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.
A couple of days ago, I was talking about that "Techno Kayo"（テクノ歌謡）album and its first track, the somewhat wacky "Uchuujin Wana Wana"（宇宙人ワナワナ）by Apache（アパッチ）.
Well, the second track has got its own technopop milieu as well although it's a bit less flighty. One reason is that it is composed and performed by the great Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）who has dabbled with a number of genres but for "Akogare no Radio Girl" （Radio Girl of My Dreams）, it seems to be a hybrid.
Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, it's all about a man falling in love with a late-night female radio DJ but for me, it's Minami's music that hooked me in. Seemingly a mixture of 50s/60s American pop filtered through synthesizers and all sorts of other technology, I'm kinda wondering if the singer was also into a bit of ELO.
"Akogare no Radio Girl" came out as Minami's 7th single in 1980 and as the first track on his 5th album"Montage" that was released in May of the same year.
1. Namie Amuro Finally
2. SMAP SMAP 25 Years
3. Arashi untitled
4. AKB48 Thumbnail
5. back number Encore
6. Sandaime J Soul Bros. The JSB World
7. Nogizaka46 Umarete kara Hajimete Mita Yume
8. Kanjani Eight Jam
9. Keyakizaka46 Masshiro na Mono wa Yogoshitakunaru
10. Hey! Say! JUMP Hey! Say! JUMP 2007-2017 I/O
Did see "The Last Jedi" yesterday. Despite some nice scenes, I could only give it 5 or 6 out of 10 frankly speaking. A lot of logic lacking, it has.
It's a Sunday so perhaps it would be pleasant to have a couple of tunes by Sing Like Talking today. Just about 6 years ago, I wrote about SLT's 8th album from 1995, "Discovery" and the fact that it was indeed a discovery. There have been a few tracks left out and one of them was "Keeps Me Runnin'", a good and tight AOR number with a fine brass section positing in some spike. It's still pretty mellow although it keeps up a good clip with Chiaki Fujita and Chikuzen Sato（藤田千章・佐藤竹善）behind words and music. Furthermore, according to some of the comments, it does get some of the folks runnin'.
I could never find this on YouTube or on any of the other video sites but I finally have to mention SLT's marvelous cover of "Time After Time". Yes, Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time". I remember hearing and seeing the original version countless times on television here since it was such a popular ballad following her breakthrough "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" in the early 1980s.
My personal opinion but I think Chikuzen and company's take on "Time After Time" makes the song even more appealing to me. Finding the song on the iTunes site, it's merely an excerpt but it's good enough to let folks know what the arrangement is like. There is an influence from some Western band but for the life of me, I can't identify it (hopefully someone can help me out there)...is it Electric Light Orchestra, Tom Petty, George Harrison? In any case, that loopy and soaring refrain there is amazing. From what I could find out is that SLT's "Time After Time" was placed as one of the new tracks for the band's June 2001 BEST album"Round About".
Man, another cold one out there...the high today will be a frigid -16 degrees Celsius or perhaps +2 degrees Fahrenheit. No matter which side of the US/Canada border you live on, it's still frozen living. Will be heading out in a few hours to finally catch "The Last Jedi". To be honest, I don't have a lot of high expectations for it considering what I've read although one particular local newspaper movie critic is still in awe. People have told me that it's actually a bit better than "The Force Awakens" but that doesn't say much to me.
Anyways, those are my admittedly curmudgeonly two (non-existent Canadian) cents on George Lucas' magnum opus. Moving on...there are also plenty of folks (including my parents and a few friends) who griped as usual about the weirdness and unappealing participants in this past Kohaku Utagassen. I'm more sanguine about it. Musical tastes change and I'm willing to watch the various acts (well, the majority of them) with a happy heart.
Still, I'm grateful for the enka acts that can still come on. In a way, the genre is a nice connection to the past broadcasts. Plus, I didn't have to wait too long in the show for one of the big leaguers to perform. Enka bidanshi prince Keisuke Yamakawa（山内惠介）was second batter up for the White team to do his hit, "Ai ga Shinjirarenainara" (If You Don't Believe in My Love).
Released in March 2017, Yamakawa croons the familiar trope of love done wrong. The melody by Hideo Mizumori（水森英夫）has got that extra twang of electric guitar and a fairly galloping beat which, along with the broken romance theme, can put it into Mood Kayo. But there is still something about it which sounds enka at the same time; perhaps it's Yamakawa himself. Kiyoshi Matsuo（松尾潔）provides the script about the woman in Yamakawa's life who will no longer accept his courtship.
Happy to say that "Ai ga Shinjirarenainara" broke the Top 10 and made it up to No. 6. Enka may be lessening its presence on the Kohaku but it's nice to see that it still has its fans, hopefully young people among them. I know Noelle is a dedicated follower of enka and Mood Kayo as am I but if there are any other young adults out there who also love these genres, feel free to chime in.
As I said in the last article, I listened to my Techno Kayo compilation album...and yes, despite the cover, I did buy it for the songs. Plus to give credit where credit is due, my impetus to get this CD in the first place was reading contributor nikala's wonderful article on her love for the genre.
Before I stumbled on the story about the Minor Tuning Band, I had been intending to write about the first track on the album, "Uchuujin Wana Wana" (Alien Tremble Tremble) by the aidoru group Apache（アパッチ）. This was the trio of women, Miwako Abe（阿部美和子）, Miwako Ohta（太田美知子）and Yasuyo Yazawa（矢沢泰代）, who were successfully auditioned to become the TV face for the Minor Tuning Band once their kayo medley "Soul Korekkiri desu ka"（ソウルこれっきりですか）transformed into a hit back in 1976.
But once they performed that song, Apache continued on for a few more years as a performing trio with 7 singles between 1977 and 1980. Their 6th single happened to be "Uchuujin Wana Wana" from July 1979. I don't know how Apache got into the techno kayo but my impression is that a lot of singers and bands wanted to get into the action of synthesizers and vocoders once Yellow Magic Orchestra showed that computer music can be fun and profitable.
And it sounds like "Uchuujin Wana Wana", which was written by Tetsuya Chiaki（ちあき哲也）and composed by Makoto Yano（矢野誠...first husband of Akiko Yano）, wanted to go into the Space Invaders route. I can't say that it is my favourite track on the Techno Kayo album by any means but it certainly sounds like a What If sort of song in that I could pose "What if Candies had continued for a few more years and gone technopop?".
Not directly related to the song but in the J-Wiki article about Techno Kayo itself, the writer posited that the Pink Lady（ピンク・レディー）hit "Southpaw"（サウスポー）from 1978 may have been the first kayo to try technopop through the usage of some syn-drums. Perhaps a baton was indeed passed. Ironically, my album does have Pink Lady represented through a song called "Last Pretender" which was their 21st single released in January 1981. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any video with that one and it is a song that has yet to be performed on TV since no choreography was ever provided to Mie and Kei .
Rather fascinating sometimes when I look for one song and then the trail leads to another song when I least expect it. A nice story comes out of it which is part of what this blog is all about. I was listening to my Techno Kayo CD which I had purchased several months ago and was planning to write about (and I will after this article) the first track. Then on the J-Wiki article for this group, I found out that this group's origins were quite intriguing.
I did this for one other kayo in the past but I'm going to start off by referring once again to "Hooked on Classics", a 1981 album of disco-infused classical music that caught fire over the radio and at the stores.
Now this is where I get into the meat of this article. It seems that this whole process of adding a disco medley to another genre's famous compositions wasn't started by the folks behind "Hooked on Classics". Half a decade back, in fact, a band of Japanese studio musicians had decided to put together their own medley of kayo hits by applying the disco sound.
The group came up with the rather sad name of Minor Tuning Band（マイナー・チューニング・バンド）and called their potpourri "Soul Korekkiri desu ka". Not sure if it's really soul but I think it's more of a disco-and-funk thing. As for the title, it came from the famous line in Momoe Yamaguchi's classic "Yokosuka Story": korekkiri, korekkiri mou korekkiri desu ka, and sure enough the medley starts off with the disco version of the song.
Well, then, allow me to provide the list of the songs involved in "Soul Korekkiri desu ka":
Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）-- Yokosuka Story（横須賀ストーリー）
Sakiko Ito（伊藤咲子）-- Kimi Kawaii ne（きみ可愛いね）
Candies（キャンディーズ）-- Haru Ichiban（春一番）
Masamitsu Tayama（田山雅充）-- Haru Urara（春うらら）
Junko Sakurada（桜田淳子）-- Nee! Ki ga Tsuite yo（ねえ!気がついてよ） back to Yokosuka Story
Yasuko Naito（内藤やす子）-- Omoide Boroboro（想い出ぼろぼろ）
Masato Shimon（子門真人）-- Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun（およげ！たいやきくん）
Daniel Boone -- Beautiful Sunday
Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）-- Momen no Handkerchief（木綿のハンカチーフ）
Kozue Saito（斎藤こず恵）-- Yamaguchi Sanchi no Tsutomu-kun（山口さんちのツトム君）
Teruhiko Aoi（あおい輝彦）-- Anata dake wo（あなただけを） back to Yokosuka Story
Yuko Asano（浅野ゆう子）-- Sexy Bus Stop（セクシー・バス・ストップ） back to Yokosuka Story
Harumi Miyako（都はるみ）-- Kita no Yado kara（北の宿から）
Perhaps even Minor Tuning Band hadn't expected it, but "Soul Korekkiri desu ka" became a hit soon after it was released in December 1976, peaking at No. 2 on Oricon.
Then came a slight dilemma. The powers-that-be wanted to get "Soul Korekkiri desu ka" performed on TV and perhaps the band kinda thought "Do we really have to go on TV?". Well, through an audition process within the NTV Music Academy cadre of students, three women were chosen to be the voices and faces for the song and the trio was dubbed Apache (although it was really the vocal group Singers Three who originally recorded the song). Problem solved.
And Apache was actually how I had wanted to start things off tonight. By the way, the following year, there was even an "Hooked on Enka"medley that became the talk of the town.
I've had this song bookmarked for several months so I gather that it's time to give its due on the blog.
One thing I gotta say about Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）. Not only has she been a great singer and songwriter but she has had this ability to come up with these upbeat tunes that are mainstream pop but have all of the energy of an aidoru number. I realize that she has also been seen dabbling into AOR and City Pop but I think her "Kokoro ni Make-up" (Make-up for the Heart) is just good ol' pop.
Written and composed by Ozaki, it was initially the B-side to her 9th single"Slow Dancing"（スローダンシング）from June 1979 but was also included in her 5th album later that October, "Little Fantasy"."Kokoro no Make-up" continues that kayo tradition of masking some melancholy feelings in some happy music that follows a woman getting over the shock of a failed romance. As much as she would apply the cosmetics on her face to cheer her up and get back into the world, she realizes that she also needs some of that make-up for her bruised heart.
I did say that Ozaki's upbeat numbers have the energy of aidoru tunes but there is something about the arrangement that elevates things from the usual teenybopper song. "Kokoro no Make-up" starts with the melodic equivalent of a motorcycle rumble before launching into the air. And then there are the disco strings, the synths and the thumpy bass. Come to think of it, perhaps I should label it as a City Pop tune after all.
There are some heavy hitters in the band, too. Along with Ozaki herself on the Prophet 5, there is Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）on guitar, Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）on bass, Jake H. Concepcion on alto sax, and Hideki Matsutake（松武秀樹）with the synthesizer programming.
