Mina Aoe -- Shinjuku Saturday Night （新宿サタデー・ナイト）

Happy weekend! Well, I'm still a few hours shy of the actual evening but it's still Saturday, so I've decided to put in a bit of Mood Kayo via the smoky vocals of the late Mina Aoe（青江三奈）. Her 13th single "Shinjuku Saturday Night" from December 1968 is another one of her geographically-based songs topped off with a small bit of her scatting. Kaori Mizumori（水森かおり）may be the current Queen of Regional Songs but I think Aoe may have worn the tiara some decades ago.

(karaoke version)

Written by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composed by Yoichi Suzuki（鈴木庸一）, "Shinjuku Saturday Night" is that bittersweet ballad of lovers meeting up in the titular happening place to be in Tokyo only for one of them having to inevitably head back up to his hometown in Nagano Prefecture after the tryst. But the way the song sounds, it seems as if the parting is just temporary. It might be too bad that the night is over but the fellow will probably be back next week or the week after. That trumpet and the rest of the orchestra are just having too cheerful a time.

I may have already told you once on the blog but Shinjuku is basically split up into three parts now: the new commercial area of South Shinjuku centered around that new JR station annex and the nearly 2-decade-old Takashimaya Times Square, the hotel district of West Shinjuku and the oldest area of bars, restaurants and red-light facilities in East Shinjuku. Back at the time when "Shinjuku Saturday Night" was released, perhaps East Shinjuku with Golden Gai and Kabukicho was indeed the place to be, but it's hard to imagine the time when the district was devoid of those skyscrapers and hotels in West Shinjuku. Incidentally, the funky song playing in the above video of Shinjuku of the 1970s is Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Omoide no Screen"（思い出のスクリーン）.

Shinjuku was sometimes the place that my friends and I would head to for a movie and dinner. I could get pretty much anything I wanted for food there....from Kumamoto ramen to Italian fare, although the branches of McDonalds in the area were probably the establishments that got most of my yen. Well, hey, I was a jobbing English teacher...going to a ryotei was simply not within my budget.

Mondo Grosso -- Family

Earlier this afternoon, I was writing about Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）weaving his City Pop magic for Anri（杏里）and her 1983 album "Timely!!", but the day before, I had come across this song on YouTube which took me back to my good old days of R&B back in the late 70s and early 80s. And it was produced by another artist who also wove some fine magic for various other artists.

This was "Family" by 90s musician-producer Mondo Grosso (aka Shinichi Ozawa/大沢伸一). Released in 1995 as a single, it also came out as a track in his album "Born Free" which came out in the same year. Listening to it, I couldn't help but shimmy a bit since the arrangement had me thinking about Stevie Wonder. Great horns and funky/mellow keyboards. It's just so nice and cool. It's no wonder that there were some wonderful tunes later on by songbirds such as Bird and BoA.

"Family" is a cover of the 1980 original by jazz flutist/saxophonist Hubert Laws with his sister Debra Laws providing those happy and velvety vocals. Now I'd be interested in hearing some more from the Laws' family. But I have to ask who the vocalist was in the Mondo Grosso cover. Was it Debra again or someone new? Inquiring minds want to know.

Anri -- Timely!!

Well, after hearing the album a couple of more times in recent days and then listening to the individual tracks on YouTube, I finally decided to write about the entire album known as "Timely!!", Anri's（杏里）6th album from December 1983, after having already written about a few of its other tracks over the years, such as "Windy Summer" and my recent "Remember Summer Days" which was added onto a remastered version of the album.

City Pop maestro (and all you Vaporwave/Future Funk fans out there, track him down and kiss his ring!) Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）produced "Timely!!". In "Japanese City Pop", Kadomatsu had given full kudos and recommendations to the album "Awakenings" by the late Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）as one of the quintessential City Pop albums of the decade. However, I think he shouldn't sell himself short here since I think this particular project by him and Anri also deserves to stand along "Awakenings" in terms of the genre. Despite its release date near Xmas, the title "Timely!!" seems quite worthy as a happy reminder of the summer that passed and the one to come.

(full album)

Kadomatsu took care of all of Track 3 (7:15), "Stay By Me", another uptempo beach-friendly classic, notable for the punch of Masaki Matsubara's guitar and the horns. If there is one thing that was great about Kadomatsu in those early 80s, he did like a good and tight brass section which was arranged here by Jun Sato.

Anri was responsible for the words and music for Track 4 (10:53) "A Hope From Sad Street". There is some interesting dreamy synthesizer work by Keishi Urata to go along with that fresh morning feeling as the heroine starts to come out of her post-breakup funk and stride back into the life of the city with that coffee and cinnamon bun. Kadomatsu was on guitar here.

The relaxing and reassuring "You Are Not Alone" was most likely the last song on Side A of the original LP. Written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）and composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, I'm starting to get the feeling that Hayashi loved that flugelhorn back then in his ballads. Anri's vocals soar nicely here alongside Matsubara's guitar solo at the end. A very nice sunset song.

Intermission

Grammar aside, "Shyness Boy" is the one song out of the album that really stands out for me. For a tune about falling in love with that bashful guy, Kadomatsu's creation has got a lot of soaring brass oomph, those bright Anri vocals, and even a tribute to the Doobie Brothers in the arrangement. And it also sounds as if it just incorporates a lot of daytime and nighttime feelings into its short 3-minute-and-change time.

The final track on the original LP "Good Night For You" (before the addition of "Remember Summer Days" in the remastered edition) is a wonderful way to finish up the album. Starting off with a gospel blues piano riff, it goes off into a dreamy direction as Anri gets everyone to turn off the lights and turn down the bed after a worthy day (or album). Some nice guitar work here too by Tsunehide Matsuki. The chorus consisting of Kadomatsu (words and music), Yurie Kokubu and Yoshihiko Kadomatsu (a relative?) sends everyone gently off into that good night.

I still have a couple of more songs on the tracks left before considering "Timely!!" complete but I'll leave those as a follow-up. Anyways, the album is one of my personal City Pop favourites. Plus, it did hit No. 1 on Oricon and what I didn't get on J-Wiki was that it was also the 10th-ranked album of 1984, according to entamedata. Listening to this one, I can remind myself of how wonderful those Anri-Kadomatsu collaborations were back in the day.

Then again, with a very pretty young lady from Kanagawa Prefecture with a fine voice, some great album photography and splendid songs by one of the City Pop princes, how could it lose? :)

Miyuki Imori -- Hitomi no Chikai （瞳の誓い）

Ahhhh....Miyuki Imori（井森美幸）. She has been one of the chatty and cheerful tarento mainstays on Japanese TV for years and years. Of course, she's also appeared on tons of commercials and I remember her especially for her work for Mondamin Mouthwash. Incidentally, she hails from the prefecture where I had resided over a quarter-century ago, Gunma Prefecture, although she was born (1968) and raised in the southwestern part of the province while I was assigned up north in the Japanese Alps. Apparently her hometown of Shimonita is famous for its green onions.

If she has a best friend on TV, it would be former aidoru Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）since I always saw them together in some cooking segment on one of the morning wide shows, and I believe they were fellow panelists on the monomane specials.

In 1984, she entered the 9th Annual Horipro Tarento Scout Caravan by Hori Productions, one of the big talent agencies, and won the Grand Prix over 120,000 other hopefuls including actress Honami Suzuki（鈴木保奈美）of "Tokyo Love Story".

Then in April 1985, Imori made her official debut as an aidoru with "Hitomi no Chikai" which has been translated as "Promise On Your Eyes" in the music video (unfortunately taken down) and as "Swear By My Eye" in the Wiki article for the lass. Although written and composed by the big duo of Chinfa Kan and Tetsuji Hayashi（康珍化・林哲司）, it is pretty much a run-of-the-mill aidoru tune that isn't horrible but will probably disappear from my memories within several minutes (mind you, they were responsible for a big hit for another singer). Then again, the vast majority of songs ever sung by the huge throng of 80s aidoru would be classified similarly. Still, "Hitomi no Chikai" did OK on the charts, peaking at No. 32, and winning her the Excellent Newcomer Emerald Award at the Megalopolis Song Festival. She released another 5 singles up to 1989 along with one original album and two BEST compilations many years later.

(Unfortunately the video has been taken down.)

Here is Imori performing her debut song on an episode of "Utaban" (うたばん) with hosts Takaaki Ishibashi and Nakai-kun looking humourously bemused. I'm surprised that the former fellow didn't just attack her as he usually would. Looking at her swaying and bouncing around like that, I think that seemed to have been the default "choreography" for an 80s aidoru since I've seen many a teenybopper girl from the earlier years do those movements.

And speaking about "choreography" (I'm retaining my quotation mark rights for a reason here), Imori is also notorious for a dance number she did in her audition at that Horipro Tarento Scout Caravan in 1984. It has apparently gained legendary status and like those annoying parents who pull out the video or photographs of their daughter (much to her horror) doing something embarrassing in her early years, Imori's fellow tarento like to pull out that footage occasionally to get her screaming and to educate/remind viewers. I've seen the audition many times now on TV and she kinda looks like Barney the Dinosaur on Red Bull.

However, showing that she's a good sport with a sense of humour, she didn't resist too much at being teased about that very same dance years later.

With her debut in 1985, her contemporaries are Minako Honda（本田美奈子）, Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）, Yui Asaka（浅香唯）, Yuki Saito（斉藤由貴）, Yoko Minamino（南野陽子） and the Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）among others. And according to her profile on the Horipro website, one of her talents is ripping magazines. Well, I gather after being razzed about her dance video all these decades, she has probably gotten quite good at it.

Orquesta De La Luz -- Salsa ni Kokyo wa nai (サルサに国境はない)

I just saw on the NHK Morning News within the last 15 minutes that Prime Minister Abe has quietly made his first trip to Cuba. He's already met Fidel and Raul Castro, and I'm going to assume that he and his staff will be trying to bring Japanese-Cuban relations closer through some signed agreements.

However, there was already a much earlier cultural attempt through the formation of the fantastic salsa band Orquesta De La Luz all the way back in 1984 with singer NORA. So I've decided to bring in a bit of Latin flavor tonight in commemoration of this historic visit and showcase a 1991 song that was released by the band "Salsa ni Kokyo wa nai" (Salsa No Tiene Frontera) or "Salsa Without Borders" in English.

Written and composed by NORA, "Salsa ni Kokyo wa nai", the lyrics that are flashing on the screen in the video above seem to be telling about the story of the band itself and how people needn't be locked into just one country's music. Totally agree with that and I got a blog to illustrate that. Man, I love those sharp horns!

I'm not going to pretend that I know the intricacies of salsa music and perhaps NORA would admonish me that the music of Orquesta De La Luz doesn't need to be a think piece. It's supposed to be a platform to have tons of fun...preferably on the dance floor. One other reason that I put up the band tonight is that it's been well over 4 years (basically since the start of "Kayo Kyoku Plus") that I first wrote up about the band through their amazing cover of "Watashi wa Piano"（私はピアノ）as originally sung by Mizue Takada（高田みづえ）and the songwriter behind it, Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）of Southern All Stars. Definitely they were due for another article and this time, it's one of their own songs.

Their 2nd album was given the same title in 1991 and went Platinum, but a couple of years later, Orquesta De La Luz was able to sing the title track at the Kohaku Utagassen. 1993 was indeed a banner year for the band as their latest album at that time "La Aventura" was nominated for a Grammy Award and they were even awarded with the United Nations Peace Medal.

Yuuichi Nakamura -- Grizzly-san no G☆ROCK (グリズリーさんのG☆ROCK)

Some of the funnier scenes during the yearlong run of "Shirokuma Cafe" (しろくまカフェ) in 2012-2013 involved Grizzly, Shirokuma's bestie (or should I say beastie), since he easily became flustered or frustrated with the antics of his old friend and some of the other patrons at the Shirokuma Cafe. I'm not sure if it had also been the case in the original manga but in the anime, Grizzly started out as a recurring role but near the end of the series, it seems as if he got promoted to co-star. All the better for all of us.

Yuuichi Nakamura（中村悠一）was the one who played the gruff (but with a heart of gold) bruin owner of his own bar, and since getting to know the seiyuu for the first time from that role, I've seen him play the romantically clueless Nozaki-kun in "Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun"（月刊少女野崎くん）in 2014, the sullen Hazuki from "Natsuyuki Rendezvous"（夏雪ランデブー）which aired in the same year as "Shirokuma Cafe", and currently the kindly widowed father in the foodie fave "Amaama to Inazuma"（甘々と稲妻）during this summer. However, he never got to sing any of the theme songs for those anime although I do have him represented on the blog as one of the Matsuno sextuplets singing the earworm "Six Same Faces" for "Osomatsu-san"（おそ松さん）.

Excerpt only at iTunes.

However, Nakamura got his time behind the recording mike at the end of a few episodes of "Shirokuma Cafe" in character as Grizzly with "Grizzly-san no G☆ROCK" (Grizzly's G☆ROCK) which was written and composed (as all of the ending themes have been) by Saki（紗希）. Grizzly has always been the passionate buddy in the group with his hair-trigger temper and his cries of "Enjo, enjo!"（炎上、炎上！...Burn it up, burn it up!）, and he brings a lot of that energy to his own ending theme which was the second in the series. It's done like an old 50s or 60s rock n' roll tune that any of those old pompadour-sporting and hip-twisting teens in Harajuku of the late 70s and early 80s would have gyrated to. I'm not sure if his pride would allow it but Grizzly could set up his own sock hop at BAR THE GRIZZLY. Speaking of which, Grizzly even has his own instrumental theme as heard below...perfect with that glass of I.W. Harper.

Tohoku Shinkansen -- Summer Touches You

Yup, summer is indeed coming to an end for another year, and though I'm not sure how the season was where most of you are, outside of Toronto and Japan, it was definitely a scorcher here in T.O. And I'm saying this as a fellow who lived 17 summers in the Tokyo area where I used to swim not walk through the atmosphere. To be honest, I'm not a huge summer fan in terms of the humidity so I'm quite glad that fall weather may finally look kindly upon us in a few days' time.

So perhaps it is appropriate that before summer officially goes out like a lion, I throw in one more summery song...or at least something with the word "summer" in the title. And here I have Tohoku Shinkansen's（東北新幹線）"Summer Touches You" from their lone 1982 album "Thru Traffic".

A few weeks ago, I encountered my first song by this duo consisting of guitarist Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）and songwriter Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）from the same album, the oh-so-comfy "Tsuki ni Yorisotte"（月に寄りそって）. Well, "Thru Traffic" starts off with "Summer Touches You", a mid-tempo number created and sung by Narumi that has a great City Pop intro and some nice George Benson-style canoodling on the guitar. The fellow on the Japanese-language music blog "Music Avenue" keyed me in on the Benson comparison, and he remarked that as soon as he had heard those first few measures of "Summer Touches You", he was assured that "Thru Traffic" was going to be one solid album.

I actually looked for the album at my usual sources of Tower Records and CD Japan in the hopes of purchasing it but unfortunately it's not there anymore. There were a few copies of it at Amazon but the cheapest one in the lot started from the 7000-8000 yen range which is way too rich for my blood. At this rate, I can only hope that one of the readers of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" is a Tower or CDJ procurement employee who could somehow aim to get a few of those CD versions back on sale for "Thru Traffic". Pretty please.

Let's all look forward to autumn!