Japan, and it was actually titled "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie". Before you could say Weird Al Yankovic, I could tell from the title and the intro that this was going to be a wacky parody of the original "Deck the Halls". I had assumed all these years that Boston Charlie was some near-lethal form of hooch that boozehounds could get in the various dives and saloons in the not-so-nice areas of town but it was actually just a play on the title. However, that fade-in intro where the three start shrieking the chorus in improbable harmony has always had me imagining the sots stumbling around at night trying to get into that hole in the wall.
Then, everything gets set right with a snappy drum and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross plow into the song with some major scatting while a piano player nimbly skates over the keys like a Gold Medal-winning figure skater. But just before the three end up taking us listeners to something far more respectable, we get thrown back into the back alley as Boston Charlie does its thing and the trio shriek their way off into the darkness. So, "Deck Us All" is more scat than vocalese but below you can see them handle the latter.
So, what were some of the big Japanese hits coming out in 1962? I've got three right here.
The first time that I had ever heard of the word "runt" was back when I was a boy while I was reading the series of books "Clifford The Big Red Dog". One of the books actually goes into Clifford's origins when he was ironically born as the smallest of the litter...or the runt...and hadn't been expected to survive too long. Well, he ended up becoming one mighty large canine to even give Paul Bunyan pause.
It's not the smoothest segue into this band called Runt Star but let me go on. What information I could get on this group which probably focused on pop and rock has been through a couple of individual members' own J-Wiki profiles and it looks like Runt Star lasted between 1999 and 2007. Consisting of vocalist and guitarist Tetsuya Takatsu（高津哲也）, keyboardist Kazuya Saka（坂和也）, bassists Kazuyuki Murata（村田知之）& Shige Murata（村田シゲ）, and drummer Toshiyo Okada（岡田年世）, they apparently released most of their output between 2000 and 2002.
Their last album or EP was "Floral Words" in May 2002 with one track being "Daylight". The YouTube video has been up for over fifteen years, so that's a lot of staying power. I'm glad that it still exists because "Daylight" is a very pleasant tune to hear in a Spitz sort of way. It's so mellow that I would probably categorize the song as a pop melody without really any rock. In fact, it rather approaches the works of Blue Peppers and Kirinji. I can even hear an echo of Al Stewart's"Year of the Cat".
I remember one of my friends who once went on business to Monaco, of all places. As a quick geography lesson, Monaco is the second-smallest sovereign territory in the world (just next to the Vatican) but it is also one of the wealthiest countries. Whenever I think of the place, my mind goes to car racing, casinos and lots of tuxedos and evening gowns. My friend was frankly bewildered by the opulence especially when he found himself within the Monte Carlo district. That's something I can relate to completely; if I were there, I would probably be sweating a ton in my plebeian clothes and feebly asking where the nearest McDonalds is located.
Well, maybe we can all take a tour of the place vicariously via J Utah's driving video through Monaco. I do have to say that it does look glorious out there. I wonder if the state has a dress code along with a postal one.
Musing about Monaco did leave me wondering whether there was ever some sort of kayo kyoku based on the country. I imagined that it would be an exotic kayo from the late 1970s to join Mayo Shouno's（庄野真代）"Tonde Istanbul"（飛んでイスタンブール）and Saki Kubota's（久保田早紀）"Ihojin"（異邦人）. Strangely enough though, I couldn't find anything from that era and it took me a fair while before I finally found one song which had been created a few decades later.
There's absolutely no information on the singer Aki Saotome（早乙女あき）except for the fact that she released a single in 2012 titled "Monaco no O-Hime-sama" (Princess of Monaco). It was written by Hiroko Iwakiri（岩切浩子）and composed by Kazuya Jun（順一弥）, and it's quite the jazzy Mood Kayo, reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s with Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）behind the mike. However, it is the breathy and fragile vocals of Saotome here and that swinging jazz is perhaps reflective of the titular surroundings with clinking glasses of champagne and spinning roulette wheels. No mention of the legendary Princess Grace of Monaco in the lyrics, though.
For a few minutes though, considering the paucity of data on Saotome and the names involved that I had never seen before, I had even allowed the possibility that I encountered my first example of an AI Mood Kayo song, but then that production year of 2012 cropped up. And so, I figured that Ms. Saotome is a flesh-and-blood human being who recorded "Monaco no O-Hime-sama". I just find it a tad eerie though that there is absolutely no other information on the lady, unless she's just a regular person who recorded it on a lark and then decided that it would be a one-and-done for any professional singing career. But it is a pretty refined tune.
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