KMM Dan -- Saturday Night Witches

I think this might strike readers from outside of North America rather ironically but currently there is a massive snowstorm smashing into the eastern half of the United States while Canada stays quite calm. CNN is doing a full court press.

Meanwhile, KMM Dan（KMM団）will probably have a grand old time at the karaoke box singing this tune, if the above video is any indication. Yup, it's been a couple of years but I'm finally putting up the other song by the group of seiyuu involved in "Witchcraft Works". Not as much of an earworm as "Witchcraft Activity", "Saturday Night Witches" was also written and composed by the technopop unit TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN FUND as an interesting tribute to what I think is old 80s synthpop. It's not quite full funky R&B and not quite full New Wave but it is an intriguing Japanese tribute to the music of the big hair, gaudy makeup and broad shoulders that was all the rage back in the decade of my high school and university years.

In terms of the lyrics, it's all about having a great time downtown tripping the light fantastic, preferably without the gigantic violent bunnies. I very barely head out on Saturday nights nowadays so there is definitely a natsukashii element listening to "Saturday Night Witches"...all those old discos, trips to Kuri and late-night midnight snacks.

tohko -- Bad Luck On Love ~ Blues On Life ~

Throughout the 4 years that I've been writing on this blog, I was scouring my brain for a particular singer that I had vaguely been able to remember back in the 90s. At the time, the name escaped me although I could remember an album cover of hers, but when I was writing the Creator article for Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）, my memories finally divulged the name: tohko.

For a while, she seemed to be the It girl on the charts as the music video for her debut single, "Bad Luck On Love ~ Blues on Life ~" got heavy rotation on the various music shows. Released in January 1998, it was written by Marc Panther from globe and composed by Daisuke Hinata（日向大介）. Even though, the song wasn't directly a Tetsuya Komuro creation, there was something about the sound which fairly hinted at his involvement as producer. Plus, at the time she reminded me quite a lot of TK's then-ingenue (or not...not quite sure how long the relationship lasted) Tomomi Kahala（華原朋美）. The reason that I could remember her at last was because her name (which was then written as トーコ until her 3rd single) was listed as being one of the Komuro Family.

However, "Bad Luck On Love" has a more down-to-earth sound to go with the girl-next-door look of tohko. When I was re-acquainting myself with the song, I have to admit that I couldn't quite remember the verses but then when the refrain came out...ahh...now I could since it was always that part of the video which was shown on programs like "CD Countdown". Nowadays, my exposure to the latest Japanese pop music has mostly been restricted to anison and the AKB stuff so that it is nice to hear some of the mellower late 20th-century material again.

"Bad Luck On Love" peaked at No. 14 (spent 9 straight weeks in the Top 20) and went Platinum before becoming the 72nd-ranked song for 1998. It was also a track on tohko's debut album, "Tohko"（籐子）from August of that year which went all the way to No. 3.

As for the singer herself, she was born Tomoko Saito（斉藤朋子）in 1977 in Tokyo. She was a member of the Otowa Yurikago Kai（音羽ゆりかご会）, a very famous children's choir which has performed a ton of anime and tokusatsu songs. When she graduated junior high school, she had tried to enter the prestigious Takarazuka Music Academy but failed the 2nd round of examinations.

Asako Toki with Sho Wada from TRICERATOPS -- Human Nature

I remember Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" getting heavy rotation on the radio back in the early 1980s and also in my ears and heart. It was a wonder that I didn't rush out and get "Thriller" in those days but it wouldn't be until well into my time teaching in Tokyo that I finally got the classic album. By that time, I was no longer listening to radio so hearing the song again (and every other song) fired off waves of nostalgia for the R&B of my youth.

Speaking of my Tokyo days, I have to give my thanks to Tower Records since it was there that I had first heard of Asako Toki（土岐麻子）, the chanteuse of contemporary mellow pop. It was often the case that I entered the huge Shibuya branch and when I got onto the 2nd floor, there was a display of one of her albums. Always interested in giving artists that I had never heard a chance, I put the headphones on when her 2011 BEST compilation of covers and commercial songs "LIGHT!" was first released. Among one of the tracks was her own version of "Human Nature" with Sho Wada（和田唱）from the rock band TRICERATOPS. Suitably mellow and more acoustic than the original by Jackson, I was quite struck at how close Wada sounded to the legendary Michael.

In any case, the duet by Toki and Wada plus some of the other tracks (one of them is "Gift", a duet with EPO) did the trick and I bought my first Toki album. But actually, her version of "Human Nature" originally came out on her 13th studio album from 2010, "Ranhansha Girl"（乱反射ガール...Girl of Diffuse Reflection）which I would also purchase some time later. It would peak at No. 32 on the album charts.

Mina Aoe -- Ikebukuro no Yoru （池袋の夜）

As many people who have lived in Tokyo will attest, the megalopolis has a number of city centres. Shibuya is the Mecca of Youth, Akihabara is the Electronics Haven and Shinjuku has got that split personality of tall skyscrapers and tightly packed bars and red-light establishments. Ikebukuro, though, is that amalgam of city centres that could just be an overall downtown, albeit a fairly dense one. It has the youth, it has the electronics stores and it has that one big tower in the form of Sunshine City 60 plus its fair share of seedy bars. I've visited the area as much as I have the other centres and I think I can say that Ikebukuro comes across the jack of all trades compared to the specialists of Shibuya and Akiba. It's got a bit of everything.

Therefore, I cannot be surprised that this hustling and bustling area also has a kayo in tribute to it, and it's done by the husky-voiced lady of class, Mina Aoe（青江三奈）. "Ikebukuro no Yoru" (A Night in Ikebukuro), Aoe's 16th single from July 1969, has lyrics by Shizuo Yoshikawa（吉川静夫）which go over the usual pining over a lost love affair in the particular area.  However the music by Masanobu Tokuchi（渡久地政信）has more of an enka feeling than a Mood Kayo one although I can still envisage Aoe crooning away in some smoke-filled bar somewhere between JR Ikebukuro Station and Sunshine City 60.

"Ikebukuro no Yoru" became Aoe's biggest hit, selling over a million records and spending 6 straight weeks at No. 1. It would later become the 7th-ranked song for 1969 and it had enough push to even become the 30th-ranked song for 1970. Not surprisingly, it earned a spot for the singer on the 1969 Kohaku Utagassen as the top batter and also a Japan Record Award.

Taeko Ohnuki -- Romantique (Follow-up)

This is a follow-up on an article I did all the way back in 2012 on singer-songwriter Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）4th studio album, "Romantique" from 1980. As I mentioned in that article, "Romantique" was a change in direction for the former member of Sugar Babe who had hit a rut of sorts a couple of years back. It was notable for incorporating some of that trendy technopop spearheaded by her friends in Yellow Magic Orchestra and a more exotic European sound compared to the New Music and City Pop that she had been writing and performing. You might say that this was even Newer Music.

In the other article, I covered the synth-driven "Carnaval", the quirky "Decade Night" and the wistful "Ame no Yoake"（雨の夜明け）which has the synths combined with her new European sound. In this article, I have a couple of more tracks, "Bohemian" and "Hatenaki Ryojo"（果てなき旅情）.

"Bohemian" continues from "Ame no Yoake" with the combo of Euro and synths. However, it also contains some further and interesting mixing of some gently pulsating Latin rhythms at the beginning followed by an elegiac waltz before those rhythms return to extend into a melody of life in the big city with Ohnuki making shoutouts to New York and Hollywood. According to a 1983 interview in the journal "Music Steady" via J-Wiki, she mentioned that the bohemian in the title referred to her. As she put it, it was about "That one person having the dream and heading out to succeed in one city, and if he/she fails in grabbing that chance, heading over to the next city to try again". Perhaps the song was inspired by those several months between "Romantique" and her previous album "Mignonne" when she was thinking about what to do with her career. Just from listening to the music, it seems as if she were portraying some of that early angst before the melody lightened up considerably signalling her getting back down to brass tacks.

"Hatenaki Ryojo" (The Neverending Mood of Traveling) is another fascinating track that just sweeps through like a romantic epic. It is also reminiscent of "Bohemian" in that Ohnuki describes a woman looking for love and her life's work although instead of moving around America, this lass is jumping from city to city in Europe. There is that sense of her waiting on train platforms for not just the train but also for what could be the next big opportunity in romance. That mandolin in the instrumental bridge might represent one extended adventure in one exotic country.

So it looks like a couple of these tracks shows a bit of wanderlust on Ohnuki's part.

I dunno but this photo makes her look slightly elfin.

Tazumi Toyoshima -- Tomadoi Twilight （とまどいトワイライト）

Tazumi "TAZZ" Toyoshima（豊島たづみ）is a Fukuoka-born singer-songwriter who I first found out about through one of the CDs in the "Good Times Diva" series with her song "Tomadoi Twilight" (The Bewildering Twilight) from February 1979. Showing that Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）wasn't just their only client, Ryudo Uzaki and Yoko Aki（宇崎竜童・阿木燿子）created this atmospheric ballad about a woman going through the sufferings of loneliness. The heroine seems to be spending her nights at the bars surrounded by the usual barflies only to come home to an empty room.

Although the lyrics hint at life in the big city, the music has a bit more of a countryside feeling due to those pan flutes (?) that are part and parcel of the original melody. Momoe may have sounded like the toughest suffer-no-fools-period woman of the city, but Tazumi's delivery of "Tomadoi Twilight" has a more crackly quality as if that same woman Momoe had portrayed was now a wiser, sadder and more resigned veteran now simply going through the motions of hitting the watering holes and hoping beyond hope that someone would even greet her with a friendly word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_IMLeWCxy0

Of the 10 singles that Toyoshima has released, this was arguably her most famous song as it peaked at No. 19 on Oricon, becoming the 78th-ranked song of the year and selling almost 150,000 copies. The sad ballad also became the theme song for a 1979 TBS drama titled "Tatoeba, Ai"（たとえば、愛...For Example, Love）about a popular radio DJ who's caught between her current husband and her previous one.

Chikuzen Sato/Superfly -- Desperado

A few celebrities have passed on in the past several days. David Bowie was one with actor Alan Rickman coming very quickly after (loved him as the deliciously villainous Hans Gruber in the original "Die Hard"). And now I have found out that Glenn Frey of The Eagles also left this mortal coil earlier today.

I was not an Eagles fan but certainly through the karaoke bars and boxes, I've heard enough takes on "Hotel California", and the band was almost right up there with The Beatles, The Ventures and Carpenters in terms of popularity in Japan. In fact, the first teacher I worked with on the JET Programme was an Eagles fan and I think part of the reason for him being so musical was his love for the music of Frey and Don Henley. Of course, my connection with him was through his work in the 1980s with his pop hits of "The Heat Is On" and "You Belong To The City".

However one of the most hauntingly beautiful ballads that I have heard was "Desperado" as sung by Frey. My own rule on the blog as applies to me is not to feature the same singer twice in a month, but I wanted to give my own tribute to Frey through a couple of cover versions by Japanese artists, one who was just put up a few days ago.

Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）gives an absolutely beautiful bluesy version of "Desperado" on his 1995 "Cornerstones" album. Perhaps not through his voice, but melodically, he may have been channeling Ray Charles though the synths were a bit twee.

Then, there is Superfly's version which came out on her 2010 album "Cover Songs: Complete 'Track 3'". I couldn't help but be reminded of Linda Ronstadt singing the song while listening to Superfly.

Of course, I will leave off the man himself. I'm not a religious person by any means but if I were, I can imagine that both Bowie and Frey must be having one heck of a jam session right now.