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.
1. Arashi Beautiful World
2. AKB48 Koko ni Ita Koto
3. EXILE Negai no Tou
4. Lady Gaga Born This Way
5. Shojo Jidai GIRLS' GENERATION
6. Namie Amuro Checkmate!
7. KARA Super Girl
8. Keisuke Kuwata MUSICMAN
9. SMAP SMAP AID
10. Ikimonogakari Ikimonobakari: Members Best Selection
1. AKB48 Flying Get
2. AKB48 Everyday, Katyusha
3. AKB48 Kaze ga Fuiteiru
4. AKB48 Ue kara Mariko
5. AKB48 Sakura no Ki ni Narou
6. Arashi Lotus
7. Arashi Meikyuu Love Song
8. Kaoru to Tomoki Maru Maru Mori Mori!
Tama ni Mukku
9. SKE48 Pareo wa Emerald
10. Kis-My-Ft2 Everybody Go
Early in the lifetime of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I wrote about the quirky "Jenny wa Gokigen Naname"（ジェニーはご機嫌ななめ）originally performed by the band Juicy Fruits and then covered by a number of artists, notably a duo called hi-posi（ハイポジ）. In the article, I also mentioned that my first encounter with hi-posi was through this slightly avant-garde video that I saw one night on TV. Vocalist Miho Moribayashi（もりばやしみほ）definitely made an impression on me...looks and voice.
Well, I didn't know the title of the song back then but I finally found the video on YouTube. The title is "Shintai to Uta dake no Kankei" (A Relationship of Just Body and Song) which was their 2nd single from 1995. And yep, all that out-of-focus fuzziness, sometimes herky-jerky camera work and closeups of Moribayashi's face are back to enhance that dreamy nature of the song and its video. I think hi-posi must have represented the cool beatnik corner of Shibuya-kei especially with the singer's whispery voice. Her feathery vocals remind me of the voice of CHARA if that singer had decided to adorn herself in the atmosphere of beads and lava lamps.
Moribayashi (partnered with guitarist Kenji Kondo/近藤研二) came up with both words and music for "Shintai to Uta dake no Kankei" as she sensually encourages the listener to develop that relationship between body and music together. The lyrics are pretty vague but I think they pretty much come down to "making beautiful music together". No complaints here. A mini-album and a full album with the same title as the single were released in 1994 and 1995 respectively with the band's own translation of the title, "BODY meets SING".
Here I was lamenting about how current J-Pop didn't have the old soulful groove tunes of the late 1990s and early 2000s when I encountered this band called Suchmos through a browsing of YouTube last night.
I decided to try out this one song of theirs which had come out in January 2016, "STAY TUNE", and suddenly the good vibes came back. Memories of Misia, bird, Sing Like Talking and Jamiroquai came flooding back into my head and Suchmos provided me with a goodly dose of endorphins. This is some fine groovin' for a Friday night!
According to the Wikipedia bio of Suchmos, the group started up officially in 2013 and consists of six fellows who have known each other since grade school. And in the J-Wiki article on Suchmos, vocalist YONCE followed in his older sister's footsteps by taking up ballet at the tender age of 3 and listening/dancing to her favourite singers who were the aforementioned Misia, TLC and other R&B acts.
Suchmos covers a number of genres: rock, hip-hop, soul and jazz according to Wiki and J-Wiki but after giving a few more of their songs a shot, I think they are quite comfy in that third genre. Certainly I hope they stay comfy there, too. Apparently, the origin of the name Suchmos was derived from jazz legend's Louis Armstrong's nickname Satchmo.
YONCE, bassist HSU and the rest of the band took care of words and music for "STAY TUNE" which got as high as No. 10 on the Billboard Hot Japan 100. It also went Gold as the song was also included on Suchmos' 2nd EP, "LOVE&VICE" which peaked at No. 15 on Oricon after its release in January 2016. The song was also on the band's 2nd album"THE KIDS" which was released a day earlier.
Gonna have to keep my eye on these guys!
The music video was partially filmed on the 33rd floor of this
building in Roppongi Hills, the Mori Tower.
I came across some of this fellow's material on YouTube and when I saw that chanteuse Hitomitoi（一十三十一）was involved for one of his songs, I gave it a try. Nothing that broke the mold but it was still nice and sunny.
There's barely anything about this lad by the name of Dorian outside of a short blurb on this site called "felicity" but he has been doing his best to spread the word of gospel for urban dance music. I'm not quite sure that his "summer rich" with Hitomitoi would be something to boogie down to, but it does make for some pleasant listening. It's included on his third original album"Studio Vacation EP" which was released back in August 2011.
Along with Hitomitoi, Dorian has worked with folks like Towa Tei and ZEN-LA-ROCK. The only other information that I could find about him is that according to the music video for "summer rich", he can apparently shred a mean shovel!
I had been thinking about doing Yoshimi Iwasaki's（岩崎良美）"Koi Hodo Suteki na Show wa Nai"（恋ほど素敵なショーはない）, forgetting that nikala had beaten me to the punch a couple of years ago, and her description pretty much nailed my impressions of the song. Plus, I gave my response to it underneath. It's a wonderful, short and sweet tune that had me thinking Carpenters and was quite the revelation considering that my entire world view of Hiromi's（岩崎宏美）younger sister was tied with her most recognized song "Touch"（タッチ）. Therefore up until I started the blog, I only knew Yoshimi for a 1950s rock n' roll sound.
Gonna have to listen more to that lone Yoshimi BEST compilation that I got last Xmas. To paraphrase from my own article on her debut single"Aka to Kuro"（赤と黒）, I think she covered a larger area musically than earlier thought. There was that 1970s West Coast breeziness of "Koi Hodo Suteki na Show wa Nai", and then I believe I had read earlier through another one of nikala's other articles on Yoshimi that despite her status as an aidoru, she had actually ventured more into City Pop and J-AOR in her early years.
Despite that rock-like blast to introduce "Aka to Kuro" and intermittent interjections of brass, her debut quickly ventured into some of the usual sweeping aidoru tunes of that age. For tonight, I want to show her 3rd single"Anata Iro no Manon" (Manon of Your Colour) which embraces even more of the City Pop aesthetic while still hewing to those aidoru roots. Released in August 1980 and created by the same duo behind "Aka to Kuro", Rei Nakanishi and Fujimal Yoshino（なかにし礼・芳野藤丸）, the arrangement brings nothing less than life in the big city, thanks to that brass and bass plus the relentless guitar.
The one thing that had me scratching my head initially was the title. Was this about a French artist? For years, artists' names ranging from Chopin to C. Claudel have been used in kayo titles. However in this case, the title of this aidoru tune refers to the title of an early 18th-century novel by Abbe Prevost titled "Manon Lescaut". I'm just going by the Wikipedia article here but apparently the novel was about the title character, a young woman with a taste for the high life who forces her lover to scrounge about for the money and luxury to keep her happy.
In Yoshimi's song, the protagonist declares boldly "I am Manon Lescaut" although there is not much of a hint that she's stringing her boyfriend along aside from pretending to have sprained her ankle so that he would carry her home on his back. Mind you, I think most fans were just wondering at the time about who the heck Manon Lescaut was.
Still, it was pretty interesting to hear this mesh of French literature (very loosely, I know) and Japanese City Pop sung by an aidoru. Furthermore, I think I have mentioned it before but Yoshimi tried to follow in her older sister's larynx with that delicate yet fairly rich delivery in her early years. And to add more to my knowledge, the younger Iwasaki actually made it onto the Kohaku Utagassen for the first and only time to perform "Anata Iro no Manon" at the end of 1980 with the elder Iwasaki lending moral support, of course. There were three ladies in slinky green dresses behind her also providing backup chorus: singers Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）, Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）and Mako Ishino（石野真子）.
"Anata Iro no Manon" reached as high as No. 22 on Oricon and won Iwasaki a Newcomer's Prize at the Japan Record Awards that year.
On TV Japan just following the weekly "Uta Kon"（うたコン）on Tuesday nights, there has been that 10-minute vignette from NHK called "Ano Hito ni Aitai"（あの人に会いたい...I Want To Meet That Person）which focuses on a certain notable person who has left this mortal coil. Last night's focus was on Hiroshi Kamayatsu（かまやつひろし）, the singer and guitarist from Group Sounds band The Spiders（ザ・スパイダース）who had only passed away a few months ago in March.
Of course, a number of his songs during his time with The Spiders and on his own played in the background while we heard some of his comments over the decades. Most of the songs have already been covered in the pages of this blog, but I did hear something new, and that would be "Summer Girl" which came out in July 1966 as the band's 6th single. Written by Hiroto Sasaki（佐々木ひろと）and composed by Kamayatsu, the beach ballad has that bittersweet mood of love with a bit of appealing early Beatles rawness.
But I have to admit that the version by 80s pop band C-C-B is one of the few instances in which the cover actually sounds even better than the original. The arrangement by the band and Yasuo Sako（佐孝康夫）injects a lot of Beach Boys into C-C-B's take on summer love, and I have to say that the vocal delivery is a lot more solid, and it was a nice touch to have a Duane Eddy-like guitar instrumental in there, too. "Summer Girl" was included on C-C-B's 1985 album"Tanoshii Natsu Yasumi"（楽しい夏休み...Fun Summer Holiday）.
