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.
I
remember writing a post for Kakko’s
(or Anju Suzuki [鈴木杏樹], in Japan) PWL
debut single “We Should Be Dancing” a while ago. Now, I’m here with her second
and even more obscure single, “What Kind
Of Fool”, which – just like her debut – was released in 1990.
While
I wait for Kakko’s unreleased album to be oficially released one day, I have to
deal with the singles and some leaked songs from the album. From what I heard
so far, “What Kind Of Fool” is among the best in the girl’s already thin
catalogue – even though it wasn’t
produced directly by Stock, Aitken and Waterman (it was written by
Bill Clift and composed/arranged by “Mixmasters”
Phil Harding and Ian Curnow, famous names from the Hit
Factory’s floor)
Like
most of the songs composed by SAW and their creative team, “What Kind Of Fool”
is a dance-pop song with a bubbly chorus that sticks in your mind
combined with all the well known synth
gimmicks and flourishes that the Hit Factory loved to use. Like I said in “We
Should Be Dancing’s” post, Kakko + SAW is the epitome of kitsch.
Well, if “We Should
Be Dancing’s” flop wasn’t enough, “What Kind Of Fool” did little to help Kakko’s
career. In fact, her lack of success was so big that the Hit Factory didn’t release her already recorded full
studio album (something that SAW and Kakko’s fans are eagerly waiting for
more than 25 years). In her defense, some comments on YouTube argues that maybe
she was two years late to hit it big in England, but who knows...
Well, I got my semi-annual batch of CDs, thanks to the good folks at Tower Records and CD Japan, and one of them is a compilation of Mood Kayo classics titled "Showa no Yoru"(昭和の夜...A Showa Night). For years, I've been buying all these discs of pop music but I never had my own collection of the old-time music of Japanese bars and nightclubs despite the fact that I have been writing about a number of those songs on the blog. I finally rectified that situation.
A lot of those familiar classics were on the single disc and there were a few that I hadn't heard before. However, among that latter category, there was this one ballad which was the final song on the CD that I especially did enjoy. That was Akira Fuse's（布施明）"Sotto Oyasumi"(A Gentle Good Night) which I would solidly put into the jazz genre but since it is placed on a Mood Kayo hits album, I will throw it into that category into the Labels section as well.
This was released back in July 1970, a little over 5 years after Fuse's debut, and though there wasn't anything written about how well it did on the charts, I certainly feel that I've come across a little gem of a ballad. In past articles on the singer, I've mentioned on how he was one of those 70s kayo singers with the boomer voices, but in "Sotto Oyasumi", he gave his vocal cords a nice little break.
Written and composed by musician Kuni Kawachi（クニ河内）, I like this ballad since I've always been a sucker for a jazzy "good night" song. It's one of those standards that sounds like the perfect way to end a fine soiree in a downtown location. A few hours of dancing, drinking and chatting happily away come to this midnight denouement as the orchestra crooner, as exhausted as the partygoers, has enough boozy energy to send people home with a melodic and dreamy farewell. And Fuse provides that song through "Sotto Oyasumi". I've never been to an Akira Fuse concert but I'm pretty sure that this would be a nice way to finish things off for the night.
Of course, being a standard means that other folks have tried their hand at the ballad. Naomi Chiaki（ちあきなおみ）has given her slightly lighter version of "Sotto Oyasumi" with a Mood Kayo saxophone.
And there's even the Tough Guy himself, Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）. But I gotta say that Fuse's original is still the one to beat.
Early in the life of the blog, I wrote about the veteran singer-songwriter Iruka (イルカ...nee Toshie Hosaka/保坂としえ) since she provided me with one of the wonderful reasons that I got into Japanese pop music of the Showa Era in the first place, "Ame no Monogatari"（雨の物語）. And since then, I've discovered that she has delved into other heartrending pop ballads and even some of that modern City Pop stuff.
Although I had vaguely heard about this Japanese group called Shrieks（シュリークス）, I had no idea that Ms. Hosaka was even a member of this folk band. It had undergone a number of lineup changes since its inception in 1969 as a folk club at Waseda University, starting with three members starring Kazuo Kanbe（神部和夫）. Hosaka joined the group with the recording of their 4th single in April 1971 but two of the members left Shrieks, leaving just her and Kanbe.
There would be 5 more singles from the duo of Kanbe and Hosaka with their 2nd-last one being "Watashi wa Koukishin no Tsuyoi Onna" (I am a Very Curious Woman) which was released in December 1972. If it hadn't been for the writeup below the YouTube video, I wouldn't have initially recognized that it was indeed Iruka on vocals here. It's not often that I have heard the singer do something comical and even her voice sounded quite a bit less crinkly than I have been used to.
Written and composed by Kanbe, Hosaka sings about how much she enjoys her "exploration" of various men although she just cannot find that perfect match (it must have been really difficult in the pre-Internet days, eh?). It might have been a figment of my imagination, but listening to the first video higher up the article, I may have heard a few gasps from the audience when she sang the line of how she loved SEX. About a year or so ago, I was having a talk with one commenter on the blog about whether there were any message songs by Japanese songwriters, and I replied that the industry was most likely far more conservative in Japan than in the West, so not too many. Therefore, for Hosaka to frankly admit in song that she enjoyed the making the beast with two backs probably had more than a few fans popping their eyebrows at the time.
Shrieks broke up in 1973 after a total of 9 singles and 5 albums. A year later, Iruka would make her debut. Meanwhile, she and Kanbe would get married and have one son, Touma Kanbe（神部冬馬）, a singer-songwriter in his own right. Kazuo Kanbe passed away in 2007 at the age of 59 due to Parkinson's Disease.
First off, my admiration and respects to 6_6 tina for this wonderful drawing of the main characters of "Kimagure Orange Road"（きまぐれオレンジ☆ロード）, one of the quintessential anime from the 80s. I had just done an article on another Kanako Wada（和田加奈子）song the other day that had nothing to do with "KOR" so I thought I would do a KOR theme song today that had nothing to do with Wada.
Coincidentally, my anime buddy was playing his usual block of anison yesterday and that included a chunk of theme songs from that particular anime including the very first opening theme for "KOR", Masanori Ikeda's（池田政典）"Night of Summerside". I'm sure the producers for the anime version of the manga were probably knocking heads together about what type of song they would put in to introduce the story of Kyosuke, Madoka and Hikaru, and they obviously went with a tune that launched things off to a very zippy and urban tempo. Man, if those were indeed the opening credits to "Kimagure Orange Road" above, I would definitely recommend folks to watch them in a very well-lit room!
"Night of Summerside" was Ikeda's 3rd single from May 1987 and I was quite surprised on listening to it that the singer/actor/seiyuu was still only 20 years old when this was recorded. He sounded like an assured City Pop veteran who had been through the gamut of harbour-side and hotel-top bars. One commenter for one of the YouTube videos of the song remarked that the dynamic tune sounded so 80s, something that wasn't lost on me since there is something very Omega Tribe about the arrangement. And in fact, Kiyotaka Sugiyama（杉山清貴）, who had been the first vocalist for the very 80s Omega Tribe, was Ikeda's sempai in the same management company. According to Ikeda's bio on J-Wiki, Sugiyama presented Ikeda with a pair of his trademark sunglasses which Ikeda proceeded to wear when singing "Night of Summerside".
Yup, summery indeed. I had assumed that "Night of Summerside" was another collaboration between Chinfa Kan and Tetsuji Hayashi（康珍化・林哲司）who had whipped up a number of songs for the kayo-symbolic singers of summer, Omega Tribe and Anri（杏里）. However, as it turned out, Ikeda's representative tune was actually written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）and composed by the band NOBODY. It became the singer's first Top 10 hit by ranking in at No. 10. It would seem everyone was a winner with this one...success for singer and songwriters, and the successful launch of a legendary anime.
The J-Wiki bio also mentions that his music career ended sometime in the early 90s with Ikeda moving fully into acting.
The turn of the century in Japanese pop music was the period when Japanese R&B started coming into the fore. Folks like Hikaru Utada (at least, initially), Misia, m-flo and SOUL'd OUT were bringing this new wave in but then I saw and heard some of these other acts such as Heartsdales and then the target of this article today, Bennie K.
From what I've read about Bennie K's origins on Wikipedia, there is a sense that fate had a very strong hand here. The duo of Yuki and Cico were both born in Osaka and have the same family name of Yamamoto (common, though it is), and yet they were not related at all and Yuki soon left Osaka to be raised in Saga Prefecture in Kyushu. Their chance meeting happened one day while Yuki was doing a high school homestay in Los Angeles at Cico's aunt's house. Becoming fast friends during their time together in California, the homestay eventually ran its course with the two separating (but I'm assuming that they kept in touch) and pursuing their own music careers, only to meet up again and collaborate at a Christmas event. From then on, they were inseparable.
The process of gaining their group name of Bennie K was also quite interesting and I'll leave that up to you to look up at their Wikipedia entry. In any case, my first exposure to Yuki and Cico was through "Sunrise" which was actually their 8th single from September 2004, more than 3.5 years following their debut with "Melody".
Listening to "Sunrise" and watching the music video, the song which was created by Bennie K and Mine-Chang sounded like a tune that The B-52s hadn't sung or arranged. And since I was a big fan of that group's "Roam", I also liked "Sunrise" with the added rapping. The role allocation was interesting to see as well with Yuki being the singer and Cico the rapper...and man, could Cico rap at the speed of sound.
"Sunrise" ended up being Bennie K's first Top 10 hit, peaking at No. 10. It was also placed on the duo's 3rd album"Synchronicity" from November 2004. It hit No. 5 on the album charts and was the 71st-ranked release for 2005.
There was one other Bennie K song after "Sunrise" that I had seen on the music channels but other than that, I don't know much about what had happened before and what has been going on with them since. However, hearing the high-energy "Sunrise" for some months was enough for me to grab their CD single.
Another nice start to the weekend with one plus being I get to head out for dinner with friends and family tonight in Greektown. It's been a while since I've had some good souvlaki...not sure if I can handle that much food anymore but I can still give it the good ol' college try.
Moving on...since it is a very pleasant Saturday outside, I thought I would write about a just-as-pleasant-and-breezy number titled "If" by Kanako Wada（和田加奈子）. This was another track from her 6th album"dear" from 1989, and it's a medium-tempo song with some pep and tight hornsmanship (yes, new word). Do love those horns. Written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and composed by Chika Ueda（上田千華）, I'm not totally sure about the lyrics since Kanako breezes right through them and the print in the liner notes is so small, but I believe that they are about a woman who is about to happily leave a relationship that is not working. So the title is not merely a supposition but perhaps a very short and to the point ultimatum.
I fully realize that Wada was one of the more famous anison singers in the 80s, most notably for "Kimagure Orange Road", but I also like her for this little musical niche she had made for herself: nicely polished pop songs which won't cure disease but like a good house guest, come in, provide a good experience and never overstay their welcome.
Ahhh...yes, the old days of tokusatsu fun...high kicks, rubber suits and all. My brother and I remember them well. Of course, the original "Kamen Rider" was one such program from our childhood. In fact, my brother used to have a Halloween costume of the Japanese bug superhero. The neighbours couldn't figure out what he was supposed to be, but hey, he had a cool propeller on his belt.
Cue ahead 40 years or so. Last week my brother and his family came over for dinner. After that, we turned on TV Japan and it turned out the latest incarnation of the franchise "Kamen Rider Fourze" was on. It took me a couple of minutes to convince my brother that this was indeed a Kamen Rider. Couldn't blame him. The first time I saw Fourze, I had to convince myself that this was a Kamen Rider....evolution and rising special effects budget be damned.
I kinda felt the same way with the current Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）. As I've mentioned in past articles on the group, my period of interest in the Girl Group That Tsunku Built was really just within the years 1999-2001, so seeing this present incarnation known as Morning Musume '16, there was no one I could identify in it compared with the MM I knew back then with Yuko, Kaorin, Maki and the rest when they seemed to be all over the media. All I could say up to about a couple of weeks ago was "Wow! They're still alive".
One reason for the shriveling of interest was that I had felt that beyond 2001, Morning Musume started moving away from the disco-influenced tunes whipped up by Tsunku（つんく）and Dance Man. But then on a recent episode of "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, Morning Musume showed up (don't even know how many members there are right now) to perform a number that suddenly re-inflated my memories of the good ol' days.
And that number was "Utakata Saturday Night!" (Ephemeral Saturday Night!), their latest and 61st single from May 2016. Hurrah! I could see a figurative disco ball in that performance and some of that good-time dynamic dancing. Mind you, John Travolta would still look rather pensive at the sight but hey, it was nice to see a let's-have-a-party MM again.
I don't know the current members and in fact, I don't know the person behind the making of the song. I was surprised that it wasn't Tsunku and Dance Man but a guitarist and the leader of another all-female group called Akai Koen（赤い公園...Red Park）by the name of Maisa Tsuno（津野米咲）. But I still like the results. My personal favourites will always be "The Peace!"（ザ☆ピ～ス！）and "Love Machine"（LOVEマシーン）but it's nice for the current franchise to bring back a bit of "Saturday Night Fever" even if it may just be this once.
So far, "Utakata Saturday Night!" has peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and I'll be interested in seeing how it places on the yearly rankings. Actually, this particular song is sandwiched as a single with two other tunes to officially be called "Utakata Saturday Night!/The Vision/Tokyo to Iu Katasumi"（泡沫サタデーナイト!/The Vision/Tokyoという片隅...A Corner Called Tokyo）. Of course, it's still many months away from the Kohaku Utagassen selections but it would be nice to have Morning Musume come to the stage to do this particular number.
