Judy and Mary -- Over Drive

Ahhhh....one of the nostalgia songs for me. Judy and Mary's "Over Drive" was another song that seemed to take up permanent residence on "Countdown TV". And for me, it was the first song by the band that I really paid attention to since it was just a happy and sunny tune to be sung by the chipper YUKI. The official music video is also another good memory in my noggin' with the gang shuffling about in their overalls.

Released in June 1995, "Over Drive" was Judy and Mary's 7th single. It was written by YUKI and composed by JAM guitarist TAKUYA and managed to get as high as No. 4 on Oricon and later finished the year as the 50th-ranked song. It was also included on the band's 3rd album, "Miracle Diving" which came out in December 1995 and peaked at No. 2. It would finish 1996 ranked at No. 23.

The song also was a fair favourite on TV. It was not only used on a Toyota commercial (above) but it was also the campaign tune for a soup brand in 2006 and was even utilized as the ending theme song for a 2001 high school quiz special. Just a happy, happy tune.

Top 10 Albums of 1971

1.  Elvis Presley                              You Don't Have To Say You Love Me
2.  Simon & Garfunkel                    Bridge Over Troubled Water
3.  Simon & Garfunkel                    Greatest Hits II
4.  The Cool Five/Keiko Fuji          Enka no Kyouen/Kiyoshi to Keiko
5.  The Ventures                              Best 20
6.  Shinichi Mori                              Tabiji
7.  Shinichi Mori                              Kage wo Shitawaite
8.  Kiyohiko Ozaki                          Second Album
9.  Soundtrack                                  Love Story
10. Kiyohiko Ozaki                         First Album

All I can say is thank ya, thank ya verra much...

Ryusenkei -- Airport '80 （エアーポート’80）

I just came across a 2012 article on "The Japan Times" that talks about a return of that Perrier-sipping and plane-hopping Japanese genre known as City Pop. And considering some of the singers I've encountered for the first time via YouTube and articles on this blog, I think the return is still happily on the move. Perhaps Japan, and specifically Tokyo, may no longer be all that close to the top of the economic heap as it was when City Pop was experiencing its first heyday, but it seems that there is still a want for some of that urban contemporary beat.

One of the relatively new artists that I discovered in the last few months is Ryusenkei（流線形...Streamline） aka Cunimondo Takiguchi nee Toshiaki Takiguchi. He is mentioned in that Japan Times article but otherwise there is not a whole lot about him aside from his own Facebook page. However, I did find out that he has had three albums so far under his belt, "City Music" (2003), "Tokyo Sniper" (2006) and "Natural Woman" (2009).

Tonight I'm featuring a track from Ryusenkei's first album "City Music", "Airport '80", created by Takiguchi. Both the album and the song are perfectly titled considering the genre. The airport is one of the representative places when it comes to City Pop...that launching point to exotic horizons, whether they be the shores of Honolulu or the streets of Manhattan, or that landing point before heading into the world's biggest megalopolis. As soon as I heard that melody of shimmery strings and strumming guitar along with those technological bloops after that recording of soaring jets, I knew I was getting back into some comfortable musical territory. The mellow vocals also had me craving those huge cocktails with the paper umbrellas. I'll be interested in trying to catch up with what Ryusenkei has been producing over the past decade.

Have a look at a couple of articles that Marcos V. has written up on similar material. One is on Greeen Linez and the other is his playlist on those Retro Grooves.

Momoe Yamaguchi -- Get Free

Just a couple of weeks after beginning "Kayo Kyoku Plus" in 2012, I actually had written up an article on this song "Get Free" by Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）with the corresponding YouTube video. But when the video got taken down, I was actually quite depressed since I didn't have the knowledge or the experience I have now, so I decided to eliminate the whole article and later just covered the whole album it came from, "L.A. Blue" (1979),  

I've already mentioned about the song on that article already since a karaoke version of "Get Free" exists. But since I wanted to make some amends for that early inexperience and also provide a bit of a counterpoint to the other article I just wrote for Momoe-chan's raunchy "Rock n' Roll Widow", I'm bringing back this particular song.

(cover version)

Do I have any new insights about it after a few years? Well, it's amazing how different a singer can sound by changing the songwriters. So instead of the rock n' roll husband-and-wife team of Ryudo Uzaki and Yoko Aki（宇崎竜童・阿木燿子）, "Get Free" was taken care of by the sibling songwriting duo of Takao and Etsuko Kisugi（来生たかお・えつこ）. Another surprising thing is how American AOR the tune sounds. The Kisugis are known for some pretty mellow songs but I always pegged them as kayo kyoku songsmiths so "Get Free" is a pretty fascinating stretch. And as I mentioned in the article for "L.A. Blue", it feels like a theme song of driving across America to the West Coast. Getting free, indeed. In a way, perhaps Momoe was a proto-Anri（杏里）.

Momoe Yamaguchi -- Rock n' Roll Widow （ロックンロール・ウィドウ）

And here I thought that Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）kicked up her heels when she performed "Imitation Gold" and "Playback Part 2". In the latter half of her career in the latter half of the 1970s, she took on that persona of that jaded and tough seen-it-all heard-it-all woman, thanks partially to the songwriting by the husband-and-wife team of Ryudo Uzaki and Yoko Aki（宇崎竜童・阿木燿子）. Well, just a couple of singles away from retiring the mike, Yamaguchi, Uzaki and Aki decided to REALLY knock it up a notch.

"Rock n' Roll Widow" was on my compilation CD of her BEST songs (as it probably has been on any of her BEST discs), and unlike those two other Uzaki-and-Aki productions, there was much more of a feeling of fun and abandon despite the "widow" part of the title. Perhaps the widow was dancing on top of her hubby's grave but that is about as dark as I will get in my speculation. In any case, the song was Yamaguchi's 30th single released in May 1980 (I realize that she was not far from retirement, but it's hard to imagine her as anyone other than that representative 70s songstress), and on hearing the song, it seems like her two collaborators just told her to go nuts. And she truly thrust in the growls and the yells. I'm sure her fans launched their eyebrows when they first heard the song. My favourite part of the song is when she belts out the "Kakko, kakko, kakko..." with the harmony gradually phasing in.

Then I saw her performance of the song on shows such as "Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）. She sported that big hair, the face paint and the fashion, and put on some rather interesting dance moves such as a furyo stance at the very beginning. In the J-Wiki article for "Rock n' Roll Widow", the writer also mentioned about her sashaying up and down her guitarist's back during the instrumental. For a lady who I usually imagined as being pretty static in her performances, Momoe-chan just went Disco Queen...or Rock Queen, perhaps. In a way, it was like watching Olivia Newton-John's Sandy character undergoing that transformation at the end of "Grease" from Sandra Dee to leather-wearing she-devil.

The song hit No. 3 on Oricon and ended the year as the 40th-ranked song. It was also a track on Momoe's 20th studio album, "Moebius Game"（メビウス・ゲーム）which was released at the same time as "Rock n' Roll Widow". The album peaked at No. 6.

The lady still had a couple of more singles before entering domestic bliss but with this song, it was Momoe's way of saying "I have just LEFT the building!"

trf/Every Little Thing -- Brave Story

When I first heard trf's 15th single, "Brave Story", my impression was "Well, this is rather different." The TK Rave Factory was a singing and dancing unit that I had always associated with fast, uptempo and cheerful stuff. The guys who put some oomph into a Coke commercial in the early 90s and all that jazz. 

"Brave Story", on the other hand, sounded like trf and Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）wanted to contribute a song to a James Bond movie right down to the title.  Released in July 1996, it starts off with main vocalist YU-KI and her backup singers performing a bit of gospel before the music just blasts off with a melody of a suspense-thriller. Those first several notes have always had me imagining unmarked copters taking off on a black ops mission. I could hear the lead chopper pilot intoning something like "THIS IS GRUMPY TO PRINCE CHARMING...GETTING READY TO WAKE UP SNOW WHITE...PREPARING POISON APPLE..."

Komuro, as always, took care of the suddenly dramatic music and lyrics. And even the latter (co-written by Takahiro Maeda/前田たかひろ) read like something out of a melodramatic spy novel...about some fellow going off on a mission of sorts although the words aren't all that direct. The entire song made for a pretty fun listening experience but in a new way when it came to trf. And sure enough, I made a purchase. The song managed to peak at No. 4. It was also available on the group's first BEST compilation, "WORKS - The Best of TRF" which came out on New Year's Day 1998.

Cue ahead several years later. Speaking of compilations, it looks like there was a couple of tribute albums to trf this decade, including the 2-disc "TRF Tribute Album Best" which came out in March 2013. And on there, another 90s music unit, Every Little Thing, gave their own version of "Brave Story". However, instead of  the full-on down-and-dirty theme for a Jason Bourne adventure that the original was, ELT's cover is a jaunty Latin-flavoured romp in the sun that has Kaoru Mochida's （持田香織）familiar and lispy vocals along with an arrangement that has echoes of 80s band PSY-S. It's also appealing in yet another way. For me, cover versions don't always work but I'm happy to write that this is the exception here.

Teruo Ikeda -- Otoko no Iji (男の意地)

I don't know, there's just something about Teruo Ikeda (池田輝郎) that I like. I think it's his pleasant Min'yo voice, or probably his dignified, gentle appearance. Or it could simply be because he sang "Neon bune" (ネオン舟), a song which I have somehow not gotten over despite listening to it ad nauseam over the months since I've discovered it. But either way, I've come to appreciate Ike-Teru more than I had expected and have been digging through his short discography for more.

A product that came from this little excavation was his recent single from 24th July 2013, "Otoko no Iji". The MV - half of it - was one of the first few suggestions after keying in the fellow's name into the YouTube search bar, so I went ahead to check it out. Having Ikeda standing in the middle of a little alley with bars lining it on both sides and glaring into the camera kinda reminded me of the "Neon bune" MV, just with a broader street and a different place. And Ike-Teru had dyed his hair brown then, very odd-looking. Both were written by Toshiya Niitani (仁井谷俊也) and composed by Hideo Mizumori (水森 英夫), which I'm guessing is why the two songs sound really similar in their music style and arrangement, with "Otoko no Iji" sounding more dramatic and intense. Could be due to it being about a man's pride, so some manliness had to be injected into it. By the way, Mizumori has been the one doing the composing duties for all of the singer's official singles.

(karaoke version)

"Otoko no Iji" peaked at 36th place on the regular charts, and besides his debut single "Yu no shigure" (湯の里しぐれ), the rest (7 in counting) have all cracked the Top 50... for exactly how long, I have no idea, but that's pretty respectable. Can't wait to hear his newest single, "Minato shigure" (港町しぐれ), that's gonna be released next week.

enkado.net

Come to think of it, whenever I see Ike-Teru, I see an Enka/Min'yo, more uncle-like version of Mae-Kiyo that doesn't goof around. Must be the droopy eyes and the suits. Oh, that answers my first question in the beginning of this article, huh?